Effective Communication

What's the difference between a good leader and an excellent leader ? According to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ and various other books on the same topic, the answer to that is a no-brainer. You guessed it, of course: it's emotional intelligence. At any rate, that's what accounts for at least 85% of the difference!

And if you think seriously about what emotional intelligence really is, that's no great surprise.

Harvey Deutschendorf, Emotional Intelligence Coach at a large human resource organization, tells in a fascinating article how his company developed a special program to train potential leaders to replace managers who would be retiring in the coming years. As part of the program, a section of the company newsletter was devoted to emotional intelligence. This included sharing stories of personal experiences where emotional intelligence was evident, as examples from which the budding leaders could learn.

The following is one of these stories.

The writer was standing in the cashier's lineup at the local courthouse, waiting to pay for a speeding ticket. Ahead of him, in front of the line , was a short elderly gentleman. He took a fat wad of bills out of his pocket and counted them out in front of the cashier - and as he did so, he was laughing all the while! The writer watched in amazement as the man handed over the money, took his receipt and grinned from ear to ear as he said to the cashier: "Now I'm free!"

The writer was curious to hear what the cashier thought of this, and as he took his turn he remarked to her that he had never seen someone who was happy while paying a fine. They both enjoyed a chuckle and then it struck the writer that he had just witnessed another first - never before had he seen an official in that kind of establishment smile!

When the cashier asked him to sign his credit card stub, the writer quipped that there was no place for a tip on it. As he left, the cashier thanked him for "making my day." As for the very jovial gentleman who by now had disappeared from the scene, little did he probably realize what a powerfully positive effect he had on at least two strangers that day!

After noting that walking away in an upbeat mood after having just paid a fine was anything but typical for him, the writer points out that two lessons he had just learned were, above all, reasons for rejoicing.

Firstly: the stranger had demonstrated that we all choose how to react in any given situation. Secondly and most importantly, we should never underestimate the impact that our behaviors have on others.

To be sure, internalizing these two basic but unappreciated facts is a vital life skill that needs to be mastered by anyone and everyone. But certainly, these two lessons are doubly important in the context of leadership training. As Deutschendorf notes, learning to deal effectively with adversity and and the ability to carry on despite setbacks are crucial leadership skills.

And as we have seen, staying positive is essential to good leadership for another reason: leaders are in a position where they can affect the mood of many people under them.

Labels: business communication, emotional maturity, interpersonal relationships

Stumble It!

The title of this piece may sound like a contradiction in terms, but no, it makes perfectly good sense.

Disappointment, disapproval, resentment, bitterness, frustration, anger. All these are emotions that are clearly "negative", in the sense that, generally speaking, we don't perceive of them as "ideal" states of mind and people don't feel that way by choice. It's just that external circumstances (We didn't order them!) are unfavorable right now and what we feel seems to be an inevitable and unavoidable reaction to these circumstances.

Whether or not that last statement is entirely accurate, there's no denying that these negative feelings are a natural part of daily life. In the world of nature, you can't have heat without cold, light without darkness, nor health without disease. So, too, in the realm of human interaction, we can't expect positive without negative.

What's crucial is not whether or not we have these feelings, but how we express and control them. So crucial, in fact, that this is the likely "make or break" factor in all kinds of interpersonal relationships, and nowhere is this more true than in the relationship between marriage partners.

How do you handle your negative feelings towards your spouse, your children, your friends or fellow workers?

If you express them in an uncontrolled outburst of violent rage, the fallout for you and those near and dear to you is hardly likely to be pleasant - to put it mildly. Even if you give vent to your feelings in a way that's more controlled but deliberately intended to hurt - such as through sarcasm, ridicule or name-calling, the communication will be anything but effective.

But another way of dealing with such feelings is in some respects the worst of all, and unfortunately, it's far too common. That's when you don't express your negative emotions at all but keep them hidden inside you. By holding them in, you think you'll make them go away.

But they don't. In your heart, the tension you've tried so hard to suppress builds up. And builds up. And builds up. Until....

Professional counselor Dr Meir Wikler, in a book entitled Ten Minutes a Day to a Better Marriage, tells a story that I strongly suspect will strike a cord with many who are reading these lines.

Aaron didn't know how to express negative feelings in a positive way. His mistake was that he through he could maintain peace at home simply by restraining them.

But such restraint does have its limits. Therefore, whenever he was particularly upset about something his wife Sarah said or did, his internal pressure cooker would boil over. He would lash out at her with such rage and venom that she would be scared stiff. Next day, he would be overcome with embarrassment and promise himself and his wife he would never repeat such outbursts.

One day, Aaron kept swallowing in every comment from Sarah that he regarded as disrepectful, derogatory or demeaning. Then, as he was standing in the kitchen, Sarah crossed a red line one more time with a criticism he felt was unfair.

What did Aaron do? He "calmly" walked over to the sink, took the bottle of dishwashing liquid and squeezed some of it into the pot of spaghetti Sarah was cooking on the stove. Then he stormed out of the house. Apparently, it took many months to pick up the pieces of the shattered trust between him and Sarah.

Please read for yourself Dr. Wikler's analysis of the mistakes made on both sides and his rules for avoiding this kind of messy situation in your own home. This informative extract from his book, I dare to propose, must be compulsory reading for all who are married or aspire towards marriage, and certainly if you feel your relationship is somewhat shaky.

I've said it often: marriage, like any other worthwhile achievement, is hard work. It just doesn't work to drive our relationships on automatic pilot.

Labels: emotional maturity, interpersonal relationships

Stumble It!

Imagine that the Internal Revenue Service in your country claimed that you owe $1000 plus in tax arrears.

You dispute this, and you challenge the tax people in court, but the court rules that they're right. Especially if you're a person of substantial means, you'd pay up with a shrug of the shoulders. "Too bad," you'll comfort yourself, "you can't win all the time!" and you'll put the matter out of your mind fairly quickly.

Now let's assume that instead of the government, an acquaintance, or even a good friend, alleges that you're in his debt, for whatever reason, for the same sum of money.

Again, you go to court.

Your alleged creditor pleads his case, you plead yours. Eventually, the judge decides in his favor, and even explains to you very patiently why the money rightfully belongs to your opponent.

How do you react to your loss now?

Probably, even if you're very wealthy, you're not about to shrug it off so quickly this time!

Why not? Because somebody else is gaining at your expense! If there's anything worse than a property loss, it's an Ego loss. Now, for most of us, that's really a heavy burden to bear!

What brings this kind of scenario to mind is some recent research into an interesting social paradox. Over the past 50 or 60 years, developed countries have been growing progressively richer, but their people, on the whole, don't seem to have become much happier.

Yes, more rich people, proportionately speaking, claim to be happier at any given time than do poorer people. This should lead you to the conclusion that as incomes rise and a country as a whole grows richer, both the relatively rich and the relatively poor would become happier.

But this isn't the case, apparently. It may still be axiomatic that an individual who becomes richer becomes happier, or at least claims to be. But when society as a whole gets wealthier, nobody seems more pleased with their lot. Why?

In a series of lectures at the London School of Economics this year, Richard Layard, an economics professor at the School, reviewed the evidence from several disciplines in an attempt to solve this paradox. One explanation he mentioned is "habituation": that is, improvements to living standards make people happy for a while, but the effect soon fades as they begin to take the innovations for granted. Another factor, surely, as we discussed recently, is the dazzling array of choices available in affluent societies.

But Layard suggests that there's probably a more fundamental reason why money doesn't automatically make everyone happier. Very simply, people are in the habit of comparing their lot with others. If I have a million but you have two million, I have to be feeling miserable. My million is worthless to me.

As Layard puts it, "The unhappiness that one person's extra income can cause to others is a form of pollution."

In one very telling experiment, students at Harvard University were asked whether they would prefer (a) $50,000 a year while others got half that, or (b) $1000,000 a year while others got twice that much. Yes, you've guessed it - a majority chose (a). Give me less, they said, as long as I'm better off than others! Other studies confirmed this tendency for people to be more concerned about their income relative to others than about their absolute income.

For Lord Layard, as an economist, the main lesson here is probably that the pursuit of material comforts doesn't always lead to happiness. But as for us, we dare not leave it at that.

Well, yes, it's nothing more or less than human nature. But make no mistake. Even human nature can be changed. All that's required is the will. And to the extent that a part of our nature is irrational and damaging to our own wellbeing and that of our fellows, it should be changed.

Are you up to the challenge?

Labels: emotional maturity

Stumble It!

Your head is spinning as you finally pull into the driveway of your home. You've had tough days in the office before, but today beats all records. And in spite of a long string of interruptions entirely beyond your control, you have to complete the project on time, even ahead of time. Or else. The alternative is not appealing to contemplate.

But now you've arrived home. Time to unwind. Haven for shattered nerves. You walk in, your wife greets you and looks you up and down, quickly perceiving your state of total physical and mental exhaustion. She says something that is intended to convey her concern and empathy.

But unfortunately, and indeed not surprisingly considering your fatigued condition, you misinterpret her comment for something disparaging and threatening. On a normal day - no big deal - all that would be needed would be a polite request for clarification. But today...today is different. Different because your reaction is so fast, so automatic. And no one is surprised more than yourself.

You yell and scream at the top of your lungs. The kids burst into tears, the dog starts howling. Your wife is paralyzed with fear, and for that matter, so are you! What happened to you? Did the neighbors hear? Did they call the police already? Not a bad job at all for a gentle, mind-mannered guy like you!

But yes, that's the havoc that stress can sometimes wreak. Stress is often the trigger that could catapult you from relative tranquility to the height of anger in many common situations, all in a matter of seconds. Which is why it's especially important to seek out and use suitable strategies to keep stress under control, before things reach the stage where it controls you! (Also to train your children to develop adequate coping mechanisms while there's still time.)

Now, it would appear, the role of stress and frustration in precipitating anger and aggression has assumed an additional, very disturbing, dimension.

The advanced technology that is part and parcel of our modern lifestyles is obviously one of its greatest blessings. Unfortunately, in many ways, it has also become a curse.

Today, we have pressed into service a mountain of electronic equipment of all shapes and sizes to house our most important records and store all kinds of priceless information, including intimate secrets. Our machines are becoming more and more complicated, which usually means, by definition, the higher the probability that something will go wrong eventually. And when it does, the consequences are becoming all the harder to bear.

The loss of a computer, cell phone or other gadget can be so jolting, says a report last month in the Washington Post, can be so jolting that it's fuelling the rise of what some psychologists are calling "computer rage." A recent survey by a researcher at the University of Maryland found that as many as one out of 10 users have hit, kicked or otherwise abused their equipment when it refuses to work or fails to perform according to the owner's expectations. "We place so much trust in computers that it gets a little scary," commented the researcher.

Interestingly, this phenomenon is said to be transforming the nature of technology service, an industry long infamous for being impersonal. It's almost as if repair teams are being called upon to serve as crisis counselors, social workers or psychologists in addition to their role as technicians.

One customer felt it was the last straw when, after experiencing six computer and two cell phone breakdowns in her household within a short period, her DVD player began to freeze every few minutes during an interesting program. "I was ready to throw everything out the window or burn them or do something violent", she confessed. Luckily, she was able to locate a computer-repair consultant who was skilled enough to calm her down.

Here again, prevention is far better than cure. And I'm talking about you, not your machine. More on this subject in an upcoming post.

Labels: emotional maturity

Stumble It!

An intriguing new trend seems to be taking root in the world of education, at least in the United States. Just could be that the winds of change will turn out, after all, to be in the best interests of the constituency they are designed to benefit - the mass of students in the wider educational system today, who are our main hope for a better tomorrow.

On the other hand, is this simply a case of political correctness gone crazy?

The ink that American teachers are using has now become very problematic, apparently, or to be more specific, red ink. Red, of course, is the traditional color that teachers have long used to correct answers and offer suggestions. But now, according to reports, the color has become so symbolic of negativity that some educators will not touch it. And parents, too, feel that red writing is far too "stressful."

One teacher explained that the disillusionment with red is part of a broader shift in grading. The emphasis is changing from "Here's what you need to improve on" to "Here's what you've done right."

Placing the emphasis on what a child does right is certainly a worthy objective. The best educators, and parents, know that there's nothing like well-directed praise to spur a children to greater achievement (although indiscriminate praise can sometimes do more harm than good.) But current politically correct thinking takes this one step further and dictates that helping people "feel good about themselves" is more important than helping them to achieve excellence.
The upshot of this is that many teachers apparently feel that the focus of their efforts should be towards ensuring that their pupils feel satisfied with their output, rather than prodding them to produce better work. And that's where the problem lies.

The self-esteem movement has been gathering momentum in recent years. Few will deny that the cultivation of a healthy self-image is a crucial developmental goal. Success or failure in attaining it could have far-reaching implications both during a child's school career and in later life. But in a recent book that must have certainly created big waves in many an educational circle, authors Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel propose that an overabundance of self-esteem can be more dangerous than helpful.

"Unmerited self-esteem is known to be associated with antisocial behavior - even criminality, Sommers and Satel wrote in One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance. In an interview to discuss their book, the authors opined that "the concept is too poorly understood to be an appropriate classroom objective. High-school dropouts, burglars, car thieves, shoplifters, even murderers, are just as likely to have high self-esteem as the winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor or Rhodes Scholars." A strong statement indeed.

Coming back to the saga of the red ink, apparently pen manufacturers are confirming that purple is becoming the new color of choice for many teachers. On of them explained the reason: "My generation was brought up on right or wrong with no in between, and red was always in your face. It's abrasive to me. Purple is just a little more gentle."

"Right or wrong with no in between.....was that a bad thing? Personally, I hardly think so. Indeed that may be the crux of the whole matter.

You see, once you start chipping away at the concept of personal responsibility for your actions and for what you become in life, when "don't worry, be happy!" is the call of the hour - then it's only a matter of time before short-term self-gratification takes over from long-term striving to reach one's full potential.

Labels: emotional maturity

Stumble It!

Jill and Sharon (not their real names) worked on the same projects in close proximity to each other in a relatively small office. Their work was very pressured with one tight deadline to meet after another. Small wonder that the two of them were continually treading on each others toes and from time to time, the very palpable tension between them would boil over into heated arguments.

One day they had such a fierce confrontation that if they hadn't been the mature adults that they were, it might very easily have become physical.

The next day, Jill didn't report for duty. Neither was she at work on the following day - nor the one after that. When her boss and her fellow workers made enquiries, they discovered that for some time she had been suffering, on and off, from a serious illness that she had hidden from everyone.

When Sharon learned of this, she almost went out of her mind. The last spat between the two of them kept replaying itself in her head. Maybe she was responsible for the sudden deterioration in her co-worker's health? Even assuming that the disease had been afflicting Jill for a long time already, perhaps Sharon's biting sarcasm and the force of her anger had weakened Jill further and made the condition worse?

It took many soothing words, a great deal of patience and hours of gentle explanation on the part of Sharon's sympathetic but firm husband to get her eventually to snap out of her alternating hysteria and depression. He repeated over and over again that while the unkind words both Sharon and her colleague had hurled at each other were certainly not to be condoned, it was unreasonable and illogical to accept blame for Jill's deteriorating health.

Most importantly, explained Sharon's husband, the overpowering feeling of guilt that was driving her to distraction every moment of the day was preventing her from functioning properly and was serving no one's interests - not hers and certainly not Jill's.

Two month's ago I posted a piece I called Shame Should Be a Badge of Honor, which somehow hit a raw nerve for many and attracted a lot of interest. I decried the lack of healthy shame in today's society, a lack which leads to people committing dishonest, indecent, immoral and unethical acts under the public gaze in broad daylight without as much as batting an eyelid.

In it's purest form, shame is a positive, healthy phenomenon. It is rooted in the desire for self-improvement and involves working with the intellect. It's all about personal responsibility, and is an elevating experience that provides an impetus for growth and promotes human dignity. It ultimately leads to enhanced interpersonal relationships.

Irrational Guilt, on the other hand - in the sense that I'm talking about here - is not about self-control, but rather the reverse. It's a debilitating and even crippling experience that erodes self-esteem and has no positive outcome. It's not about the intellect. It's about the heart ruling the head in the most negative sense.

In the end, rather than bringing people closer to their fellows, it creates barriers between them. This is surely a point of crucial significance.

In practice, how do we ensure that positive shame will never degenerate into irrational guilt? Sometimes it's far from easy, as we see from Sharon's unfortunate episode. In extreme cases, professional help may be required, especially when recurring guilt feelings are precipitated by one or more traumatic incidents in a person's past life.

Generally speaking, though, there's one yardstick that's useful in many different situations in determining whether a certain feeling, state of mind, or attitude is positive and constructive or unhealthy and destructive. What we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves the following question:

"Honestly, what's motivating me? Is it my ego or am I motivated by a sincere interest in the the party I'm involved with or in the people around me?"

Labels: emotional maturity

Stumble It!

Yes, I know that's a rather cryptic headline, but just one minute, and I'll explain...

In one of my articles on the site, I referred to an eye-opening classroom experience that former teacher John Andrew Murray wrote about in Teachers in Focus magazine. It's worth repeating here.

Murray was teaching English at a private American school and he was using the old television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents to spice up his weekly lessons on plot development. After a few weeks, he decided to stop the show before the end and let the students write their own endings. The kids liked the idea so much that they wanted to read their work aloud in class.

Murray was happy to agree, but after the first three or four students, he put a stop to the reading aloud. Why?

Because what the teacher has heard had horrified and sickened him.

Once he had recovered a little from the initial shock, he began to discuss with the youngsters the highly explicit imagery of violence he had found in their papers. They insisted that media violence didn't affect them because, after all, the graphic scenes they saw on TV and the movies were "fake." Murray then asked them how they would feel if they saw a dog on TV getting riddled with bullets.

"How horrible!" they cried out in unison.

Murray concludes that unlike the human carnage they regularly witness on TV, his pupils found animal deaths appalling precisely because they had seldom seen it.

For the first time, they realized how desensitized they had become to violence.

Now you'll perhaps understand why I refer to the media (and I use the word in the very broad sense: newspapers, magazines, books, TV, computer games, email, Internet, the works...) as the anesthetics of modern society.

It's a funny thing. When I was a little younger, a major function of the " press", as it was then called - a term later largely replaced by "the media" to embrace more modern forms of communication - was perceived to be a public watchdog against corruption and social injustice. In other words, a red flag, a siren to rouse you from your slumber, to alert and sensitize you to communal and social maladies that need addressing.

Hopefully, the media, or part of it, still serves that role. But we see from the above story how the media can do exactly the opposite.

We see, in fact, a numbing effect that can really put us to sleep.

In my next post, please G-d, we'll examine whether the power of this anesthesia is confined to our natural aversion to violence and similar phenomena, or whether its effects reach further to far more subtle areas.

Labels: emotional maturity, interpersonal relationships

Stumble It!

In my article Your Self-image in the Workplace , I mentioned the interesting confession of an educator friend who has years of experience in teaching, and only at the best schools.

"Usually," my friend had lamented with a big sigh, "a small child arrives for his first day of school with an excellent self-image."

"Great - so what's the problem, then?" I had asked.

"Well, very often, that's the end of the story!"

The following incident, which I read of recently, may be an extreme example, but it surely represents the type of thing my friend had in mind.

A certain teacher asked her pupils to open the homework they were supposed to have prepared the previous evening. She noticed that little Suzie failed to open her book, and asked her why.

Suzie turned red and managed to stammer: "I...didn't ...do the homework. I...I...forgot about it."

Thereupon, the teacher took a small coin out of her pocket, glared at the object of her anger and snickered: "Suzie, do you see this penny? Well, Suzie, I can tell you, it's even more than you're worth!"

I don't know what our teacher had hoped to achieve, except perhaps to imbue in the poor girl a hatred of learning for the rest of her school career. The only thing we can be certain of, is that it's past time that this lady looked for a new profession.

If what she had intended was to instill in her pupil a sense of shame, that's a kind of shame that's clearly very, very destructive. But it must be said, and said very clearly, there's another kind of shame that's very, very constructive.

And it's nothing less than a tragedy that in today's so-called civilized society, we've all but lost that sense of constructive shame. And as a society, we're destined to pay very heavily for it.

What inspired me to write this post was an excellent article by Dr. Joyce Brothers entitled Shame May Not Be So Bad After All in Parade Magazine of Feb. 27. I urge you to read it, and think about it deeply.

A world in which a woman boasts openly on a TV talk show about seducing her sister's husband, a man on a reality show confides his plan to humiliate an unsuspecting teammate - "knife him in the back" - a world in which songs about the joys of beating up women are openly aired and new computer games where the mission is to kill John F. Kennedy are openly sold on the market - is this a healthy world or a very, very sick one?

Carrying around the "baggage" of shame only makes people bad about themselves, say some pseudo-psychologists. But as Dr. Brother points out, rather than increasing our self-esteem, the suppression of shame can do just the opposite.

"Positive shame," she asserts, "occurs when we see ourselves as we really are - perhaps too involved to notice that our spouse needs our help, perhaps too scared of what others think to stand up for someone in trouble, perhaps too resentful of the past to allow a wound to heal..."

Negative, destructive shame is something we can all do without.

But bringing back the positive shame of years and generations gone by is what may yet save this world.

Labels: emotional maturity, interpersonal relationships

Stumble It!