Daniel Goleman's Blog, page 23

EI & the elementary curriculum

Q: Is EI being integrated into elementary school curriculum in the USA? How has it been approached?

A: There are hundreds of programs for K-6 (and up to grad 12) in use today. They are called "social/emotional learning," or SEL.  They have names like Second Step, Six Seconds, Social Development, PATHS, Resolving Conflict Creatively, and so on.  To find out more, visit www.CASEL.org, the website of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning.

Putting Brain Science to Work in Your Company

By Steve Minter for IndustryWeek, June 22, 2011. Read the full article.

Every manager faces the same challenge–how do you get the most from the people on your team? In his latest book, "The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights," author and psychologist Daniel Goleman says the key is to keep your employees in the "flow."

People operate in three neurological states, says Goleman. The first, disengagement, occurs when employees are in a low-motivation state where they are distracted and inattentive to the task at hand. "Disengagement is rife in the manufacturing sector because so many people are not inspired, motivated or engaged in the work they do. They just do good enough to keep the job," he says.

Frazzle, the second state, prevents people from being productive because they are upset with something. It may be a problem with their boss, a coworker or they just have too much to do and too little time. As a result, the body unleashes a cascade of stress hormones, and the person focuses on the problem bothering them rather than their job.

Flow represents, in Goleman's words, a "state of neural harmony, where only what is relevant to the task at hand is what is activated." It maximizes cognitive abilities and is where people are at their best and most productive, Goleman says.

How do you help keep employees in the flow? Managers should strive not to overwhelm employees but to challenge them by understanding what they are good at and what they want to get better at. Goleman recommends they conduct a "coaching conversation," a one-on-one talk where the focus is on what the employee wants from life, their career and their job. That enables the manager to determine what stretch assignments to give the employee. Goleman says that is a "fantastic way" to motivate people and help them improve.

Goleman says managers can also improve employee performance by making work meaningful to them. He notes that in a crisis or when facing a big deadline, employees will rise to the occasion if it matters to them. Mission statements try to establish this shared purpose, but Goleman says they often fail because they are too abstract and distant. "It is better and more powerful if this comes up in a natural conversation with people," he recommends.

"That is a smart mission for any company," Goleman says, "to get as many people as possible in that state where they love what they are doing, it is meaningful, it is serving a larger objective and is engaging."

Keep reading on IndustryWeek.com

 

 

 

EI & SI training qualifications

Q: I have been employed in managerial roles (a post graduate in Business and Management) and have extensively read about EI and SI. I have conducted casual research in this area and have access to a small team of psychologists. With this background, can I train individuals in emotional and social intelligence or must I acquire a specific qualification before doing so?

A: There is no accreditation or particular requirement for people working with EI in a business setting. There are, however, best practices that professionals working in this area should follow for, say, development. You can find them at www.eiconsortium.org, the website of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. And I recommend that if you are going to coach or train, it is best to belong to the relevant professional organization.

EI and Jane Austen

Q: I'm writing a MA thesis on Jane Austen's novel 'Sense and Sensibility'. My argument is that she knew about EI even 180 years ago and that this novel is in fact about EI. To me the two concepts fit in so well within the theory. I am, however, a little confused about one very important issue with the analysis of it all. In the novel there are some unsympathetic but socially smart characters (Fanny Dashwood, Lucy Steele; motivated by greed) who are very good at manipulating other people's emotions for their own self-gain. To me that cannot be emotional intelligent behaviour. Yet there are several other scholars within this field of psychology who would argue that it is emotionally intelligent. I would like to argue that it might have to do with intelligence but not emotional intelligence. Could you help, please?

A: No doubt Jane Austen encountered elements of what today we call emotional intelligence – the human brain has not changed in the last two centuries, and human nature is essentially the same.  Remember that EI is not just one ability, but a set of them: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and social skill.  People like Dashwood and Steele, who are good manipulators, have the pattern of strengths and weaknesses typical of the "Dark Triad": narcissists, Machiavellians, and Sociopaths.  Such people are good at one type of empathy, lacking in another, and utterly devoid of a third. They are excellent at cognitive empathy, understanding how people think and feel  — this lets them be manipulative. They are lacking in emotional empathy, feeling with another person, which is a basis for sympathy. And they are devoid of empathy concern, which leads people to care about others. The Triad does not care a bit about the negative consequences for others of their manipulative actions, and so can deploy whatever intelligence they have toward their selfish ends.  These types have always been with us, and Jane Austen was clearly familiar with them.

Want Creative Workers? Loosen the Reins, Boss

Philip Glass, the contemporary composer, works on his new compositions only between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. That's the time, he says, when his creative ideas come to him. When filmmaker George Lucas needs to write or edit a script, he sequesters himself in a small cottage behind his house where he gets no calls or visitors.

A lesson in managing creativity can be found in the work discipline of such inventive geniuses: A protected bubble in time and space fosters the imaginative spirit.

That notion challenges some prevailing wisdom–particularly the assumption that upping the pressure on workers will squeeze more innovative thinking out of them. Many managers assume that just calling people into a high-demand brainstorming session will get everyone's best ideas out on the table.

That is dead wrong, according to new research on the creative process. In a knowledge economy, where competitive advantage comes from leveraging the most innovative ideas and executing them well, leaders at every level would do well to reflect on these findings.

In a study led by Teresa Amabile, a director of research at the Harvard Business School, researchers asked more than 1,000 knowledge workers–members of research-and-development, marketing and information-technology teams–to keep daily diaries. This data trove revealed a disconnect between how managers think they can best support creative efforts, and how those who are actually making the efforts assess what helps them most.

Small Wins Count

When the researchers asked managers to name the most effective ways they could encourage creativity, the most frequent response was praising people for good work. When they asked the workers themselves, the No. 1 carrot turned out to be providing ongoing managerial support of their daily progress. Only 5 percent of managers got this right. Daily progress toward a large goal, even small wins, primes positive moods and catalyzes creativity, the Harvard study found.

Members of creative project teams also described the most common ways managers unwittingly undermine creative work. These ranged from dismissing an idea out of hand to ignoring suggestions to torpedoing an employee's creative project, for instance through an abrupt reassignment or a cavalier change of mind. The researchers advised managers to set clear goals and then let people accomplish them in their own ways.

Aha Moment

The Harvard researchers also recommended that supervisors protect workers' time and resources so they can have periods of sustained focus on their projects. This advice–to manage staff time well–is supported by new brain research that reveals what happens at the moment of Aha! Joy Bhattacharya at the University of London has found that in the moments just before a creative insight, the mind is typically relaxed and open to new ideas, as indicated by an alpha brain wave.

As the Aha! approaches, there's an abrupt shift marked by high gamma-wave activity. This indicates that far-flung neural circuits are connecting in a new network. A third of a second after the peak of this activity, a novel idea floats into the mind.

This finding indicates that creative insights can't be concocted on demand; they need to ripen. The first step in the creative process typically involves immersion in the problem and current thinking, and then gathering any information that might be relevant. But in the next stage, intense effort should give way to letting what is known as the "cognitive unconscious" work on the problem by making novel connections.

Constant distractions interrupt the mental space where creative insights simmer. That's why so many Aha! moments come in the relaxed space of downtime — when we're doing something other than tensing to be creative.

Lessons From Google

Anyone whose work involves strategic thinking can learn something from the findings. The usual method for devising a competitive strategy is to come up with an idea and then analyze its value. The trouble is, no one tells you how to come up with that idea in the first place.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who created the innovative search formula that became the basis of Google Inc. (GOOG), know something about that process. They have instituted Google's famous once-a-week day for employees to work exclusively on their pet creative projects. Long before Google existed, 3M set aside 15 percent of employee time for the same thing.

Another trendsetter was Xerox PARC, the legendary Silicon Valley research center known for insulating its creative staff from competitive pressures and giving them time to reflect, explore and collaborate. Xerox PARC is the birthplace of a plethora of computer-age basics including laser printing and the graphical user interface that gave us windows and icons.

In a day when the use of innovative ideas provides a competitive edge, it's good to understand how squeezing time and people can unwittingly squelch creativity, hurting an organization's future. The best advice for someone who manages innovative thinkers is to nurture the conditions where creative ideas can flow most freely.

EI and basic needs

Q: Is emotional intelligence possible when basic needs like food, clothing and shelter are not met ? Can I hope to teach SEL skills to people/children who don't get two square meals to eat in a day, let alone nurture and care…? And how?

A: When children don't have their basic needs met for food, clothing, and shelter, of course those needs are the first priority. I'd add another one by the way – safety.  And far, far too many children in the world lack some or all of these needs.  On the other hand, the capacity to meet life's challenges well is a resource every child deserves, too – and perhaps most of all those children who have the hardest lives.

SEL teaches these life skills – self-mastery and social skill – which in themselves can help children as they navigate through life. And while SEL is mainly associated with school-based programs, remember that throughout human history these same skill sets have been passed from generation to generation in the midst of life, not in a pre-packaged format.  Just as the best SEL programs are woven into the culture of a school, the same lessons can be imparted as part of the everyday interactions between any adult and a child.

Take the keystone of self-regulation, delaying acting on impulse.  This skill in itself has been found to be a stronger predictor of health and financial status in adulthood than are a child's IQ or the wealth of her parents. Lengthening the gap between impulse and action is a lesson learned anytime a child puts off for the future something he wants right now – even if that future is just a few seconds, minutes, or after getting some task done.  Such "SEL" lessons do not have to be part of a school lesson – they can be imparted on the spot whenever the opportunity arises.  For more examples, I strongly recommend "The Whole-Brain Child," by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, which will be published later this year.

In cultures around the world where one class or group has been privileged and another oppressed, there tends to be an IQ advantage to the privileged of about a standard deviation – an advantage that disappears in a generation if that oppressed group migrates to a country where they have equal advantages, nutrition, etc. As it happens, the recent meta-analysis of SEL programs (involving 270,000 children in total) found that they increased academic achievement scores by 11%. That almost wipes out the cognitive advantage of kids in a privileged class.

I remember being approached by a banker in India with a philanthropic bent. He wanted to explore offering SEL in schools for Dalits, the "untouchable" caste that even now tends to be at the lower rungs of the economy – and which suffered systematic oppression for centuries. His idea made sense to me as one more way to level the playing field in life for these children. And, in general, any way you can help disadvantaged children learn to enhance their emotional intelligence skills will, in the long run, help them have better lives.

On stress

Q: From our research, it appears that both in the business and education sector one of the ways EQ helps improve performance is through mitigating the effects of stress. People with higher EQ seem better able to manage the overload. What is the neurobiological explanation for this EQ advantage?

A: When we're under stress, the brain secretes hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that in the best scenario mobilize us to handle a short-term emergency, but in the worse-case create an ongoing hazard for performance. Attention narrows to focus on the cause of the stress, not the task at hand; our memory reshuffles to promote thoughts most relevant to what's stressing us, and we fall back on overlearned habits. The brain's executive centers – our neural circuitry for paying attention, comprehension, and learning – are hijacked by our circuitry for handling stress.

Self-regulation is one of the key abilities of EQ. People who can manage their emotions well are able to recover more quickly from stress arousal. This means, at the neural level, quieting the amygdala and other stress circuits, which frees up the capacities of the executive centers. Attention becomes nimble and focused again, our mind flexible, and our bodies relaxed. And a state of relaxed alertness is optimal for performance.

I go further into the relationship between stress and performance in more detail in my new digital-only book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights.

The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: An Interview with Daniel Goleman

By Monty McKeever for Tricycle, May 18, 2011. Read the full interview.

Tricycle: How does understanding the brain help us manage stress?

Daniel Goleman: There are several ways that understanding some brain mechanics and having basic neural tools at hand can help us manage stress. First of all, we have to realize that there's no escaping stress completely; this is the nature of life. Some of what's called samsara is what other people call "stress". When we're stressed the part of the brain that takes over, the part that reacts the most, is the circuitry that was originally designed to manage threats—especially circuits that center on the amygdala, which is in the emotional centers of the brain.

The amygdala is the trigger point for the fight, flight, or freeze response. When these circuits perceive a threat, they flood the body with stress hormones that do several things to prepare us for an emergency. Blood shunts away from the organs to the limbs; that's the fight or flee. But the response is also cognitive—and, in modern life this is what matters most, it makes some shifts in how the mind functions. Attention tends to fixate on the thing that is bothering us, that's stressing us, that we're worried about, that's upsetting, frustrating, or angering us. That means that we don't have as much attentional capacity left for whatever it is we're supposed to be doing or want to be doing. In addition, our memory reshuffles its hierarchy so that what's most relevant to the perceived threat is what comes to mind most easily—and what's deemed irrelevant is harder to bring to mind. That, again, makes it more difficult to get things done than we might want. Plus, we tend to fall back on over-learned responses, which are responses learned early in life—which can lead us to do or say things that we regret later. It is important to understand that the impulses that come to us when we're under stress—particularly if we get hijacked by it—are likely to lead us astray.

It's extremely important to widen the gap between impulse and action; and that's exactly what mindfulness does. This is one of the big advantages of mindfulness practice: it gives us a moment or two, hopefully, where we can change our relationship to our experience, not be caught in it and swept away by impulse, but rather to see that there's an opportunity here to make a different, better choice. I think that understanding the basic neural mechanisms involved is an aid to mindfulness because it tells us we don't have to get swept away.

Keep reading at Tricycle.com.

Q & A

Have a question about emotional intelligence?  I invite anyone with a question about emotional intelligence to send them in.

I'll do my best to identify most frequently asked questions, and to post answers here.

Given my travel schedule and other commitments, I won't be able to answer every single question. But I look forward to addressing issues that are on the minds of my readers, and of the growing professional community in education, business, health, and other areas who are applying emotional intelligence in their work.

Have a question? Ask it!

Stop that Bully

Skippy was the biggest bully in my grammar school. From a troubled home, Skippy was very unhappy, prone to fits of anger, and very, very mean to kids smaller than him.

I thought about Skippy when I read the headlines about the verdicts in the tragic bullying of Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old from Ireland who hanged herself after being hounded by a small group of classmates—especially Kayla Narey, the girlfriend of Sean Mulveyhill, a popular senior Phoebe had briefly been romantically involved with.

There are three general types of bullying: troubled kids like Skippy, "mean girls" (and, of course, boys) in teen cliques like the one that victimized poor Phoebe Prince, and the garden variety of teasing and put-downs that pass among most all kids.

From another perspective, bullying falls into a broader category of impulsive, ill-conceived actions children and teens are vulnerable to because of a quirk in how their brains develop.

The brain is the last organ of the body to become anatomically mature, not reaching its final form until the mid-20s. And the circuits for emotional and social skills, including impulse control, are the very last to mature.

During the ages that bullying is frequent, the brain's circuitry for emotional impulse outstrips the development of the "executive centers" where good sense, patience, and maturity reside. Most critically, the strip of circuits that can stop, think through consequences, and "just say no" to impulse are still immature.

In general, bullying is most prevalent in grammar school and declines as children grow. Still, a report from the Institute of Education Sciences found that about two-thirds of middle and high school students report being bullied at least once or twice over the year; ten percent reported being bullied once or twice a week, and 7 percent were bullied daily.

The advent of Facebook, Twitter, and texting plays right in to the development gap for impulse control. Research finds that in the online world the combination of anonymity and a lack of direct feedback of suffering from victims unleashes cruel impulse more freely. And so the surge in cyber-bullying.

The fact that a youngster's impulse-control circuitry has not ripened does not give a "pass" for bullying or any other misbehavior. But it does mean that adults need to play a more active role in helping youngsters learn how to do the right thing.

Brain science tells us that a child's brain is designed to absorb these lessons, and that when they are repeated, they actually shape the child's brain. The more a child learns to delay acting on impulse or to stop and think before acting, the stronger the underlying circuitry for becomes. So bullying, or any other misbehavior, presents a potential teachable moment, a chance for the child to learn to get it right next time.

The good news: remedies for bullying of all kinds are known and have been proven to work. These teach children the neural lessons they need to make good decisions in life, to get along better, to empathize, and to manage their own inner world in an effective way. The best programs focus at many levels, including teaching kids emotional and social skills, and fostering a caring school climate. These programs are called "social-emotional learning," or SEL.

A recent mega-study of 270,000 students found that SEL programs increase cooperation and good behavior and decrease misbehavior like bullying an average of 10% (more in the schools that need it the most)—and increase academic achievement scores by 11%!

The SEL programs that have the most powerful impact on bullying:

Train parents, as well as teachers and students
Increase adult alertness and supervision
Make explicit school rules against bullying
Change the culture, e.g., through school assemblies about bullying
Encourage students to include peers easily left out
Teach students how to intervene effectively and tell an adult.

Bystanders play a pivotal role in a bullying episode. If they do nothing, they tacitly support the bullying. But research finds that if a bystander says something that makes the bullying seem "not cool" or otherwise intervenes, in half the cases the incident ends within 10 seconds (this does not guarantee an end to the bullying, of course, which makes the intervener all the more courageous).

In SEL anti-bullying lessons, students role-play what they might do if they saw someone being bullied, or were bullied themselves. Such rehearsals make it far more likely that a kid will react effectively.

What does not work might be a surprise: harsh, zero-tolerance policies, added security equipment and patrolmen—in the absence of the other interventions like changing the school climate and getting kids to practice positive interventions—do little or nothing, and sometimes actually increase rates of bullying.

I recently heard that at a well-known, posh private school in Manhattan, some middle-school girls had become "mean girl" bullies under the leadership of one particularly angry girl. She would boss the others around, write on them with felt pen, scribble on their homework. And her special target was Eleanor: the bully would tell the girls where to sit in class, being sure to isolate Eleanor in a dead zone.

Bella, one of the other girls, had known Eleanor since first grade. One day as the girls were coming into class, when the bully bossily told Bella not to sit near Eleanor, Bella said evenly, "You can't tell me where to sit."

Then Bella went over and sat next to Eleanor. And she repeated that act of defiance the next day and the next.

A few days later, the bully ordered this clique of seventh grade girls to come into the bathroom so they could rate each other on their looks—inevitably a humiliating exercise for some.

When one of these girls told Bella she should come into the bathroom, Bella said, "Are you going to rate each other? I'm not into that."

At that, the other girl, usually cowed by the bully, said in a low voice, "I'm not either," and they both walked off together.