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Optimal state

Your Optimal Zone

Flow refers to more rarefied, even elusive, events in our lives. Optimal is when you have a good day, productive in whatever standard works for you.

Because most often “flow” refers to rarified, even elusive, events in our lives, we prefer a more realistic, attainable goal: feeling satisfied that you’ve had a good day, productive by whatever standard works for you. That’s what we mean by “optimal”.

We see ways emotional intelligence offers each of us the inner resources to more readily access optimal state.

The Emotional Intelligence Path to Optimal Performance

Optimal You

Consider you at your best. We can think of this state as one of “maximum cognitive efficiency”, where your mind operates on all cylinders.

In popular usage “flow” has become synonymous with the times we are at our peak. Experience of flow are wonderful, but you can’t count on them. Optimal state can occur as result of our own efforts, and far more of the time than such peak flow events.

Key elements of a recipe for having a day we feel a well-earned sense of satisfaction:

  • A balance between the challenge and our skills.
  • Absence of self-consciousness.
  • Time collapses, lengthening or shrinking in our experience.
  • Feels great.
  • Seems effortless.

Subjective elements of being in an optimal state:

  • More productive, turning out high-quality work.
  • Feeling good, is an upbeat mood.
  • Mentally sharp, making small wins toward a larger goal.
  • A positive outlook, committed to your efforts.
  • Giving and getting support in relationships.
  • More creative, seeing obstacles as challenges.

Emotional Intelligence and the Bottom Line

Ground rules in academics differ greatly from business. If you join a business you need to focus on what the company deems essential for its strategy and to work as part of a team, not independently.

There’s an entire industry that resocializes PhD so they fit better into corporate reality.

People who earn high salaries are not always the most effective at doing their jobs.

In sales EI can help in several ways: help sellers keep their composure when interacting with anxious or frustrated clients. EI can also help the agents understand why clients might feel the way they did.

Working in teams can be a challenge when people with different personalities, cultural backgrounds, and specialties come together with different ideas for who to do things.

Engagement not only contributes to our job satisfaction, it also enhances our performance. Workers can be satisfied with their jobs but not particularly engaged. People with high EI tend to be more satisfied with their job and more engaged.

As person’s organizational commitment declines, so does her optimal performance.

Self-awareness, along with emotional self-regulation, helps people identify stress before overwhelming, and so manage it more effectively.

Each part of emotional intelligence helps us in its own way enter and stay in the best state for our personal performance.

Emotional Intelligence: The Details

Emotional Intelligence, Redux

Reuven Bar-On research captures one of many ways to view emotional intelligence, and his measure – among several others – has spawned a multiple of studies.

There are more than dozen influential models of emotional intelligence, all created since Yale psychologist, Peter Salovey and his then grad student John Mayer wrote their first article on the concept in 1990.

The following model was acceptable to most everyone: four domains based on matrix know-do and self-others.

  • Know and self: self-awareness. Emotional self-awareness.
  • Know and other: social awareness. Empathy, organizational awareness.
  • Do and self: self-management. Emotional balance, adaptability, achieve, positivity.
  • Do and other: social interaction. Influence, coach, conflict management, inspire, teamwork.

Though most all emotional intelligence theories agree on the import of these four domains, how a given EI thinker fills in each of those domains varies greatly.

There are two kinds of competencies. Threshold competencies are the abilities everyone needs to get and hold a given job. Cognitive abilities like IQ or business expertise turn out to be largely a threshold competency. The other kind of competency is called a distinguishing competency, one that sets the outstanding performers apart from the average ones at any given job.

Data suggests the IQ and emotional intelligence skill sets are lodged in differing brain circuitry.

Self-Awareness Applied

While the flow researchers saw utter absorption in the activity at hand as an outcome of flow, we consider the ability to tune in fully to what’s at hand as a doorway into the optimal state. Neuroscience refers to this brain state, when we are at our best, as neural harmony.

The foundational skill in emotional intelligence is an awareness of our own emotions and how they shape our thinking, perception, memories and impulse to act. You know what you are feeling and why – and how it helps or hurts what you are trying to do. Cognitive scientists call this self-reflective attention “meta-awareness”.

Popular notion of multitasking is a fiction. Instead, research reveals, we switch rapidly from one task to another.

Steve Jobs: “Don’t let the voice of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”[1]

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio calls the sensations in our body that tell us if a decision feels right or wrong “somatic markers”.

McKinsey consultants reported that being in our optimal state can result in feeling we are as much as five times more effective as we are in our usual state.

Labeling an emotion is one of five steps in Marc Brackett’s system called RULER. Labeling is L.

You can’t always control what happens to you, but you can always control your own response.

Manage Yourself

My Guard Dog got upset so I had my Wise Owl talk to it.

The Guard dog refers to emotional and attentional circuitry that acts as a sentinel for danger and alerts us to prepare for an emergency.

Our ability to place our attention where we want and when we want depends on a closely related mental skill called “cognitive control”.

Each of us has our own set of triggering events.

We can’t control what emotions come to us, how strongly we feel them, nor when they arise. But we have a choice point once we feel them; we do not have to act them out. Some define maturity in terms of increasing the gap between that first impulse and our subsequent reaction. This crucial self-control skill lies at the heart of all the emotional intelligence competencies for self-management.

Seen through the lens of emotional intelligence, the drive to succeed, to work harder than others, indicated the “Achieve” competence. The hallmarks of high achievers include an intense focus on their goal, an awareness of the steps needed to get there, and an openness to measures showing how they are doing toward that goal. Part of the drive to achieve has been the focus of the concept of “grit”. Grit demands stamina, perseverance, and passion for a goal, letting us keep our eye on reaching that distant goalpost even when the going gets tough.

The Three Poles challenge is reaching the North and South Poles and climbing Mount Everest.

Important elements of high achievements are: seeking feedback in order to continuously improve, taking smart risks and bringing yourself back into the moment.

We can learn from even the most dire situation, so long as we get useful feedback – and criticism, if it’s grounded in specifics, is a form of feedback.

There is a distinction between being nice and kind. If you are just nice then you do whatever keeps everything harmonious. But kindness can lead you to say what might rock the boat in order to address problems that “niceness” hides.

Emotional agility looks a lot like EI competence “adaptability”.

Each of the EI self-management competencies has entered the popular lexicon under new names: “growth mindset” for positivity, “grit” for achievement, and “agility” for adaptability.

From Burnout to Resilience

Stress blocks us from the optimal state.

Emotional self-control or emotional balance is important. As Epictetus, a Greek philosopher, put it, it’s not what happens to us, but rather how we react to it that matters.

Emotional balance includes resilience, the ability to recover. But if stress stay high for a long time, with no chance to recover, burnout can begin to set in.

Brain science tells us that the signs of a stress attack are due to a family of brain chemicals call catecholamines – dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine. Stress also increases another brain hormone, cortisol. Although cortisol is one of the neurochemicals triggered by stress, at its lower levels cortisol helps us. When we feel that we have work to do that we enjoy, cortisol primes our brain and body to get it done.

There are many routes to finding our emotional balance in the face of stress. Here are some:

  • Find meaning.
  • Focus on the task at band even in the face of toxic levels of stress.
  • Manage the tug-of-war between work and family.
  • Change what you can.
  • Find a sense of control.
  • Take a break.
  • Deep breathing.
  • Gratitude.

While self-management and self-awareness competencies give us more control over how we manage ourselves, they are not sufficient in themselves to improve our relationships.

Empathy

Knowing what someone else might be thinking represents a key element in cognitive empathy, one of three varieties of tunning in to the people around us that make us more emotionally intelligent.

Cognitive empathy, largely based in the thinking brain, or neocortex, lets us know how the other person thinks and sees the situation at hand.

Emotional empathy, nested primarily in the brain’s circuitry, lets us know immediately what the other person feels because we feel it, too.

The third kind of empathy means caring about the person you are tuning in to. The first person to benefit from compassion is the one who feels compassionate.

The Facial Action Codin System (FACS), a method for researchers to read the emotions being expressed at a given moment of a person’s face.

Other people’s politeness and respect, one study found, lower a person’s level of emotional exhaustion.

Organizational awareness is about noticing who has the most power in the room, who is listening to others, to whom they are listening, who are the leaders. Organizational awareness builds the rudiments of system thinking, the ability to read the dynamics of large networks.

A focus on what we agree on, rather than our divides, might bring a reframing of Us-and-Them thinking to make it less divisive.

Sometimes there may be more to gain from giving emotional support than getting it.

Effectiveness in relationships depends on our empathy. Three kinds of empathy: cognitive, emotional and empathic concern. Organizational awareness takes empathy to a larger arena, applying social intelligence. Seeing a give group as “others, creating a divide, inhibits empathy.

Manage Your Relationships

People adept in the Influence competence build trust in relationship and have a positive impact on others persuading them and engaging them to build buy-in from key people.

Since leadership entails getting work done well through other people, managers and executives skilled at influence get better results.

The deepest motivations of people are accomplishments, relationships, or impact.

At its best, influence can be used to advance shared interests.

Leaders strong in the Inspire competence are able to guide people to get the job done by articulating the job done by articulating a shared mission that motivates.

The very best kind of conflict management: form a strong relationship, empathize with anyone who poses a potential challenge, and avoid conflict in the first place.

One of the first moves to heal conflicts comes when you help both sides see what they agree on before you explore their differences.

A more strategic look at handling differences of opinion in the workplace encourages a mindset that sees disagreements as both inevitable from time to time and an opportunity rather than a setback.

Emotional Intelligence at Work

The Many Names for Emotional Intelligence

Some other terms for emotional intelligence include: executive presence, listen to customers, leadership charisma, being a good coach, developing your people, being collaborative.

HBR talks about soft skills:

  • Social skills.
  • Theory of mind – a variety of cognitive empathy.
  • Listening and communicating well.
  • The ability to work well with a diverse range of people.
  • Self-awareness.
  • Managing conflict.
  • Effective response to unexpected events, or adaptability.

While both IQ and EI matter in your career, they matter differently. IQ has its strongest benefit during our school years, but over the course of a career IQ’s predictive power for success wanes as EI matters more. When everyone else is about as smart as you are, EI makes the larger difference.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence

The higher a leader’s EI, the better their workers performed.

All too often a leader’s duties involve projecting a hopeful outlook during discouraging times for a business, or carrying on with optimism even when he or she harbors doubts about a company’s strategic course. Such workplace performance can be defined as emotional labor. Managing your own feelings to fulfill the expectations of a role at work.

Some questions you can use to better understand what others feel:

  • What’s that like for you – tell me more.
  • What was going on for you when that happened?
  • What did you feel or think about that?
  • What might someone else not know about this situation?
  • What’s your perspective on that?
  • What else can you tell me?

Leaders who can be more open about their feelings are seen as more authentic, which builds trust in their relationships. Emotionally intelligent leaders can have a huge impact on the well-being and performance of others, lifting them into their optimal zone.

Emotionally Intelligent Teams

The optimal performance of teams depends on their understanding of how it is to work together as a group. It is about their pattern of interaction. Once the team members develop new group norms – agreed-on guidelines – for interacting, a significant change for the better occurs.

Clarity and psychological safety matter for group success.

There are three essential “buckets of norms” connected with high-performing teams:

  • The first set of norms create the group’s self-awareness. These norms help the group surface and understand “the needs, perspectives, skills, and emotions of its members”. It is also important to understand how the team operates. The group is aware of how it is performing, its collective moods, and seeks information to help it evaluate how well it is working. Not to mention group management of members. The degree to which a group treats its members with respect, supports them, seeks their perspective, and validates their efforts.
  • The second set is about how the group relates to other units in their organization.
  • The third set is about group-level organization awareness. It is about external view.

Anita Woolley researched what are the best predictors of high-performance in the emotional intelligence domain. They were: the social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.

One useful suggestion about creating rules of engagement is to make sure that one of those rules addressed how people should respond whenever someone does or says something that is disruptive.

Some of the rules for positive social interactions: maintain confidentiality, listen attentively, don’t give advice, never attack or make demeaning statements about others, and speak twice only after everyone has spoken once.

EI Training That Works

One good screening questions for candidates is: “Would you want your kid to work for this person?”

Authors recommend using EI evaluations mainly for development purposes, not for hiring decisions.

Successful EI training programs usually have the following five ingredients:

  • Highly motivated participants.
  • Ten or more hours of training, spaced out over time, with periodic booster sessions.
  • Ongoing practice and reinforcement.
  • Social support.
  • Active modeling and support of key organizational leaders.

Druskat observes that highly emotionally intelligent people interact in ways that make the other person feel good.

Building an EI Culture

When an organization’s leaders and employees are skilled at managing their own emotions and those in their relationships with others, researchers find that the company and its people benefit, seeing better performance in every sense: profit and growth, retention and loyalty, higher motivation, and a better emotional climate and overall well-being. Such organizations are emotionally intelligent. An emotionally intelligent organization incorporates Ei into its DNA for recruitment, hiring, performance management, and promotion.

Guidelines for leaders:

  • Show that EI matters for the bottom line.
  • Model EI.
  • Self-regulation.
  • Emotional transparency.
  • Emotional presence.
  • Be available emotionally.

Initiating a sustained culture shift toward emotional intelligence takes patience.

Some tactics for organizational strategy. Define strengths and limits. Define norms for appropriate expression of emotions. Help individuals become more resilient for systemic stress. Clarity about expectations and goals. Encourage collaboration and connectivity. Use setbacks for learning.

The Future of Emotional Intelligence

The Crucial Mix

Four Qs: EQ, IQ, CQ (creativity), SQ (spiritual intelligence or purpose).

Apple is focused on this mix of skills:

  • Technical expertise in their field of choice.
  • A deep sense of purpose.
  • Innovative collaboration.

A value conflict between your heart and your job can be a huge stress. But you need not have an exact match between your personal purpose and your organization’s mission. But there should be some shared connection.

Internal motivation is more efficient than rewards or threats.

Three steps of effective feedback – showing how to improve, fair evaluation, and on-the spot feedback.

Big P – or life influencing purpose according to Frankl is important. It helps us overcome even the worst. Giving up operating from a self-centered set of value – like minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure. People go from being tenants – living a mission defined by their job – to architects of their sense of meaning.

The purpose of emotional intelligence is to put ourselves and anyone with whom we connect closer to the optimal state.

Innovation and Systems

First there’s the immersion in the problem itself. In the second stage the mind goes into neutral, wandering off. This stage (incubation) ends with illumination, the creative insight. The third stage is execution. Those three stages was proposed already in the seventeenth century by Blaise Pascal.

Uncertainty, or a gap in information, activates circuitry in the prefrontal cortex that in turn triggers positive feelings and energizes memory.

Howard Gardner point out that two features make a new idea a creative act: a novel combination of elements, and usefulness. The incubation stage elicits that novel combination, while the execution stage revolves around usefulness.

You can plan for a hundred years, but you don’t know what will happen the next moment.


[1] In the book on page 45

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