Improving Emotional Intelligence Prof Con Stough

1. Improving Emotional Intelligence Prof Con Stough

2. Key Contacts • Professor Con Stough Emotional Intelligence Research Unit Brain Sciences Institute Swinburne University Email: cstough@swin.edu.au

3. Group Activities • Work with your senior leadership group • Develop the idea of distributed leadership • Work together to improve and identify excellent leadership behaviours • Have your staff assessed on their current level of EI (self report or 360)

4. Good news: EI can be improved

5. Transformational Leaders • Motivate others when they: • Communicate a vision of the future • Demonstrate enthusiasm, optimism and engage with others wherever possible, they ‘light the fire within’ • Display a sense of humor

6. Transformational Leaders • Motivate others when they: • Communicate a vision of the future • Demonstrate enthusiasm, optimism and engage with others wherever possible, they ‘light the fire within’ • Display a sense of humor

7. Transformational Leaders • Encourage participation and reassure staff during difficult times • Celebrate success through thanking staff for a job well done • Inspire others by providing a sense of vision and strategic thinking

8. Transformational Leaders • Challenge mindsets when they: • Challenge the ‘status quo’ and seek to initiate change when necessary • Question existing processes and develop better solutions • Encourage people to participate in finding solutions to problems

9. Transformational Leaders • Create an environment where people can take considered risks • Work at reducing the ‘red tape’ • Anticipate future challenges and directions

10. Transactional Leadership • Are not effective when they: • Are overly critical of others and focus only on mistakes • Over-emphasise ‘following the process’ over achieving outcomes • Micro-manage others

11. Transactional leaders • Use selective hearing and/or seeing • Only comment when there’s a problem • Ignore staff achievements

12. Transactional leaders • Wait until an issue becomes a real problem and then get someone else to handle it for resolution • Bully, don’t listen and try to manipulate others • Are reactive rather than proactive

13. Laissez-faire leadership • Are ineffective when they: • Avoid making a decision • Are unavailable • Avoid conflict and confrontation • Avoid responsibility

14. Laissez-Faire Leadership • Are indecisive • Direct blame and don’t take ownership • Are unsupportive and leave you to ‘sink or swim’

15. Laissez-faire leaders • Don’t follow through on their commitments • Over-delegate’ by not providing support, follow up and accountability

16. Exercise 1 • Identify current behaviours (at your organization, including your own) that could be regarded as: • Transformational • Transactional • Laissez-faire

17. Transformational

18. Transformational

19. Transactional

20. Transactional

21. Laissez-faire

22. Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test (SUEIT) Five Dimensions: • Emotional Recognition and Expression • Understanding Emotions of Others • Emotions Direct Cognition • Emotional Management • Emotional Control

23. Exercise 4 • Each group will be given one dimension of EI • Each group is to describe behaviours at your school which reflect high and low scores on that dimension of EI • E.g., anger at staff meetings may reflect low Emotional Control

24. What have we learnt today? • Next steps? • What can we do from here? • How can we embed transformational leadership and high EI into all aspects of the school?

25. Improving Leadership and EI • Build the building Blocks of Leadership: Emotional Intelligence • Here are some suggestions

26. Emotional Recognition & Expression • Two aspects • Emotional Awareness in yourself • Emotional Expression

27. Emotional Recognition & Expression Emotional Awareness

28. Mood (Emotion) List • Depressed Anxious Angry Guilty Ashamed Sad Embarrassed Excited Frightened Irritated Insecure Proud Mad Panicky Frustrated Nervous Disgusted Hurt Cheerful Disappointed Enraged Scared Happy Loving Humiliated OTHER MOODS?

29. Emotions • Primary Emotions • Anger, Happiness, Fear, Surprise, Sadness • Social Emotions • Disgust, Shame and Guilt, Embarrassment

30. Rating Emotions and Moods 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 ______________________________ Not A little Medium A lot Most I’ve at all ever felt

31. ABCs of Emotions • Emotions are always a consequence of how we think • Think of when you were upset last, what was your thought before the emotion?

32. Emotional Recognition & Expression Emotional Expression

33. Emotional Recognition & Expression Consider 5 recent communications you’ve had with others Did you effectively communicate in these circumstances?

34. Emotional Recognition & Expression • If No • Why not? How would you do it differently? • If Yes • Why was this effective?

35. Developing Emotional Management

36. A-B-C Model of Emotion • A is for Activating Event • B is for Belief or thought • C is for the emotional consequence

37. ABC of Emotions • There can be many different types of A’s • A’s can be internal thoughts about something or someone, or could be an environmental event such as the phone ringing

38. ABCs of Emotions • B’s can be your thought processes or beliefs and these can be badly formed or irrational • For instance your thought about the phone ringing (A) may be irrational (e.g., its someone to upset me)

39. ABCs of Emotions • C’s are the emotions that you then feel but which are always due to your interpretations or your beliefs associated with the activating event • Examine the connections between ABC next time you feel an emotion that you don’t want.

40. ABC of Emotions • A is the PHONE RINGS • B is your thought about this • C is your mood or emotion

41. Errors in thinking • Consider these: • Going beyond the facts • More dire than justified • Using absolutes to describe events • Faulty prediction • Invalid allocation of responsibility • Invalid conclusions about motives

42. Errors in thinking • Going beyond the facts • Don’t consider all the facts • Use only dichotomous categories • Many others

43. Common errors • Discounting positive information • Not noticing positive information • Jumping to a negative conclusion

44. Being Positive • Usually good but not always • If we think positive thoughts during a strong mood then we may miss something important

45. ABC of Emotions • Think through different solutions to the problem or cause of the mood • Identify what though or belief is causing the mood • Determine other possibilities and other angles

46. Other possibilities • Is your thought rational? • Is your thought based on all the evidence and is reasonable? • Is it your thought or an automatic thought?

47. Exercise 5 • STEP 1: Identify problem behaviours in your school • STEP 2: Identify the thoughts or beliefs that sit behind those behaviours • STEP 3: What are the faulty assumptions that underpin those beliefs? • STEP 4: Collaborate to think through a range of solutions or better ways to think about the problems

48. So what can we do? If we do these initiatives we will be a leading school

49. INITIATIVE ONE • We should measure the EI of every student at the beginning of the year • Children with very low EI can be identified and this can be communicated to parents/ teachers • Children/Adolescents can then be given special help to improve their emotional intelligence • Run individual and/or group sessions

50. INITIATIVE TWO • Accredit a group of staff to use EI within the school • Staff to be responsible for identifying students with low EI • Developing materials to embed EI within the school curriculum • Help staff develop and prevent occupational stress • Help develop leaders at different levels