In my article in the last edition of this e-zine we looked at the various components of Emotional Intelligence, which are measured by separate scales in the Individual Effectiveness questionnaire. Now we have identified what EI is composed of, the question arises: How does it relate to all the other psychological and management theories and approaches that people used before EI came on the scene ten years ago, and in many cases still do?

Self Regard
We have seen how fundamental Self Regard, or Self Esteem (same thing), is in determining the level of someone’s emotional intelligence, and perhaps that concept is the one to start with. We see the relationship between emotional intelligence, self esteem and self confidence (the distinction here being that self esteem is how we feel about our being and self confidence is how we feel about our doing) as summarised in this diagram:

To be fully healthy (not just emotionally, but physically too), happy and successful we need to have high self esteem, high self confidence, and high emotional intelligence, and of course these three variables tend to coincide to a considerable degree.

Self esteem, or self regard, we see as a prerequisite of emotional intelligence, and - in line with the Transactional Analysis model of the OK Corral - we see true self regard as carrying with it regard for others. Those who claim to have high self regard but who do not tend to regard others highly are probably denying and defending against an underlying feeling of low self regard. (See Issue 3, April 2005.)

One of the key features of EI is that all of its components are changeable and developable, and happily this applies too to the key underlying element of self esteem. The best way to have high self esteem is to choose the family you are born into well so that you will emerge from childhood feeling good about yourself, but if you didn’t manage to do that, you can still alter your level of self esteem as an adult, by controlling the pattern of “stroking” that you receive and let in from yourself and others.

One of the common responses we get when we introduce people to emotional intelligence for the first time is “I have done a lot of different bits of self development in my time, but EI seems to pull them all together and give them a structure.” Apart from self esteem, which basically derives from the experience of being unconditionally accepted by others, and which is effectively a prerequisite for emotional intelligence, many other important psychological concepts relating to the effectiveness of people’s functioning in the world are subsumed within emotional intelligence, and given a coherent place within a structured framework by it.

Transactional Analysis (“TA”)
The most obvious relationship between our approach to EI and another approach to psychological explanation and the understanding of how human beings work is with TA. We have already referred to the centrality of the model of the OK Corral, and the importance of self regard (“I’m OK”) and regard for others (“You’re OK”), and for each of the other scales we provide a connexion between levels of self regard and regard for others and levels of scoring on the other scale. Another particular parallel between our EI theory and TA theory is Scale 10 “Invitation to Trust”. One important aspect of this is integrity of the personality: in TA terms if we have Child and Parent ego-states which are not integrated with and under the control of the Adult, then we are not trustworthy.

The reasons why there are many parallels between the TA approach and our EI approach are manifold. They include:

“Intelligence“
Since EI has within its name the concept of intelligence, we should consider how the two concepts are related and how they differ. This is a bit tricky because the normal understanding of the notion of intelligence has considerably changed over the last twenty five years as a result of the work on Multiple Intelligences of Martin Gardner and his colleagues at Harvard. To oversimplify, a generation ago intelligence was conceived of largely as being one thing (what we now would call cognitive intelligence) and relatively fixed (and probably largely inherited). Whereas now we see intelligences as being multiple and of different kinds. These are not just different realms of application for our underlying unitary intelligence, but are separate entities, which can vary separately (one being higher while another is lower) and which are to be located in different parts of the brain. Two of Gardner’s original seven multiple intelligences were Intrapersonal Intelligence and Interpersonal Intelligence, and the combination of these two constitutes emotional intelligence. As well as being separate, these various intelligences are seen as all capable of development, rather than being fixed.

A number of EI theorists see emotional intelligence in terms of the old model of fixed cognitive intelligence, of which it forms a subsidiary part. We see it in terms of the new model of multiple intelligences, both its aspects being capable of development. There is probably an upper limit set by our genetic inheritance, but in our view none of us gets near that, because of our acquired psychological interferences, and so the existence of these inherited limits is largely of theoretical interest only. In practical terms, increasing our emotional intelligence involves identifying and dismantling, or at least managing, our interferences.

While that is the general picture, we have to acknowledge that the level of cognitive intelligence (logical-mathematical reasoning and facility with language) is capable of affecting the level of emotional intelligence, certainly at the extremes, in a limiting way. If EI involves thinking about feeling and we are limited in our capacity to think (say our IQ is below 80), then it is likely that this will affect our capacity to be emotionally intelligent.

“Emotions”
Traditionally, emotions were the Cinderella of psychological research and theorizing. This was for two reasons. Partly, psychologists, like most academics, were brought up in the Cartesian tradition of “I think therefore I am”, and they devalued the importance of feeling (largely female) as opposed to thinking (largely male). Partly, and this time more practically and defensibly, before the days of brain imaging it was difficult to operationalise feelings in physical terms, and so conduct research into them. Nowadays, we are fortunate enough to be able to observe brain function in living human beings, and to see what happens in the brain when they experience certain feelings. But in addition to that, we have come to realize that feelings are not brain events, they are whole body states mediated largely by hormones rather than neurons.

The consequences of this realisation are two fold. First, and practically, it means that awareness - which is fundamental to emotional intelligence and is the prerequisite of self management and relationship management, means bodily awareness. Self awareness means being aware of what is going on in our body, and what its significance is and what we need to do about it. Awareness of others means being aware of what is going on in their bodies, what significance that has for them and for us and our relationship management. Second, and more philosophically, it means that emotions just are (being the consequence of our heredity and our history) - rather than being voluntary cognitive constructs - and therefore are to be accepted, rather than judged as good or bad. Hence our Principle Number 6: “All emotions are self-justified, to be accepted and important.”

“Gestalt”
The school of gestalt psychotherapy founded by Fritz Perls shares our emphasis on the bodily nature of emotions, and of the importance of awareness. (A dictionary definition of gestalt: '(German) a form, shape, pattern: organised whole or unit. Gestalt psychology, revolt from the atomistic outlook of the orthodox school, starts with the organised whole as something not a mere sum of the parts into which it can be logically analysed.) Many gestalt ways of working constitute effective interventions for the development of self awareness. A particular scale of the IEq, apart from Scales 3 and 4 Self Awareness and Awareness of Others, which has gestalt echoes is Scale 8 Flexibility, which is in effect measuring people’s willingness to live with open Gestalts.

“Personality”
Personality is by definition something relatively unchanging and enduring: it is an abstraction from the patterns of behaviour over time. (To what extent it is hereditary and fixed, and to what extent the result of very early learning and therefore potentially changeable, if with difficulty, will depend on where you stand in the heredity vs. environment debate.) EI, on the other hand, and all the things that compose it, are, as we have seen, changeable and developable. EI, therefore, is not as some would have it coterminous with personality, nor a set of personality traits. It is rather how effectively we manage our personality, given that it is what it is.

“The MBTI”
The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, based on Jungian Analytical Psychology, is an example of this distinction between personality and emotional intelligence. It measures people’s cognitive preferences in the way they deal with information, and these are seen as being relatively fixed. Because of this relative fixity, it seems much less powerful than an approach based on EI. Once you have been “typed” there is not much you can do with the information except learn to live with it. But since all aspects of EI are changeable and developable, once you learn your EI profile you can if you wish set about changing where you stand on some aspects.

The other distinction between the MBTI and an EI approach points up an interesting paradox in EI. Because the MBTI is establishing a range of fixed personal preferences, its attitude towards these variables is neutral: neither end of the scale is good or bad. EI is similarly based on a lack of judgment. It can be argued that the one single thing that most differentiates the emotionally intelligent from the emotionally unintelligent is that those high in EI accept themselves and others unconditionally. And yet, all the aspects of EI, all the scales of the IEq, have evaluation built in. For scales 1 to 10, the higher your score the more emotionally intelligent in that respect you are seen as being, and therefore the more likely to be healthy, happy and successful. Whereas for scales 11 to 15, the nearer the middle of the composite bipolar scale you are, the more emotionally intelligent in that respect you are seen as being, and therefore the more likely to be healthy, happy and successful. Highly evaluative - it is a good thing you can do something about it if you score low!

An EI approach would similarly treat evaluatively some of the variables the MBTI measures, variables which we do not see as relatively fixed aspects of personality but as learned patterns that can be changed if people wish. For example, people whose strong preference is to be judgmental (“J”) we would see as having acquired some significant interferences in this respect, which impede them from accepting others unconditionally, a prerequisite for emotional intelligence. Just as a person-centred or Rogerian counsellor would see them as low in the core conditions of Unconditional Positive Regard and Empathy, and a Gestaltist would see them as stuck with a preference for fixed Gestalts.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming “NLP”
Fifteen years ago NLP was probably the psychological approach which found the greatest response in work organisations. In some ways it has close links with EI, and in others not. The distinction goes back to the origins of NLP. It was founded on the premise that successful therapists were successful not because of their theories about psychology but because of what they did, how they behaved, with their clients. A highly detailed analysis of the behaviours of some highly skilled therapists from different theoretical orientations generated some common patterns which were determined to be key. From the beginning, therefore, NLP has majored in technique and has tended to ignore theory, philosophy and ethics. The absence of an overarching theoretical approach, contrasts with our approach to EI which manages to organise coherently a whole variety of different insights. Above all, the philosophical approach of NLP is in EI terms deficient. Whereas we come from a respectful empowering position, putting the client at the centre of their own development, many NLP techniques are done to the client (out of awareness) by the practitioner, rather than offered to the client to use on themselves. In TA terms this is Parent to Child, not Adult to Adult; it is not respectful and it is not empowering. Furthermore, NLP is open to being used manipulatively and exploitatively. Some of the techniques it has identified are extremely effective, and can profitably be used in the process of facilitating EI development.

Belbin Team Roles
If the MBTI is the most popular way of categorising individuals in general, the Belbin team roles provide the most popular way of categorising people’s performance in team settings. How does this relate to the EI approach to team working? First, it is based on the premise that what determines team performance is the identity and characteristics of the people contained within the team. Our view, as the Team Effectiveness questionnaire demonstrates, is that the chief determinants of the level of performance, in teams as well as in individuals, are attitudinal. The TEq is therefore designed to measure the ethos and emotional climate of the team as a whole. On an individual level, it obviously makes sense to have a good spread of talents in those making up a team, but what the Belbin measure seems to overlook, in EI terms, is Flexibility. If people are emotionally intelligent, and in particular if they are high in flexibility, they will not always do their standard thing in every team setting, but will have a range of behaviours to call on, will use their Awareness of Others to diagnose which particular way of working will be most needed in that particular team, and adapt their behaviour accordingly. So really the way EI and the Team Roles relate is that the more emotionally intelligent you are, the less you will be fixed in any of the particular team roles and the more you will be able to transcend them according to the requirements of the situation. Again, the EI approach emphasises the capacity for movement and change, whereas the old approach assumes fixity.

Obviously, we could go on ad infinitum looking at the relationship between our approach to EI and various other psychological constructs and approaches. There is one more we need to look at, and then I hope I will have covered the most salient ones, and the ones people are most interested in.

Motivation
One of the issues which those interested in the application of EI in organizations are often concerned with is motivation, but the relationship of motivation to emotional intelligence is not a simple one. Historically, it used to have a special place. Dan Goleman was a student at Harvard of Professor David McClelland, who as well as being the father of the competency movement (hence the ECI-360, the Emotional “Competence” Inventory), was a motivation guru and invented the idea of “nAch”, the need for achievement. Consequently Dan Goleman’s first model of EI was not the four part one which is now the same as ours, but had an additional fifth element: motivation. On reflection, he – in our view rightly – dropped that element.

Motivation does not appear explicitly in our model of emotional intelligence, nor is it directly measured by the Individual Effectiveness questionnaire. Of course, one crucial element is covered by Scale 7 Goal Directedness, and this is definitely part of EI, and notions of Personal Power (Scale 6) are also involved: it is difficult to be highly motivated if you do not believe that what you do has much effect on the outcome. But there is more to motivation than that. Part of it appears to be constitutional: some people have higher levels of energy than others; some are fairly listless, and some tend to be more active. This variation is not part of emotional intelligence; it seems relatively fixed rather than learned. EI comes into play when it comes to managing our energy levels, whatever they are.

The crucial question when exploring the relationship between motivation and EI is: where is the motivation coming from? Is the person driven, or are they choosing to do what they do? Consider McClelland’s concept of “need for achievement”. Why do some people have this need? Because their OKness is conditional: “I am only OK if I am successful and seen to be successful”. By definition, therefore, people with a high need for achievement are relatively low in Self Regard, the most fundamental of the elements of emotional intelligence, because Self Regard is the same as unconditional OKness. In TA terms, these people spend most of their time in conforming Adapted Child trying to fulfil the conditions of their OKness, obeying the demands of their internal Parent, rather than in Adult. They may be highly productive in the short term, because they are so driven, but because they are not in Adult, their thinking and decision making will often be impaired, their lack of unconditional self regard will mean that they are likely not to be good at self management, or to be emotionally resilient, they will be liable to burn out, to heart attacks, strokes and alcoholism, they are not likely to be creative, and they are often not much fun to work alongside or under. In short, this is high motivation from a driven, emotionally unintelligent place which can be quantitively productive in the short term, but has lots of disadvantages both for the individual and for the organization in the long term.

Contrast this with people who are highly motivated in doing what they do, but who have a low need for achievement. (That is to say, they may have a strong desire to achieve a particular goal, or set of goals, which they have chosen, but they do not have a need to be seen as a high achiever per se.) They are self-motivated, they do what they do from choice, not from need or from being driven: their OKness is unconditional. In TA terms, their motivation comes from Integrated Adult. The Adult is in charge, the goals are in line with the values held in Parent, and the creativity and energy and enthusiasm of Free Child is engaged in the journey towards the goal. These people will be more creative and flexible, they will think better and make better decisions, they will take better care of themselves and not be liable to burn out or take to drink or become seriously ill. They will pace themselves better and may be less quantitatively productive than those with a high need for achievement in the short term, but over the long haul they will be a much more valuable asset to the organization. And they will have a much more enjoyable time, as will those who work alongside them or for them. This is high motivation from a choiceful, emotionally intelligent place.

© Tim Sparrow 2005
Centre for Applied Emotional Intelligence

When destructive, conflict can have a toxic, and costly, impact on organisations. In this article I give my perspective on what conflict is, why people don’t address it and on how practising emotional intelligence results in effective conflict handling. I also offer some practical tips on conflict resolution. Healthy conflict management requires a two-pronged approach with top-down and bottom-up pro-activity, in other words, senior management commitment to a skilful approach to conflict and staff who are empowered to put assertiveness principles into practice. I focus on the latter for this article.

Good conflict / bad conflict?
Whatever your perception, conflict is inevitable because people are different. We can choose to address it or ignore it, to deal with it in a way that promotes both parties’ interests or in a way that undermines the relationship. Many people perceive conflict as bad, but handled well, conflict is constructive and contributes to the organisation’s success. I refer here to the skilful or planned conflict arising from the careful management of different views and challenges so as to inspire creativity, sharpen ideas, test solutions and encourage innovation. Also, to the skilful resolution of unplanned conflict arising when managers deal with and resolve issues in ways which support and enable team members to progress beyond their differences. The skilful use of planned conflict and the skilful resolution of unplanned conflict generally reflect a healthy organisation which is able to make use of both approaches to make sustainable advances.

Destructive conflict results from an unskilled approach and usually manifests as a toxic breakdown of communication which impairs a team’s or an organisation’s effectiveness and requires costly measures to put right. When individuals set out to improve performance by bullying, or setting team members against each other, or failing to give credit, or scapegoating, they generate destructive tensions. Similarly if managers fail to address issues when they arise or take sides or crush the expression of conflict, they set forces in motion which undermine team and organisational effectiveness. The unskilful approach to conflict can be a sign of a wider organisational malaise.

Choosing the skilful approach means:
capturing the conflict in its early stages
ensuring the differences are respected and
presenting the situation as an opportunity for a creative exploration of options.

But differences are often not nurtured for their potential, instead they are overlooked until they have become toxic and chronic and then must be addressed because performance has been affected. Since this delay is costly, it is worth considering why it happens, and continues to happen.

Some reasons why we don’t address conflict

Pressures
The pace at which most people work nowadays, along with the volume of work to be processed means, for many, that people issues are a lower and time-consuming priority. In resolution sessions it is common to hear ‘with hindsight’ comments like ‘I should have seen it coming.’ or ‘All the signs were there, I just didn’t take notice.’ It’s often the case that people go around with a kind of task-tunnel-vision that doesn’t allow much space for awkward, people problems, but has to make space for the task of dealing with major interpersonal or interdepartmental conflicts. A change of perspective is useful here to get out of the tunnel and to perceive people issues as important, not peripheral, tasks. Addressing the differences early on, investing in a skilful, step by step approach to potential conflicts, nipping them in the bud, saves people and organisations huge amounts of time and money. Listen to the ‘with hindsight’ comments of the people who’ve been there.

Fears
Many people, at all levels in an organisation, get anxious about the consequences of initiating conflict. We fear the discomfort and the consequences of doing what we need to do to prevent things worsening – telling it like it is, managing underperformance, raising difficult subjects. In a culture where we are not expected to ‘rock the boat’, these fears can tower above the positive consequences of addressing the conflict as equals – I’m OK. You’re OK. The irony of this situation is that the outcomes of not addressing the issues are much more ‘to be feared’ than the outcomes of addressing them. Avoiding what needs to be done can result in people cracking under pressure, displays of very unprofessional behaviour, mistakes, huge amounts of time being wasted through poor decision making and a war of egos.

Why the fear?
As humans, we have hard-wired into us ‘fight or flight’ responses. These have served us well and contributed to our survival on the planet for thousands of years, they still do.

These reflexes are strong within most of us even today and fundamentally contribute to our clobbering (fight) or pussyfooting (flight) approach. But, for most of the civilised situations we find ourselves in, these approaches are no longer appropriate because we are not being chased by a sabre toothed tiger and because we have evolved the intelligence to exercise self management:

This intelligent use of emotions forms the basis of assertive behaviour - the middle ground between fight or flight behaviour, where flight is submissive, and fight is aggressive. The middle ground is the place where we can be aware of the slow build up of emotions, recognise the tensions that need to be dealt with and realise that conflict doesn’t mean war.

The skilful approach to conflict
In most situations assertive behaviour minimises destructive conflict because of its problem solving I’m OK. You’re OK. or Adult to Adult approach, the application of which is a major contributory factor to effecting culture change.

The creative options arising from these assertive principles and behaviours accommodate our rights and responsibilities as individuals and allow us both to address our conflicts, live out individual and company values and live with our decisions. Although this may seem like common sense, knowledge can be far removed from practice. How widespread is this approach of mutual respect? The answer lies within the culture of the organisation.

Courage
It takes a certain kind of courage to face up to potentially destructive conflict, (particularly when a conflict straddles an organisational hierarchy), a courage that requires openness and honesty, and that demonstrates the intra and inter personal skills of telling it like it is while, at the same time, facilitating the other party’s understanding and acceptance of what needs to be said. This demonstration of I’m OK. You’re OK. can be fraught with perceived dangers - arguments, aggression, upsetting others, being disliked or ostracised, being misunderstood, being discounted for promotion or becoming the target of retaliation. So more often than not we tolerate the situation because we believe we can’t do anything about it, or that nothing will change. (This gives the security of not having to face our anxiety or take responsibility for our behaviour.) We favour the chronic over the acute and so, without realising it, we contribute to, and become part of, the problem.

Alternatively, when we fear the conflict we may choose the manipulative option, an indirect, dishonest or deceptive means to achieve a particular outcome. We say something we don’t mean, we play a game, we are not congruent with our values. For many who believe conflict is a dirty word and who do not know how to address conflict skilfully, passive aggression is their preferred choice.

And then, to complicate matters further, even apparently assertive behaviour can be manipulative. It sounds right, it’s communicated with what seems like fairness and warmth, but in fact it’s set up so that there’s no choice and the manipulator maintains her/his power.

The following matrix gives some illustrations of conflict’s many guises:

Applied emotional intelligence – the skilful approach to conflict
Whether we are resolving personal conflicts or facilitating a resolution between others, success depends on commitment from both parties (The success of the resolution is often in direct proportion to the level of shared commitment.) and knowledge of:
What we feel
What we want
Taking appropriate action
Appropriate behaviour

Conflict tests all aspects of emotional intelligence. Using the Individual Effectiveness model (CAEI 2000), we can map out the components of an interpersonal relationship and use this as a guide to fulfil the above requirements for success.

Scale 14 of the IEq measures how skilfully an individual approaches conflict.

What we feel
Our feelings are our signals to action. To be sure of what to do in conflict, we need to know, really know, what our true feelings are. It’s common, for example, in conflict to think or believe we are angry and to turn this into revenge, when with a little more reflection, we would be able to locate the anger in our body and recognise a whole cocktail of feelings contained behind the label ‘anger’, for example disappointment, jealousy, hurt, sadness, embarrassment. In conflict people usually react to the pain of their most immediate or most recognisable emotion, without reflecting on what’s stashed away behind it. This takes a good level of self awareness to know, at a personal level, what we are up against and therefore to determine what we want. If we make mistakes in identifying what we feel and what we want, the conflict is likely to recur.

What we want
Achieving what we want from conflict requires effective self management. For example, if our emotional resilience and sense of personal power are low, we may opt for a submissive course of action. Broaching the subject with the other party is a high hurdle to jump, and, without a strong sense of self worth, high emotional resilience and personal power, it’s easier to shy away from the first hurdle. Choosing to increase our resilience would bring very different outcomes. The Individual Effectiveness framework can guide us towards our vulnerabilities and strengths in the conflict and so raise our awareness of what we want and therefore what action to take.

Taking appropriate action
Conflict heightens our interdependence with the other party, which means the situation requires give and take. Conflict will not be resolved if either party is unwilling to see both perspectives. Awareness of others is essential, bringing a degree of empathy for what the situation is like from the other person’s perspective. While it is difficult to know what the other person is going through, we can read behind the words, pick up on their signals, ask questions and listen hard to build some rapport and to ensure our responses keep us on the right side of progress.

Appropriate behaviour
Conflicts are resolved successfully when both parties are able to maintain mutual respect. When our words and behaviour demonstrate the I’m OK. You’re OK. problem solving approach. We can still respect the worth of the other person even if neither party is comfortable with the behaviours or actions that have taken place. The foundation of successful relationship management, and therefore conflict management, is the demonstration of a high level of self regard and regard for others. With this dynamic established, conflict resolution shifts from me against you to us against the problem. This creates a positive attitude towards conflict as both parties feel ‘OK’ and believe the opportunity is there to achieve fair and constructive outcomes, to clear the tensions and to stimulate new goals and interests.

Managing conflict
Conflict tests our attitude and our behaviour. If we are in a facilitator or mediator role, when emotions are fraught, the blame score is high and forgiveness is zero, it is crucial to demonstrate the skilful approach to conflict – to have the respect of both parties, to demonstrate diplomacy and tact, and have the courage to tell the truth with care and without compromise. To have earned this respect a facilitator or mediator will be known for putting her/his values into practice – the courage of open and honest communication, trust and trustworthiness. S/he will walk the talk consistently, not pay lip service to company values. This skilful approach is the emotionally intelligent approach. If leaders, managers and supervisors don’t demonstrate the appropriate attitude and behaviours in these delicate areas, they lose some credibility and respect because without the right attitudes and habits the conflict is likely to escalate further, resentment flare and people feel patronised with quick-fix suggestions.

Tips for resolving conflict

	Talking and listening must occur Address the need to talk about it face to face. I’m concerned about our differences on the marketing project. Can we take some time to talk them through?
	Arrange a suitable time and place
	Agree to meet for as long as it takes to work things out i.e. both need to keep enough time clear
	Address the need for contractual guidelines to create the right climate If people don’t feel safe, if they feel too vulnerable, they will be reluctant to meet face to face. They know they might shout, cry, withdraw or lose their temper and so they need to know they will be in an environment that will protect them. Groundrules need to be in place and referred to – no shouting, no put-downs and no walking out part way through are some useful pointers to start with.
	Accurately identify the issue(s) Take time to reach agreement on what the problem really is. (It is often not what it seems.) You will each have your own perspective. You both have to be sure what the problem is to reach a successful solution. If you don’t identify this accurately now, the problem will re-emerge. You need to ask yourselves What’s really going on here?
	Identify areas of agreement
	Specify areas of disagreement or contention
	Identify shared interests – What’s in it for me? What’s in it for you?
	Specify the action needed by each party. Acknowledge joint responsibilities and required changes in behaviour.
	Arrange to follow through - revisit, review and reinforce

Aim to achieve the following results

	To move from ‘me against you’ to ‘us against the problem.’
	To learn the demands on the other person that prevent her/him from meeting your needs.
	To discover assumptions and inaccurate perceptions.
	To increase mutual willingness to compromise in order to maintain the relationship.

“You get what you tolerate.”
Destructive conflict doesn’t have to be an accepted norm within an organisation, it’s true differences will always occur but, handled skilfully, will contribute to the organisation’s strength and success. Preventing and minimising destructive conflict, as well as generating constructive or creative conflict within an organisation is a delicate balance, the starting point for which is facilitating the I’m OK. You’re OK. approach between individuals and teams and ensuring this ripples out across the organisation from its core. Organisational cultures are less and less tolerant of inequality of opportunity and behaviours that do not accommodate diversity. Emotionally intelligent behaviour is evolving throughout organisations in a similar way and is increasingly expected as the norm in successful teams and organisations. Emotionally unintelligent behaviour - shouting, losing tempers, bullying, intimidating people, colluding with destructive conflict, is being eliminated as people are empowered to assert their right to dignity at work.

As people aspire to and apply the principles of an Adult to Adult culture, to emotionally intelligent behaviour, they will thrive on the absence of toxic relationships and the very real presence of creative difference.

© Maureen Bowes 2005
Centre for Applied Emotional Intelligence

Sources
The Individual Effectiveness Questionnaire – psychometric assessment – [CAEI/JCA 2000]
The Facilitator’s Handbook – by John Heron [Published by – Kogan Page 1989]
Managing Differences – by Daniel Dana [Published by – MYI Publications 2001]
Difficult Conversations – by Anne Dickson [Published by – Piatkus 2004]

Printable version of this article

Principle No. 3
People are different: They experience the world differently, they feel different things, and they want different things.

This is what philosophers call phenomenology. We don’t just react to the world differently from one another, we actually perceive it differently, according to our genetic make-up, our personal history, our desires and our feeling states; effectively, we live in different worlds. And yet we spend an awful lot of time assuming that everyone is the same, or that everyone is like us (which also means they are the same as one another). Think of all the generalisations about people we make. And we say things like “You do, don’t you?” (when in fact some people do and some people don’t), and “We are all the same under the skin”. One of the consequences of this principle is, as Oscar Wilde put it: “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”

© Tim Sparrow 2005
Centre for Applied Emotional Intelligence

Maureen Bowes is an independent Consultant in Personal and Team Development. Her website www.peopleintelligence.com shows how she applies emotional intelligence to the training, coaching and development programmes she offers.

You know the saying ‘If you want something done, give it to a busy person’? Well Maureen is one of those busy people. If she says she’ll do something, you know she’ll make it happen. She’ll engage her head and her heart, along with a hefty amount of enthusiasm, and get results. Behind that busy-ness, Maureen is a reflective practitioner whose principles ensure she reviews her practice and updates what she’s learned. Maureen continues her personal development on a daily basis at home by putting her people principles into practice. Her husband and two (almost teenage) children contribute enormously to her down to earth approach, her aspirations and her sense of humour. She is inspired by people and their success, by making a difference and by personal empowerment.

Her journey to this point has not been linear. She entered university studying Librarianship and French and left with an honours degree in Scandinavian languages... She trained as an adult educator and started a continuing trend in her life of working with hugely diverse groups. She developed the happy knack of putting people at their ease. She can establish rapport with the most and the least senior in an organisation. She has a strong sense of her value and is comfortable in herself. Because of this security, she is able to inspire security in others and encourage them to challenge their situations instead of submitting to them.

In learning to develop others she started the long process of developing herself. At a personal level she became interested in meditation and Eastern philosophies while professionally she became involved in health promotion. She took on challenging roles, firstly heading a campaign in the North East to popularise an alcohol-free lifestyle and, three years later, co-ordinating HIV/AIDS awareness programmes in Edinburgh when it was at a crisis point. She maintains this was the start of some serious personal and professional development for her and also the start of her interest in resolving conflict. She learned how to help people tackle difficult and intimate issues, and the behaviours that go with them, with a wide cross section of society and a wide cross section of values. Time and again the message of her work and the courses she attended resolved to assertion and assertive behaviour. The principles of assertion remain central to her work.

In 2003 Maureen wanted to extend her portfolio with a psychometric for measuring emotional intelligence. After much exploration Maureen selected the Individual Effectiveness and Team Effectiveness accreditation through JCA (Occupational Psychologists) Ltd. She was thrilled that the profiling tool was based on the I’m OK. You’re OK. model, she was impressed with the personal insights the profile gave her and she was delighted with the potential for its use in facilitating behaviour change in others. She is currently co-writing a book on personal development based on this model and much of her work nowadays is influenced by this approach. Maureen went on to study the post graduate course offered by the CAEI, the Certificate in Applied Emotional Intelligence, and qualified in 2004.

Having worked in a range of organisations, including a part-time post as a university tutor in Management Development, Maureen particularly enjoys working for herself as it has given her more freedom to innovate. She has run her business for eight years and has developed a portfolio of work ranging from individual and company consultancy to conflict resolution, team development, coaching and facilitation. Her clients are from both public and private sectors and include CEOs, Directors and Senior Management Teams, surgeons, entrepreneurs, team leaders and project managers. She now specialises in coaching and development for top teams which involves the Individual Effectiveness psychometric profile with 360º feedback and coaching, along with a team development programme to accommodate the team’s needs.

Central to Maureen’s enjoyment of her work is seeing people develop through personal insights. She comes into the workplace and facilitates experiential learning of AppliedEI™ to real situations at work, she creates a safe climate for interpersonal challenges, she enables colleagues to do something about their long standing conflicts, she tackles the issues others avoid, she gets people to find ways forward when they are stuck in their situations or in their limiting beliefs.

You can contact Maureen on
maureen@peopleintelligence.com
tel. 01329 822344

The story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates is a deeply moving experience for all who read the book or watch the docu-film Touching the Void. How they dealt with what happened on their expedition to climb the 21,000 feet Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes is complex and challenging from an emotional intelligence perspective. Here we highlight just one aspect of Joe’s experience – Goal Directedness, while recognising the many, many facets of Simon and Joe’s behaviour we are omitting from this remarkable adventure.

As they began their return journey, shattered and close to the edge of their physical ability already, Joe Simpson fell through a snow ledge on to a ridge, driving the lower half of his leg up through his knee cap. This is a disastrous and painful injury in any circumstances, let alone when they are still 20,000ft on a sub-zero mountain that requires every ounce of attention and ability.

Simpson’s partner, Simon Yates, then made the choice to aid his friend back down the mountain instead of the other option which was to leave him there. Lowering Simpson 150ft at a time using all the rope they had was going to be a long slow and very painful descent. Then, their position worsened. Yates, lowered Simpson off an ‘overhang’ leaving him dangling 80 vertical feet above a crevasse entrance. At this time the weather was atrocious. Both men’s eyes were being frozen shut as the cold and wind drove relentlessly at them, hypothermia and frostbite were setting in and there was little useful visibility as the wind and snow continued to increase their ferocity.

After dark had fallen, the weather worsened still and they had been in this same position on a near vertical snow face for hours; the weight of Simpson on the rope was making Yates’s situation come to head. Cut the rope and have a remote chance of surviving or keep holding on and be dragged to certain death? He cut the rope. Subsequently, Simpson fell into the crevasse, further compounding his injuries and situation. Joe Simpson was now in the most ‘hopeless’ position imaginable. All these injuries, in a seemingly bottomless crevasse, many days from any discernable habitation on the side of an angry mountain.

Both Simpson and Yates held true to one quality throughout this ordeal. They kept making decisions. No matter how untenable we perceive our situation to be, we can take action, we can make decisions. They avoided the victim mentality that would have seen them in their graves, but chose to live, and by living, have the ability to make decisions.

Out of the crevasse, on his own, high up on a huge glacier strewn with rocks, gravel, blue ice and under a very hot sun Joe made more decisions. He would hop back to base camp (a long distance!). This didn’t work. So he decided to crawl. This did work. But it was an agonising feat carrying his worsening and still very painful injuries. Deciding to crawl to base camp was unrealistic, and he soon discovered this. The damage to his morale and his conviction of success was too great with such a lofty goal. So, he did something amazing. He set himself 20 minute goals. Manageable goals. He set himself a target of reaching spot ‘x’ in 20 minutes. If he did, he felt great and knew he was achieving. If he didn’t, if it took 22 minutes, he forced himself to go further/faster. His crawl took 3 days. Joe's ability to focus and measure his success saved his life and gave meaning and purpose in a time otherwise solely inhabited by despair and pain.


Contributed by Dan Richards from the CAEI Certificate Group (2003-04)

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