Speaker 1
Hello. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me this morning. My name is Anne Gleason. I am a humanistic and integrative psychotherapist and psychological wellbeing practitioner with Zevo Health. It’s so nice to be with you all this morning. And what we’re gonna be talking about in today’s webinar is emotional intelligence.
Now, we’ll run through the ins and outs of it and I’ll leave a bit of time at the end where you can ask some questions. If you wanna throw your questions into the chat box and whatever time we have, we’ll work through them. And just to mark your card as well, after the webinar there will be a chance to network with fellow attendees. So keep that on standby afterwards.
So thank you for taking the time to be with me this morning. So we’ll work through the topic and the theme of emotional intelligence. Now, it might be something that you’re maybe familiar with the title of it, you’re kind of familiar with the phrase of it.
Perhaps you have some knowledge of it, whatever kind of stage you’re at with the understanding of it, it’s good to kind of look through it, get into the nitty-gritty of it. And for those of you who have a deeper understanding of it, sure, it’s great to revisit these things as well and to get a kind of different aspects of the understanding.
So what we’re gonna do this morning is to look through emotional intelligence itself. And for brevity, it’s called EQ as well. So there will be times where I say emotional intelligence or EQ, same thing, okay? So we’ll have a look at how to identify, access and manage emotions as well. Why EQ is important. And also as with everything, there’s two sides to every coin, why it can be difficult as well.
We’ll have a look at traditional beliefs, what we kind of hold in our mindset and in our opinions and does that hold sway with our understanding of our own environment and our world at the moment. We’ll have a look at what it means to have emotional intelligence and how we can bring those skills to the fore.
So bringing them to the remote environment that we’re all kind of dealing with over the last year or so. Okay, so by way of a definition then, the meaning of emotional intelligence or EQ is the ability, capacity, skill or self-perceived ability to identify, access and manage the emotions of oneself, of others and of groups. Now that is fairly long winded, as you can tell.
What if the idea is that get to know ourselves and we get to know how our emotional experience and the knock on effect and our behavior affects other people. And just to have a look at some stats behind EQ. So it’s behind 58% of professional success, no matter what the job is.
Studies have shown that 90% of top performers score high on emotional intelligence and a 40 year study done in UC Berkeley found that emotional intelligence was 400% more powerful than IQ when predicting success. So just to give you a kind of an insight as to the kind of statistics behind it. So let’s break it down then, the kind of the workings of EQ or the workings of emotional intelligence.
So what does it mean then to identify emotions?
Speaker 1
Now, look at these kinds of questions that I will be exploring and these kinds of themes that I’ll be kind of digging up. You might think to yourself, was sure, look, I know what that means. You know, on the forefront, there might be an understanding all right, but it’s always good to lift the lid on these things and to really give them some time and some space.
What it means for us on a subjective level, on a personal level, what it means for our environment when we think of the collective or the workplace, perhaps, and It’s always good to look at what our beliefs are and perhaps where they came from as well. So what it means to identify emotions then simply put is tuning into our current emotional experience.
And for a lot of us, that might be a two question attack. So maybe we might have to ask the question, how am I feeling? And then follow up with, okay, how am I really feeling? You know, when we think about what is causing us discomfort or distress, are we able to first of all name that emotion that we’re feeling and to sit with it as well is a different story altogether.
Because listen, all emotions have their place, but some of them cause us to have more of perhaps an uncomfortable or sometimes an overwhelming experience as well. And to know as well, just to keep this in the back of your mind as well, when we work through that kind of aspect of emotional process, we have emotions. They don’t necessarily define us and they’re temporary as well.
I’ll go into that later on, but we can often feel that sense of what’s known as permanence when we have an uncomfortable emotion or we have a difficult experience. But to know that we can kind of access that, we can acknowledge it, we can allow it, and it’ll move on like the rest of them. So accessing emotional experience then, what does that mean?
Well, to look at what kind of experiences that you find yourself in that might cause you to have a specific emotional experience. And to ask yourself, how does this make me feel? And it’s very good if we can allow ourselves to kind of focus in a here and now way to that. So we can do this by tuning into the present moment and having a look at what’s going on for us in that moment.
You know, all the time is moment for rushing. You know yourself, you’re on autopilot all the time, one foot in the future, one foot in the past, and you’re not really allowing yourself to access what it is that I’m feeling right now, but it’s really, really important to do that. And to give yourself permission for that as well, that’s the thing as well, you know.
What we can do, aside from the present moment, what we can do is use our past experiences and get the value out of them. So we can reflect on them, we can use them as reference points, and we can take the learning from it. Now, I’m one of those sickening people that always says, there’s learning and everything, you know, every kind of experience is a lesson, but it’s true.
Speaker 1
We can look back on past experiences and while they might cause a certain kind of emotion that might not necessarily be so comfortable, we can always take something from it. So allowing ourselves to tune into the emotions that come up in the moment will allow us to have that reference point when we look back in a bit of an easier sense. I’m trying to do this without judgment.
Look, if possible, trying to do this without judgment as well. Like I’m guilty of it, like a lot of us, we have that experience whereby we are quite harden ourselves and quite judgmental of ourselves.
So if you are one of those people that has that inner critic that’s quite loud at certain times, just to know that when we’re looking at any kind of growth space within emotions, which is part of developing our emotional intelligence, knowing that judgment, it can be an inevitable part of the situation, but it’s not necessarily that helpful, okay? Now, to look at managing emotions then.
We think to ourselves, well, emotions are just there. We’re managing them because they’re happening, but there are certain situations where it’s difficult to manage emotions. When we develop that sense of self-awareness, we can identify what affects us. And what I mean by that is what kind of experiences, even what people in our lives can trigger us in certain parts of ourselves.
If we can get to know that, then we can mind ourselves and we can also have that extra level of understanding of ourselves. So that’s why it’s really important to let come what’s common.
Sounds very simplistic, but it can be difficult in the moment, like I say, if there is a distressing emotion or an uncomfortable emotion, to know that if we can start those building blocks, I suppose, and start to acknowledge what’s coming up for us and allow it to be there. And to know that emotions, they all have their place, but they’re all coming and they’re all going.
So they’re moving all the time. They’re not gonna stay forever, even though some of them feel like they might. Trust me, they won’t, you have my word on this. But our emotional experience might be different between emotions.
But I guess there is something in being our own cheerleader in that space and telling ourselves that, okay, this is tough, but it’ll pass along with other more kind of tolerable, more kind of enjoyable emotions. So giving ourselves that kind of reinforcement there.
Now, a big aspect of EQ or emotional intelligence is knowing that we have a part to play in managing ourselves because we may be in a position where we’re managing others. So we’re looking after a kind of a collective setting.
And you might be somebody sitting here thinking about how you can best or how you can take steps to kind of grow your development of how to manage another person or another team. I think that it’s really important to understand perspective. And this is something that comes up for me a lot in my work is this idea that we’re all built differently in a sense, because we all have different experiences.
Speaker 1
We’ll all have different home environments. We’ll all have different kinds of trials and tribulations, different ways of coping, different ways that we might be triggered. So a different viewpoint to certain situations, to understand that will allow us to develop that empathy.
We’ll touch on that later on now in a small bit, but this idea of empathy is a really important part of emotional intelligence and working with and holding and containing a group as well, to know that while other people might have different perspectives, this means that they might have different reactions, different ways of coping.
Really, really important to bear that in mind when we’re dealing with a group setting. So everybody’s gonna have a different skillset, different coping mechanisms that they have developed over time, if they’ve had difficult experiences or they’ve been reacting to certain situations.
So really good to have this as a kind of a rule of thumb when we’re dealing with a group and when we’re managing others, that my perspective, it’s my own. And it comes from my own background, my own history, my own experiences. So somebody else is gonna have different set of experiences and that’s okay. It’s just about really being aware of that, acknowledging it is a really important part.
Now, emotional intelligence, it’s a really important part of our lives in loads of different parts of our lives. It’s wonderful to have as part of our workplace setting, it’s wonderful to have if we’re engaging in relationships, whatever it is, it can really help us to connect to other people.
It can help us to connect and it can help us to bridge connections as well, to create that kind of network between people. So it can help us to see things from a broader perspective is the thing. Gaining that perspective, taking that little bit of step back and seeing things and understanding that everybody’s viewpoint is gonna be different and that’s all right.
It’s a really helpful tool for ourselves because we can identify our own emotions as they’re coming up. And let me tell you, that is such an asset to bringing ourselves into the world. And there are plenty of people that for whatever reason, just can’t access that.
And that has a knock on effect then if somebody can’t access their own emotional experience because that might lead to different things like projection and acting out and it kind of takes you off road as to where you’re going with that collaborative effort if we’re thinking about group setting.
So when we can identify our own emotions, that can then allow us to provide space for ourselves to process. We’re in a kind of an immediate world at the moment where we are under the impression, I suppose, or under a lot of pressure in a lot of ways to be coming up with formulated thoughts, answers to questions and to have everything on the ball, on the spot straight away.
But really when it comes to emotional experience, we have to give ourselves that time. So if we can kind of work towards identifying what’s going on for us, then we’ll be quicker to give ourselves that space to process so we can learn to respond instead of reacting.
Speaker 1
Now, like I say, We’re in a situation and put yourself in mind here and think about the kind of pressures that you put yourself under as well.
So are you asking yourself to reach these unrealistic expectations where you’re firing off all cylinders as quick as anything and you feel like you’re putting yourself under that pressure to know that responding versus reacting is always going to bring a better kind of a considered response, a considered effort and a greater knock-on effect to the group dynamic in general.
But like I was saying at the start, two sides of the same coin. Emotional intelligence, it can be difficult as well, right, because simply both like emotions can be confusing and they can be conflicting as well.
So we might be in a situation where we don’t know how we feel and that might sound a bit strange but it’s a very real experience, you know, and we can also have this experience where we’re having conflicted emotions. So there’s a lot going on at once and that’s tricky, isn’t it? That’s difficult to try and manage.
When we reach that stage of feeling that sense of overwhelm, that’s when it can be really difficult to access rational thoughts. So if we aren’t in a position where we are able to or learning to be able to manage our emotions, then we can go off into overdrive quickly and then it takes us a little while to come back from that. So this is why it’s so important to be developing those skills.
So okay, time to reflect now about what you would have learned about growing up, let’s say, in your younger days, learning about emotions. Thinking yourself now and I’ll ask you some questions around that and just see what comes up for you when I ask these questions. So were you, in your younger days, encouraged to perhaps go towards certain emotions and maybe hide other ones?
Maybe you were told that anger is bad and you shouldn’t be angry and you should just get over things and you should be happy all the time or whatever it is. Or perhaps you were told that sadness and showing sadness through crying or tears was something that was seen as weakness, something like that.
So really think inside yourself and look back in those younger days and see what way those kind of lessons would have come for you. And of course, when we’re younger in those developmental stages, we’re like sponges.
So we’re taking up everything that is around us, not just the direct teaching, but actually we’re soaking up our environment as well and we’re seeing what kind of model of behaviour that we can take in around us. But really the long and the short of it is that we’re often taught that being emotional is something that’s bad or it’s a flaw or it’s a weakness, something that needs to be hidden.
And look, I’ve heard the phrase, perhaps you’ve heard it in your past as well, that you’re being emotional. And really when we look at that and you break that down, you think, OK, you’re saying to me that I’m being emotional, whereas really to be human is to have emotions. So everybody is emotional is the thing.
Speaker 1
But it’s interesting how that narrative can turn over the years and be seen as a negative. Whereas if you are a person who has had those teachings, if you’ve had those beliefs, we can always have a chance to question those beliefs and challenge them now in our adult state.
Now, emotions, we would have talked there about, let’s say, early days of learning about emotions and traditionally emotions tend to be labelled as good or bad. OK, so being happy and being content and being joyful is good, but being sad or anxious or angry is bad. Whereas the fact of the matter is that all emotions have their place.
And like I mentioned earlier on, they come and they go, they move all the time like the water flowing in a river, as a mentor said to me once, this idea that they’re there, they have their place, they all have their place, but they’re moving all the time. That’s the thing. And that’s a really important thing that we have to kind of remind ourselves, OK? So often we are geared towards that idea of.
being positive and I guess the movement of positivity can tend to be veering towards toxic positivity at times. So listen, being positive is great. I’m sure I love being happy myself, but we really have to bear in mind that in order to get a handle on our experience and to mind ourselves properly, we have to acknowledge everything that’s coming.
So if you have been on the receiving end of somebody saying, just be positive, forget about all the rest of the stuff, it’s better to include all the stuff and to allow yourself that kind of holistic process, I suppose you could call it. And by allowing all those emotions, we’re kind of disarming the emotions that would have traditionally been seen as quote unquote bad emotions.
True enough, some emotions might cause discomfort and distress. That’s for sure. But if we can develop that emotional intelligence, we can really use emotions. We can get the learning from them. So we can use them as indicators. So if you have a sense of sadness, then that might be an indicator that you need to process something.
Or if you have a sense of frustration, maybe you need to look at your boundaries. Or if you have that anger, maybe you need to channel something. Maybe you need to process something that you’re dealing with that’s conflicted in your words at the moment.
So to look now at what I talked about traditional beliefs earlier on, but it’s also good to think about what we have been taught traditionally in a corporate sense. So perhaps in the days and years gone by, success would have been equated to things like ambition, ruthlessness, individualism. This idea of they’d step over their granny to get a promotion or whatever that is.
And that’s something that is part of our lives for a lot of us as well. So we would have had experience with people, and God knows I have, experience of people that have that sense of to be a leader means to garner respect through fear. But even to break that down, it’s quite problematic because it’s limited. And it doesn’t leave for people to develop themselves as well.
So if it’s anything based in fear, it’s going to be a short-term process.
Speaker 1
But by focusing on ourselves and only ourselves, we don’t have the goodness that comes from connection and community as well. And emotional intelligence, it can allow us to get to know ourselves and, in turn, then communicate effectively and build collectively. And that’s what it’s all about, the collective effort of course.
So let’s have a look at the different emotional skill sets that emotional intelligence would look at and how they’re important then in the workplace. So things like empathy, self-awareness, social skills, self-regulation, and self-motivation as well.
Now looking at empathy, we can be familiar with the word empathy, but it’s good to kind of break it down into what it really means, so the nitty gritty of it. So empathy itself is tuning into the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others.
Speaker 2
If you’ve ever heard the phrase putting yourself in someone else’s shoes going back to what I had said earlier on about the
Speaker 1
that everybody will have a different perspective.
Empathy is that kind of link between acknowledgement and understanding of that and to know as well with empathy I heard a phrase used before and it really applies to empathy this idea that what’s most personal is most universal and what I mean by that is while we might not be able to tap into a specific experience we can always tap into the emotional result of that experience so let’s say I get stressed over something and you’re thinking to yourself God that wouldn’t stress me at all that wouldn’t bother me in the slightest to incorporate empathy means to say okay while that might not stress me I wonder how that experience of stress is like what’s it like to feel stress so what I would always say to people that I work with in clients a simple question is always good when you’re developing empathy what is it like so what must it like to be in this position what must it like to have that kind of a reaction so keeping that that simple question in the background when you’re developing those empathy skills is very very beneficial now to look at self-awareness then having self-awareness is such a wonderful aspect to how we move in the world and how we connect with others because we can get to know ourselves that bit better and this is a lifelong journey as well you might be saying that’s a good or a bad thing but I would say look at we’re all we’re always learning hopefully anyway for the rest of our lives but these kinds of aspects of our emotional experience I would see it like tending to a garden so it’s not like you’re going to plant a and you know water at once and then go back in six months time and wonder why it’s not blooming it’s about regular tending to yourself so this is something that we’re doing with these kind of aspects of self-awareness can allow us to be aware of what’s coming up for us in our emotional experience so in turn then you can help us to understand how our emotional experience and then in turn our behavior from our emotions can affect other people that’s really important to look at when you’re working in a group setting because if you let’s say are somebody who is not in touch with your emotions and you’re simply acting out or projecting that can have a knock-on effect to other people especially when there’s differences in dynamic let’s say within that group so it’s really really important to take ownership of what’s coming up for that for us how that comes through and how how we express ourselves as well it’s really important to think of that kind of ripple effect or butterfly effect of snap reactions and look we’ve all been on the receiving end of somebody who perhaps acts out or projects or takes their moods out on people so we can know what that experience is like kind of being on the receiving end of that so if we can develop ourselves to know to understand that process it can be really helpful in a group setting now social skills this is a really important part of emotional intelligence because when we tune into how we connect with others in a social sense we’re developing our ability to manage the relationships around us and if we’re working in a collective sense managing relationships as you know yourself it’s such a big part of work isn’t it working with people understanding people collaborating that’s what it’s all about you know so when we are able to connect with others we can find that common ground and we can have that shared experience as well so it’s not me versus you it’s us together aiming towards a kind of shared goal or a shared outcome so this can help us to build on the quality of those connections rather than the quality or rather than the quantity and the qualities excuse me this is a thing that comes up when we are thinking about development of relationships let’s say in a workplace setting when we develop those relationships and we build that knowledge of understand of each other and understanding of each other we develop that trust over time and that helps kind of smooth sailing as well going forward so it’s a wonderful asset to have when you’re working within a collective setting now self-regulation this one is tricky at times all right but good to understand that when we exercise self-regulation we can really get in touch with that development of that skill to maintain control on things like acting out,
Speaker 1
snap reactions, projection, impulses and how we express ourselves emotionally this is they’re all linked together so it’s all very important to take as a kind of a holistic effort when we develop self-awareness we’ll get to know ourselves when we develop that idea around empathy we’ll get to know how our personal experience can affect others so this again is allowing us to process what’s going on for us identify it processors and that means that we’re responding rather than reacting so this in turn as well will help to deepen those bonds and strengthen those connections with those people that we’re working with now self-motivation is an important part of it as well self-motivation create a sense of agency which is a wonderful asset to have when you’re thinking about developing yourself emotionally so when we work on motivating ourselves we can get a greater context or a kind of a bigger perspective bigger picture thinking as to what needs to be done all in all from a holistic point of view so we have a goal or set of goals that we work towards and then we’re also important part of any kind of aspect of our lives like i say hopefully look it will be in the situation where we’re learning all the time but we also have to create that positive space for ourselves where we’re allowing ourselves to grow and we’re allowing ourselves to develop and what’s really important here is to think about expectations and think about measurements or parameters that we set for ourselves so that self-motivation is something that works baby steps all the way it works best when we’re thinking of gradual process so we’re allowing ourselves to develop and to grow gradually over time and we’re not putting that pressure on ourselves and then in turn that pressure isn’t becoming a barrier to growth and a barrier to learning as well okay so having a look at how to bring in emotional intelligence to the workplace then so we can use our eq in lots of different aspects of the workplace we can use it obviously when connecting with others when developing relationships when developing that kind of for ourselves we can use it to get to know ourselves and then in turn expressing ourselves in an authentic way which is a really important process for us and for other people as well it can also develop that space where we can listen to other people’s experiences and understand that like i was saying earlier on that people have other perspectives and we can make space for that so we can provide that space for collective understanding so we can use that connection use that communication and use it in a collaborative sense so using it to move towards a shared goal which is wonderful of course now the situation that we’re in at the moment means that connection is different right so we’ve been dealing with oh look we’ve been dealing with so much from covid but there’s so much to our lived experience that has changed and that continues to change as well so we’ll look at that from a viewpoint of connection first of all this is different now how we connect so it’s it’s changed and it’s limited as well so we have to look at how that how that connects pun intended for exercising emotional intelligence now there’s a lot of limitations that we’re dealing with so there is an aspect of getting practical on it and needing to figure out a way to work around limitations focusing on ways to promote connection in the ways that we can and communication in the ways that we can so kind of putting our thinking caps on and thinking okay This is an opportunity for growth.
Speaker 1
And this is an opportunity for learning. If we can allow ourselves that space for curiosity, if we’re not getting in our own way by bringing in that judgment piece, or by setting unrealistic expectations for ourselves, or by moving into the shoulds or the should nots. I would always say that the shoulds and the should nots live in an imaginary world.
And it’s good to look at where we are at in a realistic sense. So if you’re saying to yourself, I shouldn’t be bothered by the change, or I should know what to do, or I shouldn’t be affected by this. Listen, take now as your starting point and work from there. And like I say, open up that curious space for how we can get practical on the situation.
And there’s a number of things that we can do when we’re thinking about developing connections. So being proactive with kind of screen to screen contact with people. We can do this by creating regular check-ins, so much so that the check-in itself is not, let’s say a worry for somebody.
You know, if somebody isn’t used to having a one-to-one with a manager, let’s say, and they get a calendar invite for a one-to-one, they might be thinking the worst. But if we can put something in as regular, something that’s part of the routine, and we can give a kind of a basis of understanding with that, to say that, look, this is the situation. We’re all working remotely.
We’re all in a situation where we’re either, you know, isolated, or perhaps we’re in a very intense, shared space, I’ll put that diplomatically. So good to have that level of understanding as to what that space means. And then to use connection through that. And within those spaces, you can develop that trust over time as people become more comfortable in that space.
If you’re bringing your authentic self to the space, and you’re bringing your vulnerable self to the space, you’re modeling that behavior for another person. Let’s say you’re in a managerial role, you’re allowing others to take indication from you as to what is safe. It’s okay to be like this, so it’s okay to be authentic. It’s okay to be vulnerable.
And within that kind of regular check-in, marking that appreciation and value, using the tools which we have to communicate. So what do we have when we’re thinking about remote? So we have facial expression, we have tone of voice, and we have extensive expression of language. So using our words, use your words, as the fella says.
But this is something that we might not necessarily be used to in a face-to-face setting, but it’s about going that extra mile. So getting practical, working around those situations, and using those skills around emotional intelligence to get the best from ourselves and to get the best from others as well.
So when we’re thinking about connecting remotely and empathy, it’s more than ever important now to develop those empathy skills. Now, depending on where you’re at when it comes to empathy, perhaps you are somebody who experiences high empathy, or perhaps you’re somebody that is in a learning space, is in a growth space when it comes to empathy.
Speaker 1
It’s really important to understand that while look at the phrase goes, we’re all in the same boat, but everybody’s experience is gonna be different with this. To know as well, sorry, with that idea around developing empathy, wherever you’re at with empathy, you can learn and you can develop.
Anyway, that being said, the last year has shown that naturally, our emotional experience can change over time, over the course of a week, sometimes a day, depending on the stress and anxiety that you’re dealing with. So we have to be considerate that other people around us will have different kinds of emotional capacity.
They’ll have different energy levels that are dealing with this ongoing situation. So they’re not all gonna be at the same stage or at the same pace as well. That’s a really important thing to understand. And when we think about self-awareness then, The impact of COVID, look, we know it has affected everybody, but the thing is that it has affected everybody in different ways.
So if we can develop that sense of self-awareness, we need to give ourselves permission to feel however we’re feeling. If it’s happening for you, it’s happening. That’s your experience. And that’s your starting point going forward. So like I say, leaving the shoulds and the should nots out of it, that’s the thing.
So it’s really important to understand that however we’re affected, we have to create that space, that reflective space for ourselves to both acknowledge and allow whatever’s going on for us in our emotional process. In that sense, we can be authentic to ourselves and we can model that authentic behavior to other people as well.
And self-care, look, self-care is a buzz phrase at the moment, perhaps you’ve heard it and you think about bubble baths and fizz masks, I’m all for them, I’m a big fan of them, but self-care can also mean creating that space to develop things like self-awareness. So we can help us to bring our best selves to the workplace as well.
Now, thinking about connecting remotely and social skills then, as we know, social connection has changed drastically over the last year, but we can use that last year to our benefits, so we can take the experience from it. And like I said earlier on, there’s learning and everything, so we can take the learning from it.
So we can be aware of different things like boundaries and energy levels as well. And boundaries is something I think that comes into all of this, that is a really good aspect of how we can create space for ourselves and create space for others. Look, boundaries is one of my favorite topics to talk about, but it is something that it has underpinnings when we think about emotional intelligence.
So developing that ability to identify boundaries and identify our own boundaries as well. So everybody’s energy levels are gonna change over time.
You know yourself, let’s say last year when everything kicked off and it was a novelty and people were throwing themselves into video chats and doing bingo and quizzes and all the rest, and now it’s a different story where there’s a little bit of fatigue there, isn’t there?
Speaker 1
So being aware of the fact that that’s gonna change. People’s, back to boundaries as well, people’s availability is gonna change. And I read this thing recently where somebody said, just because I’m, I’ll butcher it now, but just because I am technically available doesn’t necessarily mean I’m free. This is the thing. So we have to acknowledge other aspects as well.
When we’re thinking about being practical in our situation at the moment. So we have to kind of be aware of the loss that’s caused by the change and the limitations in how we connect with other people.
And so, like I said earlier on, we’re not gonna have every part of our kind of what would have been available to us in our face-to-face when we’re connecting with other people’s, but there can be other things that we can rely on. Eye contact, facial expression, and extended expression of language as well. So that’s really important. Now, self-regulation then.
There will be times, there have been times, I know for myself, I can say, I can put my hands up and say, yes, absolutely. There have been times over the last while where the emotional experience is very overwhelming. Okay, so if that’s happened to you, hands up, I won’t see you, but you wouldn’t be alone in that sense. That’s the thing.
And it can be really difficult to try and create that space where we develop self-regulation. When we’re dealing with a lot of things like restriction, we’re dealing with intensity of experience and we’re dealing with isolation as well. So this is why it’s really important to find ways to express our emotional experience in a healthy way and allowing those emotions to come up.
Thinking back to what I said about emotional diversity. So whatever you’re feeling, whatever the emotion is that’s coming up, it’s very real and it’s very valid. It’s happening. So we may as well just take it for being there and then take that as a starting point in moving forward. If we can kind of be proactive around this, it can be really helpful going forward to develop that sense of ourselves.
So it’ll help us. And then in turn, that kind of ripple effect that I spoke about earlier on, it’ll help other people as well. Now, to look at self-motivation while we’re living in a kind of a remote setting. Naturally, motivation is something that comes up a lot.
Concentration is something that comes up a lot when people are dealing with their own experience around COVID and dealing with their own experience through lockdown and stuff like that. So motivation can change. Our levels of motivation can change. Our levels of energy and concentration, like I say, can change.
So we really need to have a look at whether we are holding realistic expectations for ourselves. So if it is the case that you are dealing with a lower motivation or lower concentration, really be kind to yourself within that space and allow yourself to recharge if needs be. We can’t be firing off all cylinders every single day.
Speaker 1
We can’t be pushing ourselves to the absolute limit every day, nor should we. We have to realize that there’s ebbs and flows and we have to give ourselves permission for that. Bearing in mind the fact that we’ve normalized so much over the last year, it doesn’t kind of come into our everyday consideration that we’re containing so much within this experience.
So there’s a lot of stress, a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, and we have to take this into account when we’re dealing with development of self-motivation. And we have to kind of give space for that consideration. Because like I say, we normalize it in order to cope.
So along with motivation as well, productivity is something that is going to change over time, along with our energy levels, and that’s fine. So I think that a lot of us have developed a certain kind of a relationship with productivity over the last year or so, where we feel like we need to have tangible results for our day, or we have to have something to show for our day.
You know, whether that is people doing a side hustle or whether it’s people baking banana bread or whether it’s people redecorating the spare room, whatever it is, there’s a lot of push that we’re seeing in that kind of comparison piece. And also we’re putting that pressure on ourselves. But just to say, some days, productivity might mean getting a few things tipped off the list.
Sometimes productivity might mean getting through the day, coping, and that’s okay. It’ll ebb and flow the same with everything else. So it’s really important to allow ourselves that change in that measurement. So finally, to understand that whatever kind of, stage or development you’re at, with any aspect of emotional intelligence, there’s work that can be done, okay?
There’s learning to be done and it can develop over time. So that’s the good news. We can develop our own skills and it can have a kind of a two-way effect in the sense that we can be developing ourselves and that’s behavior that’s modeled to other people. So that’ll provide that sense of encouragement for other people.
And like I said to you earlier on, to kind of go back and think about what your previously held beliefs were, it’s really, really good to do that, really, really good to understand that we may have a set of beliefs and a set of opinions that might not necessarily tally with where we’re at now. So we can look back as our adult selves and understand that learning comes from everywhere.
So to look at that and see, okay, does that resonate with me now? Or even asking yourself the question, does that serve me well now is the thing. Now, emotional growth is a gradual process. Baby steps all the way. Don’t be putting yourself under any pressure. We need to have that patience for ourselves. So developing that patience along with the emotional growth is a thing to do as well.
And make sure as well to be marking those little achievements that you’re having and those developments, they can help to give us a little bit of a boost and bolster our process and bolster our emotional growth going forward as well.
Speaker 1
So. Listen, the thing is as well that in this situation where there’s a lot going on for us, there’s a lot that we’re dealing with, understand that we need to give ourselves that consideration and we need to give ourselves that encouragement. You’re doing the best you can in a really, really difficult situation. So as my mother would say, give yourself a pat in the back for that.
All a gradual process when we’re thinking about developing anything like this. Okay, so thank you so much for sticking with me and thank you so much for listening. Hopefully you got some nuggets of information there that are useful to you. There’s a couple of questions here. Yeah, throw your questions there into the chat box. So recognising our emotions. Oh yes, there’s a great book actually.
There’s a great author rather called Guy Winch and he would talk about this idea of emotional first aid and he’s really kind of easy to read. It’s not dense stuff.
It’s stuff that I remember a long time ago, I got stuck into his work and it’s very, very relatable and he kind of breaks it down in a sense that it’s not a scary place to go into and it’s a very, very, it’s a gentle process of that kind of learning. So Guy Winch is very good for that. Let’s see what other questions are there. Importance of education, your employees on this. Oh yeah, absolutely. Sure.
This is the thing you see with kind of the collaborative effort. The idea that in order to create that collective space that promotes psychological safety, we need to have an understanding of the dynamic that might be in place between different levels of people that are in there and we need to understand that it’s not about talking the talk, it’s about walking the walk as well.
It’s like that idea that I had said earlier on about modelled behaviour. So you know yourself if somebody is in that incongruent or inauthentic space where they are telling you what to do but they’re not doing the same themselves, you can really feel that collective effort when somebody is promoting something but they’re not kind of buying it, buying into it themselves.
So it’s really important to educate employees on this and a great way to do that is to, let’s see, for health, have a lot of workshops and webinars, we’re always good to go, ready to go, for any kind of aspect of emotional development and mental health and that kind of emotional intelligence piece as well.
What’s good is to use that educating space as a collective space where you’re all in it together. So you’re all coming from a human element. So it’s not about just sending people into a room and then expecting them to perform while they don’t have that authentic connection and it’s about connection as well. That’s the thing. Okay, so here’s another question.
Hi Ann, in terms of prolonged lack of motivation and concentration surrounding the work environment, do you have any tips on how to deal with that when you still need to log in 9 to 5, get your job done?
Speaker 1
Yeah, look at, you know, I think first of all acknowledgement of our current emotional experience is something that’s really, really important for us to do. To understand that the parameters that we’re working in at the moment, they’re not the same as they were in, like I say, previous life before COVID and before having to juggle everything that we’re dealing with.
So if you are dealing with a lack of motivation and a lack of concentration, first of all give yourself permission to have that very real experience. That’s the thing, first of all. Second of all, what can be really good in that sense is to develop a peer network.
in your company where you can actually connect with people that are on a level, you can be open about your experience, you can be very authentic about your experience, that’s the next thing where you can understand where other people are coming from. Because when you are working from home and you’re dealing with that change of surroundings, change in environment, you can feel quite isolating.
And now especially we have more time to kind of be in our own heads as such. So if your head is not a nice place to be at times with an inner critic, then you can be very hard on yourselves as to what your expectations are. Open up that space for collective communication as to what it’s like now. What’s also good is to develop that understanding that your experience is going to be changing over time.
And you know another thing that comes into this experience of motivation and concentration is our ability to switch off. And to go a little bit deeper from that then, is the idea that we need to give ourselves permission to switch off. So often we can feel that lack of motivation and lack of concentration because we’re perhaps reaching that exhaustion level.
So if you can create kind of psychological markers throughout the day where you give yourself full permission to completely switch off from work. Because it can be difficult, look I’m sitting on my kitchen table here, you know, and my variety of the evening goes of sitting on the couch as compared to the chair.
So you know we’re living within those limitations but it’s important to develop that reflective space as to how you allow yourself to really fully experience that switch off time. And also yeah, tuning into other people’s experiences and being open about it as well.
I think that that idea of being very kind of upfront about what your situation is, you can provide yourself with that support going forward if you’re in that space where you feel safe to be open as well. Okay, another question there. Any tips on how to recognize low energy levels within a team working remotely apart from regular check-ins?
Yeah, look it’s a difficult situation to change from face-to-face to remote because there are less of those cues that we can pick up. Aside from those regular check-ins, I think things to look out for is simple things like people having their camera on versus their camera off.
If somebody is usually very vocal versus leaving the mic off all the time and you know creating that space where it’s not just a workplace setting is the thing.
Speaker 1
So a place where people can connect in a kind of an informal way and that way there can be that understanding as to what it’s like for people so they can feel kind of safer to open up about it.
And I think that that space really does need that, remember earlier on I was talking about that foundation of understanding, the foundation of saying okay this is a space where you can be yourself, this is a space where you can be open about your situation.
And you know the reason I say about a group space is because often we can be in a situation that perhaps for some people you know the one-to-one dynamic of a check-in might be a little bit intimidating before it gets kind of bedded into normality.
Whereas if you’re in a group setting you may hear from another person that their energy levels are low, that their motivation is low, that their concentration is low. So that might lead somebody to say oh okay I thought I was the only one but I’m not. And that’s one of the most powerful statements that somebody can kind of can can take ownership of.
So that’s a wonderful thing going forward with that. But again with all of these ways of connecting it’s about rolling consideration as to what works and what doesn’t for people. Okay thank you for the questions guys, really appreciate that. What time are we at now? We’re just coming up to 11 o’clock now. Thank you so much for taking the time to to join me this morning, really do appreciate it.
Please do head over to the networking section now for a chance to meet like-minded professionals. Go mingle chat. And with that being said thank you so much. Hope to see you again and enjoy your weekend. Thanks so much.
