Welcome to the EI-EI-EI-Oh! Newsletter, where we explore how three big topics can intersect to create a moment of “Oh!”
Every edition, I’ll start by defining an Emotional Intelligence skill and discuss how we can use it more effectively. Then we’ll link that skill to ways in which it impacts Equity & Inclusion efforts. And finally, we’ll see how the first two “EI’s” relate to Expansive Intimacy—a new term described in my book by the same name.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Self-Awareness
Most experts agree that Emotional Intelligence development starts with our own awareness of the feelings that flow through us.
Emotional Self-Awareness (“ESA”) is a core skill that involves recognizing and understanding our emotions. This is not always easy, as I know too well. Because I didn’t pay attention to them early on in life, I’ve had to do some catch-up work to learn the subtleties of emotions and why they matter so much.
Tip #1: Using an emotions wheel helped me build my emotional vocabulary so I could better tap into the nuances of what I was feeling. I could see, for example, that sometimes what I was feeling might be described as “disrespected” when I first understood it as “angry.”
Once we become adept at knowing our emotions, we can then start to look at what caused them to arise. Understanding the underlying cause can help us make better decisions about how we might want to respond to whatever got us going. (Which typically ends up going better than when we “react.”)
Tip #2: Mindfulness—whether meditation, journaling, or some practice—gives us room to explore what’s going on under the surface of what we first are feeling. Creating awareness is often just listening quietly for what’s happening inside of us.
The last element of ESA is to look at how our emotions influence our interactions. Sometimes we can see this for ourselves. (“Oops… I was hangry and I got all up in your face for no reason.”) And sometimes we need some outside perspective to help us see how we’re behaving.
Tip #3: Find people you trust to talk about how your emotions might’ve influenced how you acted in a specific situation. This could be with a professional, like a coach or therapist, or with other people you trust deeply. Interestingly, learning about our own emotions often happens best in dialogue with others.
Ok that was a bit academic, but I think it’s important groundwork. Now let’s use a simple example to see how this might go:
On the way to work another driver jumps ahead of you in traffic.
You start fuming. “Who do they think they are?!? Where did they even learn how to drive?!?”
You’re definitely feeling something. Maybe it’s mad? Angry? Pissed off?
Your knee-jerk (i.e., reflexive) reaction might be to mutter something … ahem… unkind about them. If you’re really worked up, maybe you even honk at them or flip them off. (Hopefully not, and hopefully nothing worse.)
This reaction gets you exactly … where? Two seconds off your original pace but worked up into a bad mood? Hmmm…
So what was going on here? Was “angry” the real emotion? Maybe it was something more like “frustrated,” “indignant,” or “annoyed.” Let’s say you think about it and settle on “disrespected.”
Yeah, but why did a poorly executed traffic merge so far under your skin? You weren’t really that upset with the other driver for making you 2 seconds late, right?
For my money, I bet it was something else. Perhaps you were thinking about that colleague who called you out in that meeting yesterday and that you have to meet with them again today. Or maybe you were upset because your kid borrowed the car last night and left the tank empty, which had you running late.
This is a simple example, one that’s probably similar to one you’ve had before. When we start to become aware of our emotions, we might choose to chill out when a random driver “misbehaves” and instead start to look at how we can address what’s really going on to raise those emotions.
This is Emotional Self-Awareness at work.
Equity & Inclusion
Within the acronym “DEIB” sits another “EI”—Equity and Inclusion. My focus here is on those two elements for a couple of reasons.
First, Diversity is a fact. We couldn’t change it if we wanted.
Second, the Belonging is the feeling we all want to have. I have yet to run into someone who didn’t want to belong.
So since I don’t think we’re arguing about the “D” or the “B” in DEIB, I prefer to focus on the “E” and the “I”. What are they, when viewed from this same lens?
Equity is a goal for us to achieve. And Inclusion is a set of actions we take to move us towards that goal.
Now that we’ve laid that out, let’s consider the ways in which Emotional Self-Awareness plays into Equity & Inclusion, using a quick interview. Because if I’m going to talk about inclusion authentically, it can’t just come from me.
As I pondered who to discuss ESA and Equity & Inclusion with, I figured there was nobody I’d rather call up then my friend Angela Howard. Angela is an Organizational Psychologist and Culture Impact Strategist with nearly two decades of experience helping companies change their culture for the better. She’s also a fabulous resource whenever I’m trying to connect big ideas like these.
Click the Play button below to listen to our mini-interview.
Among the big takeaways I got from that short conversation with Angela were the following:
When our stress levels are high, our nervous systems go on high alert. In this state, we lose sight of our emotions as we seek shortcuts to get us out of our stress.
These mental shortcuts are typically biases that we might not even realize we are applying, and which could cause us to make choices that don’t consider others’ needs.
Mindfulness creates a space for us to regulate our stresses, check in with what we’re truly feeling, and consider how that impacts our thoughts, as well as the actions we might be considering.
Ultimately, taking the time to reflect on our emotional state can bring us into a humble place that allows us to look at the outcomes we are influencing, both for us and others around us. Because equity is about creating equal outcomes.
Expansive Intimacy
As Angela noted in our brief interview, we tend to go inwards in times of stress. Putting our head down, we rely on shortcuts we’ve learned over time to try to work through the situation more quickly. These unconscious reactions are understandable, particularly in a culture that doesn’t always value us taking time to stop and be with difficult emotions. We’ve gotta keep moving—there’s work to be done!
And yet, in these moments when we clamp down and grit our way through without stopping to assess how we actually feel, we are reinforcing a pattern of separateness. We separate ourselves from other people as we seek solutions in isolation. We even separate from ourselves, walling off our emotions in favor of looking like we have the logical answers needed to fix the problem in front of us.
This is where Expansive Intimacy comes in. Among its core aspects are revelation and reciprocity, as I describe in my book:
Expansive intimacy becomes possible when we agree to willingly reveal our closely held beliefs, thoughts, feelings, needs, desires, ideas, and experiences to another person, with a spirit of openness and reciprocity, thereby creating a stronger, more fulfilling relationship.
By cultivating a wide range of strong, vulnerable, and fulfilling relationships, we give ourselves an endless array of options for navigating the challenging situations that life presents. (Even bad drivers.) Those relationships also give us places to figure out how we feel—which helps us develop our Emotional Intelligence!
Better yet, as we begin to reap the benefits of expansively intimate relationships across all areas of our lives, we see how much we are all striving for the same things. Of course, chief among our goals is a sense of Belonging.
This brings us into a virtuous spiral, one in which we continually seek out ways to create positive outcomes for everyone.
When we operate from a mindset of Expansive Intimacy, we seek to Include others. And we deeply desire Equity because we know that reciprocal relationships create more than we can even imagine creating on our own.
EI-EI-EI-Oh!!!
This is but one way that Emotional Intelligence, Equity & Inclusion, and Expansive Intimacy connect. In the next edition of the EI-EI-EI-Oh! Newsletter, we’ll take a look at another Emotional Intelligence skill to see how we can use it for the better!
Until then,
Jim
P. S. - My book is now available for order on Amazon. If you’d like to share it with someone you care about, I’d be grateful for the referral.