Читать книгу Beyond Emotional Intelligence - S. Michele Nevarez - Страница 21

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 practices and cognitive behavioral techniques; and (3) whether the competency could be isolated to what we each have the ability to influence within ourselves. In other words, its development and enactment aren't dependent on others' actions or behaviors. It is from that orientation our coaching and training programs were born.

I took the liberty of adding “focus” as a meta-skill to the mix of existing competencies—self-awareness, emotional balance, empathy, positive outlook, and adaptability—for two reasons: (1) It wasn't included in the current EI framework, or perhaps its presence was simply implied. (2) It is one of the six emotional styles that Richie Davidson refers to as “attention.” I actually prefer the term “attention”; it's a nimbler concept that accommodates our ability to selectively direct our attention irrespective of whether we narrow our focus or expand it or place it anywhere in between, whereas “focus” implies narrowed attention on a specific object. However, since Daniel Goleman had also written on the topic of focus, and we were, after all, using his model of EI as our guide and inspiration, it seemed to make sense to add it—not to mention the fact our ability to maneuver this aspect of our own awareness is critical.

Additionally, I preferred the term “emotional balance” over “self-management” or “self-regulation” because it allows us to speak to and train in the nuances of what it means to be resilient, which is one of the six emotional styles Richie Davidson writes about in his book. A person who demonstrates a high degree of emotional balance is both adaptable, able to pivot, and resilient, which means they can recover more quickly. Moreover, they are also not as likely to get upset as easily or, when they do, not as dramatically. In other words, they experience their emotions more like a blip on their emotional radar screen but are less likely to go full tilt—off their emotional rocker, so to say—when they've gone off course. Like a mattress that doesn't leave a lingering impression of the body lying on it long after the person has gotten out of bed, someone who is able to bounce back mentally from whatever life has in store for them can be said to be resilient. Though we didn't end up with an exact one-to-one match between the two models, it was my best attempt at a crosswalk between our program's model of EI and one that directly tied to a model emerging from relevant insights from neuroscience.