Elise Awwad: And there's actually two questions here that go hand in hand, so I'm going to... Miguel R and Eric Y, both asked questions a little bit differently. Miguel asks, "How do we be more emotionally intelligent?" And then Eric, "What are some tools to use to act in a more emotionally intelligent way?"
Bob Biglin: So one of the first things is to really try to better understand yourself. I know that that probably sounds a little bit nebulous in some ways, but there's this... we've talked a lot about the idea of being aware of yourself and looking for that self-awareness, but one of the things that we work with clients on all the time is to find someone to help you do that. It's fine to do the introspection, but you can't have the introspection on its own.
You need some of that external input to help you calibrate how you're doing in the world. You can talk to colleagues for that, you can talk to family around that, and there are some better strategies for doing that than others, right? So one of the things I wouldn't suggest is to go to a good friend or otherwise and say, "Hey, can you give me feedback on X?" Because all of a sudden now if I were to say to you at Elise, "Elise, can you give me feedback on X?" You're thinking, "Hmm, well, I really have these ideas, but do I really want to give him that feedback? And what's his reaction going to be?"
So Marshall Goldsmith is probably the world's most renowned executive coach, and he uses an idea called Feed Forward, and I really, really like it because it focuses on what you were really working towards. The feedback is always retrospective. There's not always a lot that you can solve about what's happened in the past. Of course, if you've behaved in a way that's pretty egregiously, one of the things you need to go do is go back and repair the damage from that. But if it's something like, for example, Elise, if I were to say to you, "I would like feedback on my presentation skills. You were in my last presentation, weren't you, Elise? You know, how did I go?"
Elise Awwad: It was excellent.
Bob Biglin: You might think to yourself, "Boy, it was really appalling. How do I tell him how to do that?" So a different strategy might be for me to come to you and to say, "Elise, I'm working on trying to improve my presentation skills, and in particular, I'm trying to make sure that I'm clearly communicating the message with the right amount, but not too much information. Could I ask you over the next six months as we're going through our team meetings, could we just get together for 10 minutes after our group meeting and you provide me your perspective on what you observed? And just tell me how did it hit you as a participant in that?"
So this idea of Feed Forward is really thinking about what's my objective for the future, and who can I engage to help me with that process? And I share that because that definitely applies to how you can help build your emotional intelligence, right? You can work with colleagues that you have. You can work with your spouse or your partner and have them help you work on those areas that you think you need to improve upon. And then clearly there is seeking some professional help with that.
So you might want to actually go out and ask your HR business partner to help you with a 360 or go get a professional coach to help you with that. But there's some things that you could actually do on your own without spending any additional money on that to use the networks and the relationships that you have right now. And then certainly reading and doing a little bit of background reading on some of these topics is good.
I know earlier today, a couple of the speakers actually, and I'll go back to Dr. Arno's session from this morning, talked about a whole host of online resources that are out there, and there are some great courses that are out there online. Coursera has a couple of them that are focused around emotional intelligence. I think there's one or two on edX. They're also great resources, and they're totally free.
What's nice about them, and I'm thinking of a couple in particular that are on Coursera, is that they take you through some personal reflective questions that help you think about your values as it relates to your behaviors and to help you get a better sense of calibrating how you're presenting in public and how you're interacting with other people. So I would say it's a combination of all of those things. I hope I answered this question.