Beyond Emotional Intelligence

A Guide to Accessing Your Full Potential

S. Michele Nevarez

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119800217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Réussite personnelle

Discover the hidden inner workings of your mind so you can break unhelpful habits and set yourself on the path to achieving your full potential.

Beyond Emotional Intelligence reveals how our ingrained mental tendencies can either help or hinder us, depending on how conscious we are of their influence over our lives. Whether we seek to set and achieve our desired outcomes, improve our relationships, or live in alignment with what we value most, we need emotional intelligence (EI) to identify and overcome the mental patterns that may be keeping us stuck. In this book, you'll embark on 12 Self-Discoveries that will help you get to know yourself, so you can stop getting in your own way. You'll learn how, with practice, you can retrain your mind to develop new thought patterns that will serve you better as you work toward your life's aspirations.

Each of the 12 Self-Discoveries offers unique clues and insights into who we are and why we do what we do. They function as an internal barometer for our triggers, emotional patterns, and mental habits. Ultimately, they provide a clear path to uncover and work with our habits of mind and patterns of action and reaction, giving us the possibility to exercise our own agency at key moments in our lives. Beyond Emotional Intelligence presents the 12 Self-Discoveries framework which provides you with a solid foundation from which you can begin to grow.

• Discover how your hidden thought patterns are influencing your life and your relationships with others
• Build Emotional Intelligence as you learn to recognize your reactions, perceptions, and value systems
• Use the highly regarded 12 Self-Discoveries model to identify your mental roadblocks and remove them with new habits of mind
• Learn proven methods for influencing your outcomes, de-cluttering your mind, and shift your own awareness

This book will be your guide as you embark on a rigorous process of self-discovery as you learn to embrace your inner wisdom and take control of your results.

1
The Evolution of Emotional Intelligence

Each generation rides on the invisible wings of the great thinkers and doers who came before them but from whose departure in substance, style, and approach we often stand to gain. What if we hadn't moved beyond the insights of Aristotle or Newton, for example? Without even knowing it, we are constantly iterating upon the uptake of residual knowledge of those who have come before us, be it our teachers, our contemporaries, or the collective wisdom (or lack thereof) of the context in which we find ourselves. In writing this book, I've often pondered where the world might be if the big thinkers in the various fields of science or quantum mechanics had as their primary object of inquiry the mind and had rigorously applied their fancy-pants formulas and analysis to its movement and behavior. Or what if the most skilled meditation masters had applied their wisdom and direct experience of the mind to the study and behavior of the physical universe? And how amazing would it be if there were a clearer path between the two, a practical crosswalk between them?

The Business Context from Which Emotional Intelligence Emerged

Thanks to the collective wisdom of the younger generations and those who are demanding a new model of leadership and ways of doing business, the leadership paradigms of yesterday are starting to budge—maybe not as much in practice or as quickly as we'd like, but they are shifting. A senior leader I worked with in the investment management industry once told me he thought emotional intelligence was a bunch of hooey. Instead, he wanted us all to read Good to Great. Needless to say, he didn't have an overabundance of the skills and competencies we've come to think about as being foundational to emotional intelligence (EI). The popularization of EI has been gaining momentum over the past 25 years since Daniel Goleman published his first book on the concept. His work has been a beacon beckoning and guiding leaders whose ships are lost at sea.

Like many other disciplines of scholarship and study that have historically placed a higher value on the ideas and voices of a select few, the field of emotional intelligence is no exception. It isn't that there aren't subject matter experts of diverse perspectives and backgrounds doing important and interesting work in this space; it's just that their voices are still comparatively muted and their presence largely overlooked. It's really important we change that. Part of what this entails is looking at how the models we're using now were derived and evaluating whether they adequately reflect what we understand both from a neuroscience standpoint as well as what we ideally want leadership to look like, not to mention EI itself. Are there EI competencies, for example, that when practiced and developed explicitly articulate a vision of inclusive leadership and result in leadership that doesn't destroy the planet and acts in service of world benefit? Equally important, we need to ask ourselves what EI looks like outside of the business domain from which its most popular iteration and framework emerged. What would a model based on what we understand about the brain and its bidirectional relationship to the body look like, for instance?

To the extent we iterate or improve upon existing models of EI, we need to make sure that what we feel is valuable to democratize is reflected and is fully considered from the variety of contexts in which these models are being taught and practiced, like education, government, or medicine, for example. What we have come to value in leaders has most definitely shifted since the early competency studies used to inform and shape the EI model Daniel Goleman made famous. Essentially, the current EI framework is itself a leadership or behavioral competency model whose later iterations were inspired by studying the competency models of 188 large global companies at the time (Goleman, 1998). The fact that its credibility has been strengthened by virtue of a mostly self-referential process means it still resonates, and any analyses done since support its perceived efficacy; although, candidly speaking, I'm not sure how, given that EI doesn't consist of just one or two things. It consists of many behaviors and skills among a sea of intervening factors—like context—which is what makes measuring it relative to its current definition, apart from anecdotally or qualitatively, a difficult if not impossible undertaking. Moreover, if we were to poll companies now, 25 years later, to find out what their leadership competency models consist of and what sets apart leaders who succeed in those distinct environments from those who don't, we could expect to find out what those individual organizations we polled value, promote, and reward in their own cultures. We may also spot values of a more aspirational nature than a true depiction of the qualities the leaders in those companies embody. Finally, to the extent commonalities can be found among successful leaders inside those companies or the competency models meant to describe and guide them, instead of concluding these are indicative of good or excellent leadership, it would be more accurate to say that any trends we see are reflective of what prevailing models of leadership elevate and deem as important in the context of doing business today or that their similarities reflect the values they have in common from an aspirational standpoint—which often means very little unless they are also backed up by effective systems of learning, application, evaluation, and reward. Otherwise, they remain just that, aspirational.

Like anything that is contextually constructed or derived, leadership competency models are artifacts of what is presently valued and prioritized—either in real terms or aspirational ones—within the respective contexts we find them. If we aspire to change the value proposition of business, which I happen to believe the fate of our planet is balanced upon, then instead of working solely from current competency models and norms of doing business in which increasing shareholder value is still the primary objective, we also need to work from the point of view of what we want to have happen. I don't know about you, but I would like a world populated with leaders who shape themselves and the businesses they run as agents of world benefit versus agents of world greed. In this regard, we would do well to channel the ever-increasing innovation and drive toward continuous improvement toward benefiting beings and the planet instead of toward how much wealth and power we can acquire and amass.

Because the most popular of the current models of EI evolved from and within the realm of leadership and business, we also need to decide whether we care enough about EI as a paradigm to see what it might look like in other contexts and whether it holds enough weight outside of the one it was derived from and largely created for. If the answer is yes, which is what my guess would be, then we need to be explicit about which of its elements can be backed up by science and defined in a way that we can apply it and not just talk and write about it. We explore in the last chapter of the book what EI might look like with these objectives in mind and in practical terms.

Democratizing Emotional Intelligence

When I began my work in 2016 to democratize emotional intelligence, it was with the express goal of broadening access to make its practical wisdom available to all, not only to the upper echelon of leaders. My second aim was to translate the theory of EI into an applied methodology and set of practices people could apply in their own lives with the intent to close the knowing-doing-being gap, by which I mean attempting to bridge the chasm between what we have the capacity to know intellectually, what we have the capacity to apply relative to what we think we know, and finally, the degree to which we embody each. Early on in this endeavor, I remember looking at the Goleman-Boyatzis model of EI, consisting of four domains (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management) and 12 underlying competencies, and thinking, “Where on earth does one begin?”¹ Certainly, we can aspire to be proficient in each, but if I felt the undertaking was daunting and overwhelming as someone trying to help people acquire these skills, I could only imagine how it might feel to be on the receiving end of this training. I knew a simplified approach would be necessary.

I asked myself what I thought was the next logical question: “Which, if any, of the domains and competencies are prerequisites to perform the others?” Put another way, “Which, if any, of the domains and competencies when applied result in the demonstration or skillful application of the others?” From there I set out to find whether there were any necessary and sufficient causes to perform the various EI domains and competencies. While I started my inquiry intending to pinpoint the prerequisites of EI, I quickly found myself asking a bigger question: “What makes developing anything in ourselves possible?” This is a question I've been asking in slightly different ways since as early as I can remember, and one that is perfectly logical to ask given the task at hand—to create a methodology that bridges our conceptual knowledge of EI with our ability to develop, apply, and embody it. Asking and attempting to find answers to questions, like what enables us each to be able to shift, change, and grow, and what are the causes and conditions that allow us to be the most authentic versions of ourselves as much of the time as possible, led me to where I am at now, writing a book on a topic that is much broader than that of EI. I realized then, as I do now, that the methods and frameworks we use for this or any other purpose need to serve us and not the other way around.

However, bound to the parameters of my aims at the time, I found myself gravitating back to the work I had done as an adjunct faculty member of Cultivating Well-Being, a program developed as a joint initiative between Dr. Richard Davidson's foundation, Center for Healthy Minds, and the University of Wisconsin School of Business's Center for Professional & Executive Development. The program was aimed at a corporate audience and was based on the insights, methodologies, and neuroscience research Dr. Richard Davidson has written about along with Sharon Begley in their 2012 New York Times bestseller, The Emotional Life of Your Brain (Davidson & Begley, ² During this same period of time, I was also in the process of obtaining my master's degree in Positive Organizational Development and Change from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. I was taking courses with Dr. Richard Boyatzis, who, along with Daniel Goleman, developed one of the first behavioral models of emotional intelligence, which is still in broad use across the globe today. I had made mental note at the time of a synergy I spotted between what Richie Davidson refers to in his research as the six emotional styles (outlook, resilience, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context, and awareness) and several of the domains and competencies of EI. I gravitated toward Richie Davidson's work, however, because his research not only establishes a brain basis for the six emotional styles but identifies specific contemplative and cognitive-based practices that when applied consistently can move the needle on our brain basis to develop them.³ I remember feeling both excited and hopeful that his research had established a scientific basis upon which EI could be practiced and developed, something I felt had been notably missing from all of the then-existing EI models. Granted, I don't believe this was in any way his motivation or intent—rather, he was most fascinated by the topic of resilience and how it is that some people are better equipped at dealing with life's slings and arrows, as he eloquently puts it.

The fact that the concept of EI is thriving 25 years after its debut in Daniel Goleman's writings on the topic is clearly because there is something about EI that resonates deeply with people's experience. When I accompanied him to Europe to hear him speak about EI, many people told me reading his book changed their lives and, in some cases, literally saved their lives. While not everyone would attribute EI or Goleman's work as the reason they decided to stick around on the planet, most of us if given the choice would prefer to spend time with someone who demonstrates EI than with someone who doesn't. Though when pressed to say why that is or to articulate exactly what it is about someone who exhibits or embodies EI that causes them to respond this way, I'd venture a guess that while we might hear similar themes, we wouldn't hear a common response as to why they feel this is so. Emotional intelligence still mostly eludes simple explanation, as would seem to be the case based on the countless articles and books written about it—although that may be equally indicative of EI fast becoming a lucrative industry in its own right.

Despite people having a lot to say about emotional intelligence, we still don't have a common or agreed-upon definition pointing to its definitive meaning or scientific basis. Thus, it isn't surprising we've collectively struggled to articulate what exactly it is or how we definitively measure and develop it in ourselves. After all, our ability to understand and apply something relies on our ability to define what we mean by it. Only at that point can we reliably determine how to approach developing it and training others to do the same. Emotional intelligence is no exception. It relies on our ability to extrapolate the many behaviors and skills from the model—consisting of four domains and 12 competencies—and formulate them into specific practices that when applied result in our becoming more emotionally intelligent—again, once we've defined and agree on what that means.

The Prerequisites of Emotional Intelligence

When I began working with Daniel Goleman and the team at the time to formulate the wisdom of EI into practical applications people could learn and apply, I determined we needed to isolate the prerequisites for developing what his model asserts differentiates top leaders from mediocre ones. My first instinct was to do a crosswalk between his work and Richie Davidson's, knowing it would provide a compelling scientific basis for the prerequisite skills of EI. Daniel Goleman and Richie Davidson had just published Altered Traits at the time, which was largely aimed at sorting science from bunk on the topic of mindfulness as well as sharing their personal stories that had inspired them to do work in their respective fields (Goleman & Davidson, 2017).

What began as an intentional strategy on my part to create a methodology to train and coach people wanting to develop EI led to me reorganizing the domains and competencies on the basis of three factors: (1) whether it stood the test of being a prerequisite to develop other EI competencies; (2) whether it had a direct tie to one of Richie's six emotional styles, which his research concludes can be developed vis-à-vis certain contemplative practic...