Article written by our team member and psychologist: Dipl.- Psych. Celia Avila-Rauch – Windrose Global Advisors and author of the book “Dark and Light Side of the Fear in Leadership” available in English and Spanish.
Celia Avila-Rauch
Psychotherapist, Coach in Conflict Management, and trainer in Emotional Intelligence Skills
To be conscious about Emotions perhaps help us to understand how psychological and cognitive processes, including neuronal systems work together. Emotions and cognitions play a role in the development our personality traits too.
ABSTRACT
What Emotions and Needs Teach Us?
One problem the most people is that probably, they do not understand what they feel, or they find it is hard to name their own emotions. To become emotionally aware of the feelings you are experiencing is the emotional Intelligence skills. The Emotion and Cognition is giving us information. What limits or triggers you, what gets you angry, or sad, or hurt, what causes that you take things personally. So, when you are improving your emotional intelligence, what that will allow you to do is to become less reactive and more interactive with conversations. When you are in control of your emotions, and no repressing your feelings, you are emotionally intelligence skilled.
When emotions are controlling you, you are acting irrationally, and emotionally dependent. The only way to effective use your emotion is to understand how they all useful to you. You should learn from your emotions and use them to create the result you want.
When you are familiar with the hidden emotions, you will be aware of the signal, that these emotion give you, and to use these signals frees from the fear will allow you to experience all the richness of which humans are capable. There is always a hidden message in every emotion. We are aware of the messages behind our pleasant emotions, but we are not aware of the message behind our unpleasant emotions.
Emotions are the language of our subconscious mind. We can manage our negative e, unpleasant emotions when we learn how they serve us. It is important that we communicate our expectations with other people or our values. Let the know what is important to you and what your expectations of others are.
The quality of emotion you experience everyday determinate the quality of your life. Emotions is not to be emotional, and it is important how to deal with. Also, to be aware which emotions are important to you to feel. The way a person experience or express his own emotion, that this does not reflect your emotional capacity, but the rather the limitations of your present pattern of focus. It is important why emotions and behaviours matter, but it is also important for us to know what we need for a safe and stable healthy life. Basic needs are clear, but we have also need to socialise or belong to a family unit or group. We need to feel connected to other people.
Abraham Maslow develop a needs hierarchy as desire for personal fulfilment, to develop one’s potential, to become everything that one is capable to becoming. The model of Maslow is an example of how human motivation is likely to develop under ideal conditions.
Equity, expectancy, and goal – setting theories of motivations allow us to make choice. These perspectives, however, imply a rational, logical, reasoned approach to the decision’s that shape our behavior, although our decisions are made more by feelings than by thoughts. Procrastination as an attempt to emotional regulation and it is the opposite to Motivation.
Maslow Pyramid
What role are needs playing? Abraham Maslow Human needs form the “steps of a pyramid”
1. basic physical needs
2. safety
3. social needs
4. social recognition
5. self-realization
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SKILLS
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify what are you feeling, why your are feeling it, and why your are feeling it, and be conscious that how your feelings not only affect you but all those around you. The first to define the concept of EI Skills were Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990) “emotional intellect implies the ability to perceive, value, and express emotions accurately; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they contribute to thought; the ability to understand emotional emotion and knowledge; and the ability to manage emotions to foster emotional and intellectual growth.
- Perceiving Emotions: the ability to recognize how you and others feel.
- Using Emotions: the ability to generate emotion, and to reason, think and create with
this emotion. - Understanding Emotions: the ability to understand people’s emotions, what causes
emotions, and how emotions change. - Managing Emotions: the ability which allows you to harness the power of your
emotions to make effective decisions and choices.
In 1995 Goleman points out that “Emotional competence is important above all in leadership, a role whose essence is to get others to perform their respective jobs more effectively. The ineptitude of leaders reduces the performance of all: it wastes time, creates laziness, corrodes motivation and dedication to work, accumulates hostility and apathy. To create a good team, we must develop emotional competence, which is acquired through emotional intelligence.
- Self-awareness: the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact while
using gut feelings to guide decisions. - Self-management: involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.
- Social awareness: the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions while comprehending social networks.
- Relationship management: the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing conflict. Goleman includes a set of emotional competences within each construct of EI.
Emotional competencies are not innate talents, but rather learned capabilities that
must be worked on and can be developed to achieve outstanding performance.
Goleman posits that individuals are born with a general emotional intelligence that
determines their potential for learning emotional competencies.
BOOK OF THE MONTH: Dark and Light Side of the Fear in Leadership by Celia Avila-Rauch
Dr. Hendrie Weisinger (2008) Emotional Intelligence at Work. He describes that when we are conscious about our feelings, we can see that three prevalent emotions play a role in our daily life. These are frustration, anxiety, and enthusiasm. How people managed it? How you know that your perceptions of life are accurate to the reality? Many people are confusing that emotions data or information means perception, people do not understand their own emotions. How do you pick up the emotions of another person? We need to be aware that sounds carried emotions and facial expressions carry emotions. We need to be prepared what is the emotional state of my environment. He proposed five Key concepts based on the application of the theory of emotional intelligence skills of the group of Yale Center of emotional Intelligence Skills as a good reference tool to applying your emotional intelligence skills:
- High self-awareness: the ability to tune in to information about yourself and to use it to help you navigate through life successfully. If you are not aware you lose your
boundaries. - Mood Management: involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting
to changing circumstances. It is the difference of what you see and your interpretation - Self-motivation: the ability to get yourself to do necessary tasks, to bounce back quickly from setbacks, to “psyche” yourself up on me. How good are you doing things that you cannot stand?
- Interpersonal Expertise: the ability to relate well to others, workout conflicts, give and take criticism, build consensus, enhance team communication.
- Emotional Mentoring: the ability to help others manage their emotions, to help others learn to motivate themselves, to help others work out conflict.
It is about: interpersonal emotional intelligence, nobody can know how frustrated or happy you are, nobody is deciding how to motivate you can be? Or about involving other people. How you are good building consensus, how good are you working out conflict and team communication, or criticism? Emotions and Cognition are information. All emotions are an important source of information about what is going on inside us. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and intelligence researchers came to agree that emotion and cognition work hand in hand to perform sophisticated information processing. Based to Brackett (2019) our emotional state determines where we direct our attention, what we remember, and what we learn. How we make decisions, when we are in the grip of strong emotions- such as anger or sadness, but also elation or joy – we perceive the world differently, and the choices we make at the moment are influenced, for better or for worse. Our social relations and how we interpret other people’s feelings- send signals to approach or avoid, to affiliate with someone or distance ourselves, to reward or punish. Emotions could also influence our health.
EMPATHY
Our emotional world is especially empowered by empathy, that genuine capacity that we humans must feel emotions, to get into each other’s skin. Empathy is involved in emotional and social adjustment. Empathy has two fundamental aspects: cognitive and emotional. Cognitive empathy would be the ability to put we in another person’s place: to understand it. Effective empathy or sympathy is the ability to tune in to the other person’s feelings or concerns. The empathy is not found in a certain part of the brain, but in all and the responsible ones are the mirror neurons. Empathy is part of social intelligence, social consciousness and social aptitude. Like empathy, pro-social behavior must be taught and practiced from childhood (Paul Bloom 2007). Bloom also emphasizes interest in personal values that must accompany both cognitive and effective empathy. Empathy is the foundation of all human knowledge and relationship, a person who recognizes the signals hidden in the behavior of others much earlier, and find out what they need or want (Goleman 1995).
Join our Emotional Intelligence Workshops for Business and Innovation.
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence has been defined in many ways. The definition which makes the most sense for our purposes is as follows: “intelligence is a set of cognitive abilities which allow us to acquire knowledge, to learn and to solve problems”.
PERSONALITY
Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Personality appear from the emotions, behaviour and experiences between my parents and me, the survival features between needs, fear, anger, and the environment. S. Sulz (2001) Personality development: my world, myself, my relationships, my survival rules.
PERSONAL VALUES
Human being is social and use the language to communicate, to express his feelings, believes and values. When we think of our values, we think of what is important to our lives.
NEEDS
If the desire for change is based on an unmet need, this is analysed. Again, based on a concrete situation in which this need is strong, the feeling in this situation and its trigger are identified. The effect of the previous way of dealing with the need on the relationship with the other person must also be considered, as must one’s own dissatisfaction. Possibilities of change and their dangers must be considered clarified to finally reach the decision of a new way of dealing with the need:
- My important need is ……………………………………………………………
- That is how I deal with it……………………………………………………………………….
- A typical example is………………. ………………………………………………………………………………………
- My feeling about this is ……………………………………………………………………………………………………
- This feeling is triggered by………………………………………………………………………………………………..
- The effects on my relationship design are as follows …………………………………………..
- What I have done to myself so far? What disadvantages would a new behavior have?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… - What would i change about it?…………………………………………………………………………..
- How could I change this?………………………………………………………………
- What is stopping me? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………
- Which feeling does it create? …………………………………………………………………………………………
- What do you want to do out of this feeling? ………………………………………
- Which behavior is functional or successful?……………………………………………………
- What do I need to react like this?………………………………………………………………………..
- How can I do this? ……………………………………………………………………………………………
FRUSTRATION
Frustration is wanting something and not getting what we need. Your experience the emotion of frustration due to your rigid belief and thinking. When frustration hit you and surely they will on many occasions, remember to become more flexible and adaptation to change your viewpoints on something. The negative message in frustration and disappointment is that your brain believes you could be doing better that you currently are. Frustration is different from disappointment. Disappointment is the feeling that there’s something you want in your life which you will never get it. Constant frustration means that the solution to your problem is within range, but what you are doing now is not working and you need to change the approach in order to achieve your goal. When you
are not using your talents, gifts or resources, you become frustrated. Anger and Fear are physiological sensations due to the biochemical reaction in your body. Adrenaline is created in the body as a protective mechanism that prepares our body to fight against the attack, or to escape from danger. Bodily tensions or others disturbing emotions often accompany anger or fear.
Anger keeps people at a distance, and this enable you to conceal your vulnerability. In fact anger is nothing but a shield that covers you underlying fears and hurts, or frustrations or cry for help. You can experience frustration, irritability, annoyance, resentment, hated or even rage at various levels. Fear is a nature’s way of protecting you from real and current danger, It prepares you to escape from harm. Fearful emotions include everything from you low levels of concern and apprehension to intense worry, anxiety, fright and even terror. Fear is simply the anticipation that is something wrong, or something is going to happen and needs to be prepare for. Fear is telling us to be prepare, to deal with something negative or uncomfortable from happening. Do not permit that fear will control your life. Try to face it and to understand. Some fears are not easy to face it. It takes time and courage. Normally we are focused on what is unpleasant in life, instead the pleasant experiences. Life is an emotional experience. All negative emotions ask you to change your perceptions. Self- confidence is very important to overcome the fear and anger. One of the fastest way to build self-confidence is to think through clearly who you are and what you need. To think about the skills you have to build a good life and career, and work every day on becoming better and better at something that is important to you.
CONCLUSION
To take control of our emotions, name them, tame them and use them bring a greater advantage in our life. When we feel an unpleasant emotion, talk back to that emotion.
1. When we feel angry: We should ask ourselves a question: What am I angry about?
2. When we feel low: we should ask : What am I sad about? Etc…
REFERENCES
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Brackett, M (2019) Permission to feel. Quercus Editions. UK
Caruso, D.R.; Salovey, P, (2004) the emotionally intelligence manager. NY
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