Can Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Be Learned?

The words "emotional" and "leader" together in the same breath could conjur up some pretty negative images, mostly because the word emotional is often used to describe someone overly emotional, and at least slightly out of control. The truth is that we all possess a range of emotions and knowing how these feel, what some of our triggers are for some of the less desirable ones, and being able to show appropriate emotion are all the attributes required of great leaders. This blog explores whether Emotional Intelligence (EI) can be learned or is it more an inate skill? Also, what sort of qualifications should we look for when wanting to hire a professional to assist in developing our EI?

Working With Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman Ph.D, visiting Harvard lecturer, author, pyschologist and science journalist, has written extensively on the subject of EI starting in 1995 with his book, aptly entitled "Emotional Intelligence". He argues that emotional maturity is a more important factor than IQ for determining workplace success, ("Working with Emotional Intelligence", 1998). Goleman draws heavily on the landmark work of Salovey and Meyer, psychologists who previously defined EI as: “the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (1990, p.189). Goleman is one in a long line of thinkers and writers who have proposed that we must first be able to empathise with others in order to help them and lead them. As early as around 300BC , Sun T'zu (if he existed) wrote in "The Art of War" that victory starts with empathy.

Inate EI?
Goleman's most recent best-seller is "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships" (2006). Goleman explores a person's individual attachment style, shaped as an infant, this having a critical impact on EI abilities in adulthood. Attachment styles are due in part to individual temperament and also largely shaped by social and parental influences in infancy and early childhood. "Our childhood leaves its stamp on our adult ardor nowhere more clearly than in our "attachment system" ... As we have seen, children who are well nurtured and feel their caretakers empathize with them become secure in their attachments, neither overly clingy nor pushing away. But those whose parents neglect their feelings and who feel ignored become avoidant, as though they have given up hope of achieving a caring connection. And children whose parents are ambivalent, unpredictably flipping from rage to tenderness, become anxious and insecure." So these attachment styles of anxious, secure and avoidant usually follow us into adulthood and impact upon our ability to be emotionally intelligent. The "secure" attachment style (centered and grounded) is the more effective of the three when it comes to EI. The two extremes of clinginess (anxious) and aloofness (avoidant), are large hurdles for some to overcome and in extreme cases, will likely not be overcome. The secure attachment style allows enjoyment of both intimacy and solitude. The anxious person as an adult might continue to be overly dependent upon others, try too hard to please others and not cope well alone; or even overcompensate by showing traits of arrogance and narcissism; while the avoidant person is unable to fully experience intimacy; has difficulty with empathy; does not allow others to get close; is probably much more of a loner; and does not demonstrate high levels of emotion, even where warranted. The secure person embraces both intimacy and solitude because he/she has little investment in self-protection or mistrust. Authentic emotional expression is fundamentally important to being a good leader; without the mixed messages that come from someone overly people-pleasing or emotionally redundant. In other words, when those around us see us over or under-reacting emotionally, they do not feel the same level of trust in our abilities to lead, and probably rightly so. It is clear then that those with an inate secure foundation, are more equipped for EI than others.

Security and Social Awareness
"Social awareness" is a key skill of the emotionally intelligent and encompasses abilities such as being a good judge of people, having developed an emotional literacy, generally holding a positive regard towards others and possessing a healthy "trust radius". These are fairly esoteric criteria and also internally determined to each and every one of us. Clearly if someone is preoccupied with protecting himself from the evil intentions of others then he will not be predisposed to being highly socially aware. The same applies to someone with a strong dependency upon others for self-worth. "For leadership positions, emotional intelligence abilities account for up to 85% of what sets outstanding managers apart from the average” – Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998).

EI Assessments and Development
It is with this in mind that various EI assessment tools have been developed in order to determine the areas of improvement for our leaders; given very few people in the world are perfectly secure! These tools are available for pretty much anyone to administer, once undergoing a few days of EI training, usually under the broad label of "coaching". Of much more importance than administering the test and getting the EI result however is what can be done once the tests have been administered. Is this an area that will respond well to some training, coaching or is something altogether deeper and more psychotherapeutic needed?

Craig (identity changed) is a high ranking director working in an extremely dynamic and competitive industry in the city of London. Craig approached me on Harley St to work with him privately to achieve improved EI. He was finding that all his appraisals were coming back with the same feedback - Craig delivers extremely well on his deadlines and organisational objectives but his soft skills are below average. He is liked by his superiors but not by many of his subordinates. The area that most people would like Craig to improve on is being less arrogant and more empathic. During our first session together, Craig admitted that he found this feedback overwhelming. This is usually the case when feedback is about something that is fundamental to the person. How could he possibly adjust these habits of a lifetime, particularly when most of his reactions were unconscious, automatic and seemed to get the job done? This is a valid concern and if left unaddressed, the individual is caught between wanting to deliver against objectives and wanting to please others, resulting in neither being done, with stress mounting for the person in question. Craig needed safe ways to test letting go of some of his more competitive traits in order to rehearse more empathic ones, and so a plan was put in place for him to begin to gather new evidence to support new ways of behaving. Upon deeper exploration with Craig, we also uncovered that Craig was "predisposed" to being competitive, having been encouraged to do so from a very early age, beginning with competing to be heard in an extremely noisy household! Under the bold exterior, Craig also experienced high levels of anxiety and insecurity about himself in relation to others. He could attribute this to various factors such as growing up feeling like a square peg in a round hole at school, with parents who were themselves frequently shouting and stressed, and generally not receiving sufficient attention other than when achieving remarkable results.

In examining Craig's main complaint against him, that of being too arrogant, an underlying fear of incompetence emerged. This fear was something that drove Craig to excellence in almost everything he did. Again, this was one of the reasons that Craig had been promoted so quickly and was viewed as a bright, young star. He agreed that this was a main "pro" to him holding on to this fear. It was important however that we unearthed the "cons" of this fear and in doing so, it brought to light the fact that Craig's personal relationships as well as those with subordinates who relied upon Craig for guidance and knowledge generally suffered. He admitted to being more intent on achieving than listening, on teaching others how to do things his way rather than attempting to understand others' points of view (frequently putting other people's backs up!) as well as not being sufficiently tolerant with those less experienced than he. At worst, when Craig's fear of incompetence was fully activated, Craig found it extremely difficult to control his temper and unsurprisingly this really worked against him, both at home and at work. Craig and I worked on modifying his existing beliefs about what he needed to do to be truly successful, and not just in work. In order for these to become automatic, he needed to rehearse them in session, role-playing situations in order to then go out and practice them, and to receive fair and helpful feedback from those around him who support him. His underlying feelings of anxiety and insecurity reduced through balancing his views of what would make him a great boss as well as a husband and father; and importantly, practicing a set of relaxation and stress management techniques helped address when he was likely vulnerable to triggers. In working with hypnotherapy Craig modified his mental image - to that of someone more mature and empathic rather than arrogant and anxious, strengthening the links between positive outcomes and the traits of EI being rehearsed.

Having used these tools and worked with some fairly high-profile individuals with these sort of challenges, my opinion is that it is not an area that one should be expecting a coach with fairly limited psychological training to assist with, as areas such as the client's learned expectations about him/herself in relation to others; his/her abilities to trust others; and automatic, learned responses, particularly when under stress, need to be adapted. This requires a coach with a breadth of training and experience in psychotherapeutic methods as well as simply holding a coaching certificate and EI assessment certification. Exploring someone's inner world, their belief system and also modifying behaviours - perhaps overly passive or overly aggressive - which have in fact served the individual very well, are not changes to be attempted lightly nor can they be worked on superficially.

What Are The Qualifications Needed to Coach EI?
Modifying the areas of a person relating to their self-worth, attachment style and ability to trust and then rebuilding them in a way that does not threaten the individual's hard won successes; will not likely be achieved in just a few sessions, nor with a coach trained in applying goal theory (the standard coaching cetification which teaches coaches to hold the view that one must identify the goals and coach a client in accordance with them, in order to motivate the client to learn new skills) and a bit of NLP (neurolinguistic programming, a poorly validated and misused collection of behavioural techniques that make some quite extravagant claims to deliver swift behavioural modification). EI is a term to cover a variety of skills deriving from very fundamental beliefs that we hold about ourselves and the world as we have learned it to be, from our earliest moments onwards: it is not just about developing emotional self-control, nor in learning more about the skills of motivating and managing others. For a highly successful leader wishing to further develop their EI skills, psychotherapeutic experience in the EI Coach is essential, in my opinion. The case study of Craig sounds pretty straightforward but it is precisely the steps highlighted there that are the most problematic for a coach with insufficient training and experience: what are the predisposing factors to the problems being demonstrated - and how entrenched are they?; how can risk be managed in adapting some of the maladaptive behaviours that have served the individual very well, in the organisation that they operate?; what is a realistic improvement for this individual?; and even more importantly, how can tolerance to trial and error learning be improved, usually in someone used to learning new things and getting results extremely quickly? The skills required of a coach with this calibre of leader are complex, psychotherapeutic but also requiring strong organisational experience, particularly in appreciating the influence of the organisation and group on the individual. My advise to any leader seeking EI coaching is to avoid coaches who do not have an organisational development background coupled with formal training and experience in psychotherapy. Specifically find a coach trained in administering EI assessments and also Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), the most effective therapy for linking behaviour with emotional development. Without this blend of experience in handling the organisational influences as well as changing the individual ones, coaching could be highly damaging to a leader's chances of survival and improvement, particularly in the complicated environment that he or she likely exists.

Laying the foundations for healthy relationships

Last week I wrote about one aspect of building healthy attachment in a new infant, the way in which parents respond to the individual needs of their children, at the earliest stage, when they cry.

This week I explore further how healthy adult relationships can depend upon the attachment built early on as a child with the parents. Relationship patterns that follow people throughout life are claimed by many psychologists to be established largely between the ages of 0 - 18 months. Of interest to this blog is how early attachment then defines our abilities to build relationships and assess "reality" when encountering differences with others (thus the amount of conflict one experiences in one's own emotional life), in later life. It is generally accepted that early experiences with caregivers gradually give rise to a system of thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviours about the self and about others, including what one should expect of love and intimacy from others. This system is called the "internal working model of social relationships", and continues to develop with time and experience. It enables the child to a greater or lesser extent handle new and different types of social interactions as it develops through adolescence and into adulthood. An adult's internal working model continues to develop and to help cope with friendships, marriage, and parenthood, all of which involve different behaviours and feelings. This is also the reason that different styles of relationships work for different people, rather than there simply being one blueprint for all. Some couples need and give more space than others; why one wife is happiest when her husband is around all the time, whereas another prefers to have time apart as well as time together, for example.

The main claim of Attachment Theory is that a young child needs a secure relationship to at least one primary adult caregiver for normal social and emotional development to take place. Indeed, significant separation from a familiar caregiver, or frequent changes of caregiver in a young infant, may result in psychopathology at some point in later life. Much has been written about attachment, including how an infant learns expectations and styles of attachment, from the earliest responses to its cries (at 0 - 2 months); to discriminating amongst various possible caregivers (from 6 months - 2 to 3 years, this being described by psychologists as the "critical period"). The theory originated from psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby and has been developed further since. The key word for healthy attachment is secure. Feeling secure however is not a one-size-fits-all, with some infants appearing to be more temperamentally secure than others. The claim cannot be nature over nurture (that we are genetically predisposed, our temperaments are all set at birth and that is that), nor nurture over nature (that our environment, parents etc. will be totally responsible, disregarding individual temperament, more complex family systems, genetics, etc.), rather that the outcome for any individual is a more complicated blend of both.

There are however some parental givens in encouraging healthy attachment in one's infant, and these are defined quite clearly within Attachment Theory. Developmental Psychologist, Mary Ainsworth, introduced the concept of the "secure base" and developed a theory of how attachment patterns are developed in infants, through interaction between them and their primary caregiver (usually their mother), attachments defined as follows:

1. Secure attachment
2. Avoidant attachment
3. Anxious attachment
4. Disorganised attachment

She and her colleagues developed the "Strange Situation Procedure" in the 1960s, which is a widely used, well researched (tested in Scotland and Canada) and is a validated method of assessing an infant's pattern and style of attachment to a caregiver. This is administered as follows:

1. Parent and infant are introduced to the experimental room.
2. Parent and infant are alone. Parent does not participate while infant explores.
3. Stranger enters, converses with parent, then approaches infant. Parent leaves inconspicuously.
4. First separation episode: Stranger's behaviour is geared to that of infant.
5. First reunion episode: Parent greets and comforts infant, then leaves again.
6. Second separation episode: Infant is alone.
7. Continuation of second separation episode: Stranger enters and gears behavior to that of infant.
8. Second reunion episode: Parent enters, greets infant, and picks up infant; stranger leaves inconspicuously.

Two important aspects of the child's behaviour are observed:

1. The amount of exploration (e.g. playing with new toys) the child engages in throughout.
2. The child's reactions to the departure and return of its caregiver.

On the basis of their behaviours, the children are categorised into the four groups, listed above.

Our ability to hold mature, intimate and loving relationships depends largely upon our internal working model of social relationships, how evolved it is, and how capable we are of further evolution emotionally and cognitively. The optimistic view (and mine) is that we continue to evolve cognitively and emotionally as adults. There are some provisos of course, such as a need to be self-aware of some of the flaws in one's existing internal working model of social relationships. With someone experiencing a full-blown psychopathology, this self-awareness is extremely difficult to elicit, as perceptions have become fractured and dissociated. For most people however, learning to have even more fulfilling relationships includes having the ability to learn about one's own internal model. Here are some key questions to explore with yourself, keeping in mind the overall question "would someone else agree with my perceptions"?

1. What beliefs do I hold about my likelihood to be loved and to give love in return?
2. Are my expectations of others too low or too high (note: expectations could be high for some yet not others, e.g. high for work colleagues, yet too low for family members; etc.)?
3. How do I sense-check my perceptions, needs and expectations?
4. How do I recognise where I am being emotionally triggered by past events rather than the realities of the present e.g. my emotional reaction is likely to be considered by most others as inappropriate or out of proportion for the given situation (usually a triggering event, upsetting more to me than others)?

So what if there are some learned automatic responses such as insufficient reaction (lack of affect), distorted perceptions (misinterpretations) or over-reactions that need to change? If this is the case, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), cognitive behaviour analysis, dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) and hypnotherapy are effective approaches to consider. They provide the pathways, or bridges to new, more adaptive internal models through providing opportunities for social learning, bringing more adaptive ways of responding and thinking. As with learning any new skill however, this involves being out of one's comfort zone, feeling uncomfortable, experiencing a higher level of uncertainty, accepting that with learning comes error and mistakes, and all of this can be incredibly hard for some who has developed disorganised, anxious or avoidant attachment styles. If you suspect you have or your partner has any of these attachment styles, my guidance is to find a therapist that you can trust, who can give you professional insight into your internal working model of relationships and also offer you the bridges to learning and experiencing new and more fulfilling intimate relationships. Many people can see in later life, years of wasted experiences that have repeated the same pattern time and time again, even with very different people. Changing or even avoiding partners will not change the patterns unfortunately.