Daniel Goleman's Blog, page 5

Daniel Goleman: Positive or Negative? It’s Your Choice

Larry David created the TV hits Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. While David lived most of his life in Los Angeles, he came from Brooklyn. One year, while filming a show in New York City, he went to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. During a lull in the game, cameras sent his image up to gigantic Jumbotron screens. The entire stadium of fans stood to cheer him. Later that evening, as David was leaving, someone leaned out of a passing car and yelled, “Larry, you suck!” On his way home, David obsessed about that comment, wondering who the guy was, why he would say something like that. It was as though those fifty thousand adoring fans didn’t exist, just that one critical guy. Focus on the Negative… or the Positive? You probably know people like David, those who regularly focus on the negative instead of the positive in any situation. Replaying negative thoughts over and over in your head does more than make you unhappy in the moment. Research shows that such ruminating rewires your brain to make it easier for you to think negative thoughts in the future. Just like walking across a lawn beats down a path in the grass, repeated negative thinking builds up the pathway between the parts of your brain that attend to the negative. Fortunately, the reverse is also true. Focusing on the positive can build your capacity for seeing the good around you. High Performing Leaders Have a Positive Outlook Being skilled at seeing the positive, even in adverse situations, is one aspect of emotional intelligence that distinguishes high performing leaders. Sigal Barsade, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, mentioned this in a recent Harvard Business Review article. She referred to research that shows the connection between positive emotions and better performance, quality, and customer service. This is true regardless of role, industry, or organizational level. Positive Outlook is one of twelve emotional and social intelligence competencies I explore with colleagues in my forthcoming video series, Crucial Competence: Building Emotional and Social Leadership. Leaders with this skill recognize the opportunity in every situation and see other people positively. Looking ahead, they expect changes in the future to be for the better. How to Build a Positive Outlook Just as repeatedly thinking about mistakes reinforces the brain path to future negative thoughts, you can strengthen the connections to positive ones. Here are some basic steps to direct your mind toward the positive. 1)   Notice your mind is focused on negative thoughts, perhaps the downturn in sales, or that you’re complaining to an officemate about your recent less-than-stellar performance review. 2)   Redirect your attention to something positive in the moment, such as the warmth of the coffee cup in your hand or an appreciative email message you received from a coworker. 3)   Consider positive interpretations of the situation that felt negative. Was the downturn in sales related to a one-time situation that has now changed? Will the new marketing plan boost sales? The performance review wasn’t all bad. Remind yourself of the positive comments, and tell your officemate about some concrete actions you will take to improve. Practice Makes Positive The Notice and Redirect steps are the basic mental moves of mindfulness meditation. Practicing mindfulness helps build positive outlook as well as two other emotional intelligence competencies: Emotional Self-Awareness and Emotional Self-Control. I talked about the brain science behind emotional intelligence in a conversation for Crucial Competence with my friend and colleague Richard Davidson. Dr. Davidson is a neuroscientist who directs the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pointed out research that shows the importance of an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. He said, “We know there are some strategies which activate the prefrontal cortex. We know that certain kinds of mindfulness meditation practices will result in increased prefrontal activation over time. These are circuits that are really important for positive outlook but also for emotion regulation and for attention. So, there's a whole set of abilities which are impacted by strengthening the prefrontal cortex.” It’s your choice, to attend to the negative or the positive. By redirecting your thoughts to the positive, you can build your emotional intelligence.

Daniel Goleman: The Trouble with Grit

On a long plane flight, I read Grit, the best-seller by psychologist Angela Duckworth. She reviews data and tells convincing tales about how holding young people to tough goals, teaching them to persevere and not let defeats stop them, all add up to school success. Well, yes and no. It all depends on what you see as ‘success.’ Paul Tough, who wrote How Children Succeed, argues that grit makes students succeed in school. The Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation has put a big bet on programs that instill grit in students, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds. The advantages of a grit-propelled life for that particular individual are undisputed. Long before Duckworth made grit famous, cognitive science has known about what makes this possible: cognitive control. A fundamental ability of mind, cognitive control lets us focus on one task and ignore distractions, keep a long-term goal in mind as we work toward it (that’s the grit part), manage disrupting emotions, be ready to learn, and more. When more than 1,000 children in New Zealand were tested on cognitive control during their grade school years, then tracked down in their 30s, this one mental ability predicted their financial success better than IQ or the wealth of the family they grew up in. Cognitive control, or its close cousin grit, potentially levels the socio-economic playing field. All that is fine – so far as it goes. But when it comes to career success and shaping well-rounded spouses, parents, leaders, and citizens, grit alone will not do the job – let’s not over-promise. Consider what companies look for in the people they hire, the early career managers they spot as having high leadership potential, and the abilities they want to cultivate in leaders. “Grit” is not on that list. The reason: People who are driven toward high achievement can be fantastic individual contributors in an organization, to be sure. But if that’s their only strength, they will be miserable team members and atrocious leaders. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, “Leadership That Gets Results,” I critiqued this leadership style because of its negative impact on the emotional climate. I pointed to the damage such leaders do to an organization through demoralization and worse. Researchers at Hay Group looked at the impact on their direct reports of leaders who exemplified grit out of control. These leaders focused relentlessly on their goals – like quarterly targets – but were blind to their impact on the people they worked with day in and out. They never bothered to get to know personally the people they led, never helped those employees find ways to develop further strengths, never worked for a consensus, never celebrated wins. Instead they were aloof, dismissed people as hopeless rather than seeing their potential, made unilateral decisions they enforced as little dictators, and were never pleased no matter how well people did. These leaders may have made their business targets, but at a cost: they demotivated people, developed no trust or loyalty on their teams, lost the best employees. At worst, they cut corners, even cheated, to look good. The antidote: cultivate relationship skills, starting with empathy. Lacking empathy, a high-grit go-getter cares not at all about how his or her driving ambition impacts those around them. Their personal lives crumble; they are poison to work teams; and hyper-critical as leaders. Research from the Hay Group that found the best leaders showed strengths in six or more emotional intelligence competencies, ideally at least one from each of the four domains (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Management). So there’s nothing wrong with grit per se. Just balance it with some emotional intelligence.

Daniel Goleman: Our Brains Do More Than Fight or Flee

For decades, I’ve followed the evolving brain science behind emotions and behavior. In The Brain and Emotional Intelligence, I explain the role of the section of our brains called the amygdala and what I call “amygdala hijacks.” Scientists have known for many years that the amygdala is the brain’s radar for threat. It tells us to fight or flee. A key part of emotional self-control is being able to recognize and manage the amygdala’s hair-trigger response to perceived threats. New research shows a broader role for the amygdala in feeling positive emotions. Psychologists William Cunningham at the University of Toronto and Alexander Todorov of Princeton University and their colleagues found the amygdala also can play a role in compassion, human connection, and happiness. In a study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, they looked at the amygdala’s reactions when research participants were shown pictures with different emotional content. As they expected, the negative pictures provoked amygdala activity. Such activity also showed up when the participants viewed positive images, as long as they were told to focus on those pictures. Commenting on those findings, the researchers said “while people do automatically attend to negative stimuli, given the proper ability and motivation, they can show the same sensitivity to positive stimuli.” Cunningham and Todorov also were part of a team that found a connection between the amygdala and compassion. When research participants were shown pictures of people needing help, their amygdalas showed an increase in activity. This was especially true for people who had scored high in empathy. Why This Research Matters I’m excited about this research because it relates to three of the twelve Emotional Intelligence competencies: emotional self-control, positive outlook, and empathic concern. Why do these three competencies matter in the workplace? With Emotional Self-Control, we manage our distressing emotions. Imagine emergency responders in the midst of a crisis calmly doing what needs to be done. Of course, they feel fear, anger or sadness, but they manage those feelings in the moment. Not every leader faces life-or-death emergencies, but they all can experience disturbing feelings. The emotionally intelligent leader has the self-awareness to recognize those feelings, and the skills to stay level-headed despite them. When you have a Positive Outlook, you see the good in even challenging situations. You recognize the negative and also identify the ways those challenges may lead to opportunities. Leaders with this outlook more easily adapt to the change that is a constant in today’s work world. Empathy is key to all of our dealings with other people. I’ve written about the three forms of empathy – cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern. With empathic concern, we are able to sense what someone else needs and express how we care about those needs. Leaders with empathy can tune in to the emotional signals of individuals and groups. By being able to grasp the perspectives of others, such leaders can work well with a wide range of people. Develop Your Emotional Intelligence The good news about emotional intelligence is that it’s something we can develop. Brain science has shown us we can strengthen the connections between the different parts of our brains. Just like working out at the gym builds physical muscles, you can strengthen your emotional intelligence “muscles” by regular “workouts.” Emotional Self-Control: Start by building another emotional intelligence competency, self-awareness. I talked about that in a recent post. One key is to recognize situations that “trigger” distressing emotions. Sometimes, it is easiest to see those triggers with hindsight. Pay attention if you hear yourself saying “I know I shouldn’t schedule important meetings with my boss the morning after I chair a long city finance committee meeting.” Look back at situations where you didn’t effectively control your feelings. What can you learn from the timing, setting, and people involved that help you recognize triggers to avoid? Positive Outlook: Consider advice my colleague George Kohlrieser shared in a discussion from one of my video series. He said to imagine that your mind’s eye is like a flashlight. With that flashlight, you can look for positive or negative information. Intentionally shining the light on the positive, the opportunity, helps build this competency. Think back on the biggest challenge you faced at work last week. It’s easy to name the negative aspects of that difficult moment. Take the time to list three positive opportunities that arose from it. Empathy: Practice looking at another person and listing in your mind the ways in which they are like you. And, how are they different from you? Ask your coworkers what they like about their work. And, what is hard for them. * * * * * If you’d like to learn more about developing emotional intelligence, I encourage you to join Tara Bennett-Goleman and me at Omega Institute in August for Connecting Emotional Intelligence with Mindful Habit Change: A Gentle Path to Awakening. Tara is a teacher, psychotherapist, and author of Mind Whispering and the New York Times best-seller Emotional Alchemy.

Daniel Goleman: Want to Succeed? First, Become Self-Aware

“Yes, but, it wasn’t my fault….” “Yes, but, I didn’t know….” “Yes, but, they said….” That’s what Julie’s manager heard whenever he gave the new junior software engineer feedback. Whenever he would suggest a way she might improve her work, she’d respond with a “yes, but” and some defensive excuse. While the young engineer’s technical skills were acceptable, they weren’t stellar -- unlikely to improve if she couldn’t handle hearing constructive feedback, let alone criticism. So when the company president called for staff reductions, her manager remembered Julie’s “yes, but” responses. After being told her position was terminated, Julie tweeted to her friends, “I just got fired! They expect too much! It’s not fair!” Are You Aware of Your Habits? When I heard about Julie’s defensiveness, I wondered if Julie knew the real reason she was fired. Did she understand that engineering skills weren’t the issue? Was she aware of her defensive ‘yes, but’ habit? Emotional routines like Julie’s operate below the level of our conscious awareness. Think about what happens when you take a photo with your smart phone. You provide the “trigger” of pressure on the phone, the device does the rest with information it has stored. The same happens with habits. An emotional trigger occurs and you respond using the routine stored in the part of your brain called the basal ganglia. For Julie, when she heard “criticism,” her brain kicked into its automatic “yes, but” defense. To change your phone, you need to know what happens after you press the button. Then, you must modify the software it triggers. The same is true for our habits. Before you can change an automatic emotional response, you have to be aware it exists. You need self-awareness. Why Self-Awareness Matters For Julie, lack of awareness of her defensive reactions cost her a job. Self-awareness, one of the four key components of emotional intelligence, underlies the other three. Without knowing what we’re feeling, we can’t take steps to control those emotions. Such self-management is the second component. Lacking self-awareness, we can’t have the third, social awareness. We don’t understand how we impact other people and can’t tune in to what others feel. Moving beyond awareness of others to interaction, without self-awareness, the fourth – relationship management – is impossible. How to Develop Self-Awareness? Does Julie want to develop self-awareness? Do you? That’s the first step, to have a desire to be aware of your emotions. Perhaps ask yourself why, then take these steps. Stop: Practicing mindfulness is a superb way to develop self-awareness. Recognizing that our minds wander about 50% of the time, “mindfulness” refers to that move where you notice your mind wandered. With mindfulness, you monitor whatever goes on within the mind. It sounds simple, but it is more challenging to put into practice. The way I learned mindfulness is through meditating, sitting quietly, stepping back from a busy brain to focus on the present moment. I’ve shared several techniques for mindfulness in my audio CD Cultivating Focus. Look: Once you’ve stopped, notice and name what you’re feeling. It’s helpful to practice this at different times of day, in different situations. Take a few moments to tune in to yourself. Our counter-productive habits, like Julie’s improvement-blocking kneejerk defensiveness, come up over and over. One key signal we’re in their grip is the bodily sensations they trigger. Notice, for example, are you breathing slowly or holding your breath? Does your pulse feel slow or fast? Are you sweating? Do your muscles feel tense? Listen: One of the best ways to become aware of yourself is to ask others how they perceive you. That’s the value of 360-degree feedback tools. You fill out a survey about your behavior and ask trusted others to fill out the same survey. A good coach can help you review the differences between your perceptions and the experiences of others. * * * * * If you’d like to learn more about developing self-awareness and how to change self-defeating habits, I encourage you to join Tara Bennett-Goleman and I at Omega Institute in August for Connecting Emotional Intelligence with Mindful Habit Change: A Gentle Path to Awakening. Tara is a teacher, psychotherapist, and author of Mind Whispering and the New York Times best-seller Emotional Alchemy.

Daniel Goleman: Three Tasks for Every Leader

Whether you’re the CEO of a large company or the head of a small production team, all leaders share similar responsibilities. To work effectively with a group, big or small, every leader must manage meaning, set the emotional tone, and put people in the right emotional range for their best performance. These three core leadership tasks came up in a recent conversation I had with my colleague, George Kohlrieser, as part of an upcoming video series on emotional intelligence competencies necessary to develop organizational and individual leadership skills. What is Resonant Leadership? Resonance literally means sound moving on the same wavelength. In contrast, dissonance occurs when waves of sound bump into each other and don’t flow together. Leaders’ emotions are like sound waves, impacting the emotional states of people around them. Resonant leaders help everyone onto a positive wavelength. In contrast, leaders who are negative and don’t manage their emotions create dissonance. In Primal Leadership, which I coauthored with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, we describe four styles of leadership that create resonance in a group: Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, and Democratic. Each style positively impacts a group’s climate and, used appropriately, can produce results. The three tasks are key parts of each of those styles. Managing Meaning Leaders manage meaning every day. Effective leaders provide people with a clear understanding of the mission of the group or organization. Framing day-to-day events in the context of that mission helps group members understand what’s going on and how to make sense of their situation. Perhaps most importantly, resonant leaders help everyone know where they’re going. Setting the Emotional Tone All leaders set the emotional tone for their groups, for better or worse. A resonant leader maintains a positive tone, first by managing herself or himself. Such a mood flows outward from leaders who are calm, clear, and know where the group is going. Contrast that to a leader who broadcasts their agitation and lack of direction. Even in the midst of challenging circumstances, a leader can steer the group toward calm. Positive Performance What supports people to perform at their best? Sigal Barsade at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has conducted research on the impact of emotions on work performance. Barsade and other researchers have found that employee performance improves when leaders spread enthusiasm, motivation, and a shared sense of meaning. Negative emotions such as fear or anger used carefully may provide a brief boost in performance but become toxic in the long-term. How Well Do You Handle These Tasks? How well do you handle these three core leadership tasks? Ask yourself: How clearly and succinctly can I name the mission of my team/organization? How often do I frame my requests of my team/organization in terms of how they relate to our mission? Does everyone in my team/organization know how the work they’re doing this week relates to that mission? How emotionally self-aware am I? Can I name what I’m feeling? How well do I manage my emotions? What emotions do I broadcast at work? On a good day? When I’m stressed? What is the emotional atmosphere in my team/organization? How do I convey positive emotions as motivation for performance? You can give yourself even more data by asking a trusted colleague to review the questions and give you feedback on how they see you in relation to each task. Information from others, either just one-on-one or in a full 360-degree assessment, can be invaluable in helping you see areas where you can improve.

Daniel Goleman: Leaders: How to Regain Your Focus

Ever watch jugglers as they catch and toss balls in a loop, often incorporating more objects thrown by another juggler? Leadership is a juggling act. At every level, from CEO to team leader of a small manufacturing shop, leaders face many demands on their attention. Phone calls about production delays, emails with this quarter’s sales reports, texts about a changed meeting location—every moment brings new requests. The ability to focus amid a sea of distractions is key to effective leadership. Conflicting demands on a leader’s attention is an age-old issue. Caesar didn’t have a smart phone or laptop, but I’m sure many people tugged on his toga to be noticed. What’s different about the current world of work is the flood of information brought to us by electronic devices. Driven to Distraction In a post several weeks ago, I mentioned Clifford Nass’s research at Stanford that shows multitasking reduces our ability to concentrate. Nass and his colleagues looked particularly at people who simultaneously use many media devices – voice calls, texts, emails and computers. What they found is that “people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory, or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.” As Nass said, “They’re suckers for irrelevancy, everything distracts them.” Why Focus Matters “Sucker for irrelevancy” is not on the hundreds of lists detailing high performance leadership competencies I’ve reviewed from companies large and small. What capabilities are on those lists are some variation on being able to pay attention, control memory, and switch from one job to another effectively. Working to maintain clear focus on a task – despite intrusions – consistently occupies the brain’s circuitry for attention. Just like the muscles in our bodies, attention can become fatigued. Common symptoms of attention fatigue are lowered effectiveness, increased distractedness, and irritability. These symptoms also indicate depletion in the energy required to sustain neural functioning. Leaders must be skilled at more than one type of focus. A more open and relaxed attention is called for in situations that require creativity and innovation. This is where self-awareness is crucial: monitoring attention lets us check whether our mode of attention suits the needs of the moment. I’ve written extensively about focus, including the triple focus: inner focus, a focus on others, and focus on the outer world. It takes insightful self-awareness and strong skills in self-management to attend to our inner territory, the emotional worlds of others, and what is going on in the larger systems of which we are a part. If your work includes giving feedback, motivating people, and responding to changing situations in your environment, you need that triple focus. How Leaders Can Regain Focus In a deluge of distractions, how can leaders regain their focus on what matters, both in the moment and in the long run? The great news is that research by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Thomas E. Gorman & C. Shawn Green indicates ten minute sessions of mindfulness of breath, three times a day, reverses the degradation in concentration common in media multitaskers. Gorman and Green’s research confirms what I’ve known for decades, that mindfulness is a powerful and practical tool. To help people hone their concentration, I created a series of guided exercises in Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence. I invite you to try out Sensory Focus from that collection. It’s a great place to start at rebuilding your concentration muscles. How can leaders build their abilities to focus on others and on systems? My colleague, Bill George, and I talked about that in our conversations for Attune: The Role of Focus in Authentic Leadership and Authentic Leadership. In Attune, we look at each type of focus and the interaction between them. * * * * Supplementary reading available at More Than Sound: The HR and EI Collection’s The Focused Leader program includes: Attune: The Role of Focus in Authentic Leadership by Daniel Goleman and Bill George Authentic Leadership by Bill George and Daniel Goleman The Leader’s Mind by Daniel J. Siegel and Daniel Goleman Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman: Want Kids to Succeed? Teach Them Focus

In my previous post, I mentioned Clifford Nass’s research at Stanford that shows multitasking reduces our ability to concentrate. And, I shared the good news that recent research by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Thomas E. Gorman & C. Shawn Green indicates ten minute sessions of mindfulness of breath, three times a day, reverses the degradation in concentration common in media multitaskers. Gorman and Green tested ways to repair damage to concentration. Why not prevent such damage in young people? That’s what I’ve long advocated: Help children develop the ability to focus. Why Help Kids Focus I talked about the importance of teaching children to focus in the book, The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education, which I co-authored with my colleague Peter Senge. Some schools are already teaching children to be “mindful,” which means paying attention to what they think and feel without being carried away by those inner stirrings. This observing awareness creates a platform within the mind from which a child can weigh her thoughts, feelings, and impulses before acting on them. And that moment of pausing gives a child a crucial degree of freedom that allows her to manage her emotions and impulses rather than simply be controlled by them. Attention is the essential skill for learning. The specific capacity for keeping your attention where you want it is termed cognitive control. The circuitry for cognitive control runs through the prefrontal cortex, which acts as the mind’s executive center. This is the part of the brain that allows us to resist distraction, inhibit harmful impulses, delay gratification in pursuit of our goals, be ready to learn, and stay focused on our goals. Research has shown that teaching children mindfulness increased their ability to ignore distractions and concentrate. Cognitive control has been shown to be a better predictor of financial success when someone is in their mid-30s than childhood IQ or wealth of the family in which they grew up. Focus and Emotional Intelligence Such control is also a key part of developing emotional intelligence. To be emotionally intelligent, we first need to be aware of ourselves and our feelings. Emotional self-awareness is a core competency that requires focus inward. Being tuned in to ourselves lays the groundwork for another essential competency, emotional self-control. These are crucial skills that I believe should be taught in every school. It’s been over twenty years since I co-founded CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. Today, CASEL is a national leader in advancing the development of academic, social and emotional competence for all students. Their mission is to help make evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) an integral part of education from preschool through high school. How to Help Children Concentrate Children of all ages can learn simple mindfulness techniques through age-appropriate exercises. In The Triple Focus, I wrote about visiting a second grade class that used favorite stuffed animals in an exercise called Breathing Buddies. The teacher told me her students were calmer and better able to focus on days when they did short sessions of that exercise. Children of all ages both enjoy and learn from video games that challenge them to count their breaths and click on the screen after a certain number of breaths while ignoring attractive distractions. You don’t need video games to teach this essential skill. I developed a series of guided audio exercises geared toward different age groups from six-year-olds to adults. Try This To give you a sense of what these exercises are like, here are two ten-minute samples that you can try. Focus on Listening is from my Focus for Teens audio collection. You also can practice Sensory Focus that is included in my Cultivating Focus collection geared toward adults.

Daniel Goleman: Distracted by Multitasking? Try Mindfulness

Sean’s coworkers used to be impressed with how he could scan through sales data and compose an email message while talking on the phone about an ad campaign with someone from marketing. They wondered if multitasking could help them get more work done. Then, they noticed Sean didn’t hit his performance goals. Are multitasking pros more productive than the rest of us? No. That’s the answer from Clifford Nass’s research at Stanford. In 2009, Nass and his colleagues found that multitasking reduces our ability to concentrate. That was bad news for all of us who spend our days barraged with information. Good News: Ten Minutes Makes a Difference Now, recent research has an antidote: Just ten minute sessions of mindfulness of breath, three times a day, reverses the degradation in concentration common in media multitaskers. Thomas E. Gorman & C. Shawn Green, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that multitaskers perform better after completing a short meditation exercise in which they sat quietly counting their breaths. Gorman and Green’s research shows, again, what I’ve known for years: training attention pays off in practical ways. Mindfulness is the basic move of noticing your mind has wandered and bringing it back into focus. And, just like building muscles by repeating exercises at the gym, you can build the “attention muscles” in your brain through the practice of mindfulness. Applied Self-Awareness Mindfulness is applied self-awareness, the foundation skill in the emotional intelligence model. I have argued that we should help kids strengthen this muscle of mind in schools. It’s the basis for cognitive control – the key to goal focus, ignoring distractions, impulse control, and delay of gratification. These are all core mental skills for learning, leading, and life. Cognitive control has been shown to be a better predictor of financial success when someone is in their mid-30s than childhood IQ or wealth of the family in which they grew up. In past research, my friend and colleague, Richard Davidson at UW-Madison's Center for Healthy Minds has shown the benefits of following a guided online mindfulness meditation exercise. Simply counting their breath produced greater self-awareness, less mind wandering, better mood and less distraction. It’s Not Too Late Feeling overwhelmed by the flood of information coming at you? This new data on mindfulness and multitasking is good news for us all. It’s never too late to build attention. I’ve been a meditator since my college days, did research on the benefits of meditation while at Harvard, am writing a book about the strong new research on mindfulness and other kinds of meditation, and still meditate daily. I created a series of guided exercises for honing concentration in Cultivating Focus: Techniques for Excellence if you want to give it a try. Oh, and what about your kids, if you have any? There’s Focus for Kids and Focus for Teens. * * * * Supplementary reading available at More Than Sound: Develop a Healthy Mind: How Focus Impacts Brain Function Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills with Richard Davidson Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence Brainpower: Mindsight and Emotional Intelligence in Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Daniel Siegel The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights

Daniel Goleman: Master Your Emotional Terrain

What Makes You Angry? For many, being put down by an authority figure causes our blood to boil. For others, delays that ruin our efficiency are frustrating. The calmest person can become enraged by a wrongful accusation. All sorts of life situations, big and small, might trigger anger. How well do you understand your own particular “hot buttons” – situations which trigger specific feelings? To be emotionally intelligent, we need to understand what our emotions look like in action and what provokes each feeling. Thanks to the work of my friend, Paul Ekman, one of the world’s top authorities on emotions, we have the Atlas of Emotions to help enhance our emotional intelligence. The Atlas was inspired by conversations between the Dalai Lama and Dr. Ekman about the science of emotions. The Atlas of Emotions explains: “The Dalai Lama asked Paul Ekman to create a map of the emotions, hoping that such a map would enable people to have more constructive emotional experiences. When we wanted to get to the new world, he said, we needed a map to get there. If we want to get to a calm state of mind, we need a map of the emotion. He asked Ekman to base the emotional map on the scientific consensus about what emotions are. With the help of Stamen Design and Paul’s daughter, Dr. Eve Ekman, this tool was created to be a visual journey through the world of emotions.” How Does the Atlas Work? We know that emotions influence our lives and shape what we say and do – we just don’t always notice this in time to avoid doing or saying something we regret later. The Atlas builds our awareness of emotions, giving us the potential to have some choice in what we feel and how we act. Like all atlases, the Atlas of Emotions includes maps that chart a landscape. Through the Atlas we can explore that terrain, see where emotions come from, and the effects they can have. For each of five universal emotions – anger, enjoyment, disgust, sadness, and fear – the Atlas invites us to investigate: Continents, showing how emotions vary in strength and intensity States, illustrating variations on how each emotion is felt Unconscious actions that stem from emotional states Triggers for a given emotion Moods, longer-lasting cousins of emotions Calm, the balanced frame of mind For in-depth exploration, the Annex section shares more about emotions research, including a timeline explaining how emotional episodes unfold. Why the Atlas Matters Knowing what the Atlas teaches can help with emotional self-awareness, emotional self-management, empathy, and social skill — the whole array of emotional intelligence. Many of us are familiar with one or two emotions, but lack awareness of others. The Atlas gives a sound overview of all the major emotions, how they work, and what the antidotes for the less helpful ones — like anger — might be. We encounter all these emotions at work, in ourselves or others. The Atlas can help us understand – and manage – what’s happening in the emotional landscape around them. This emotional radar matters especially for leaders. Dr. Ekman has pulled together what scientists have found in their research and offered it up in a user-friendly format. Give it a try. * * * * Supplementary reading available at More Than Sound: Knowing Our Emotions, Improving Our World Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence Brainpower: Mindsight and Emotional Intelligence in Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Daniel Siegel The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights

Daniel Goleman: What You Say Vs. What They Hear

Are you sending nastygrams to your work colleagues? I’d never heard that word before, but it is a perfect term for an insensitive email message. A colleague told me about a mid-size retail company where such messages are causing problems. Ryan, a team leader at the company, sent Andy a nastygram criticizing him for something outside of Ryan’s expertise. Andy exploded when he received it and told his officemate, Janet. She wasn’t surprised - Andy wasn’t the only one Ryan had upset. Ryan had worked there for just a month and he’d already made a lot of enemies. Negativity Bias and Online Communication Does Ryan realize he’s sending “nastygrams”? He might think his critiques are appropriate and assumes they will be heard that way. If so, he doesn’t understand “negativity bias” and how it plays out in email and other text-based digital communication. Most of us live far removed from the physical threats faced by our human ancestors, but our brains don’t know that. The amygdala is the “fight-or-flight” part of the brain that continually scans for things that could harm us. It pays more attention to negative information than to positive input. When we talk with someone in person, our facial expressions and tone of voice convey the feelings that go with our words. When someone sends an email message, they unconsciously assume their unspoken emotional cues accompany the message. Receivers don’t get the nonverbal part of the message and think that positive email was more neutral. When the sender thinks it’s neutral, receivers tend to think it’s more negative. Our Social Brain and Online Communication The negativity bias may not be all that’s at play in Ryan’s messages. In face-to-face interactions, when we get an impulse to say or do something, our social brain might say, “Hold on, that’s not going to work.” When you’re face-to-screen, there isn’t the feedback loop to encourage restraint. The result can be flaming – when someone is upset, with their amygdala in firm control, and furiously types out a message and hits send before thinking about it. That emotional hijack hits the other person in their inbox. Flaming stems in part from online disinhibition where the disconnect between the social brain and the screen releases the amygdala from the usual management by the more reasonable prefrontal areas. Even a phone call gives these circuits ample emotional cues from tone of voice to understand the emotional nuance of what you say. But text-only communication lacks all these inputs. Connection: A Cure for Negativity Bias Another aspect of Ryan’s “nastygrams” may be that the people receiving his messages don’t know him well. New at his job, he probably hasn’t made a connection with Andy and other team members. Clay Shirky, who studies social networks and the web at New York University, told me about a global bank security team that operates 24 hours a day. He said they use what he calls a banyan tree model, where key members of each group got together and met key members of every other group. Then, in an emergency, they can contact each other and get a clear sense of how to evaluate the message each group was sending. If someone in the receiving group knows that person well, or has a contact there whom he can ask about the person who sent the message, then the receiving group can better gauge how much to rely on it Like the bank security team, many of us work across distances with people we rarely, if ever, see. In those situations, it can help to use videoconferencing, at least in early interactions. It helps to take the time to get to know each other, what you enjoy about your jobs, possibly something about your backgrounds or life outside of work. Such conversations will help you make a connection. Then, when you’re using text-based communication, you’ll be better able to envision the person who will receive your message. Try This If Ryan had followed these simple steps before he sends email messages, he might not fall into the nastygram pit: Save the message as a draft. Take three deep breaths (even better, wait longer). Open the message. Imagine you’re the recipient of the message, including what you know about who they are. Would they read this message as having a positive or negative tone? Revise the message to reflect your intended tone. Taking a few moments on your intention and message can save you hours, days, or even weeks of trouble. * * * * * Supplementary reading available at More Than Sound: Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence - Selected Writings What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights