A Crisis of EQ

This is what we have. A crisis of EQ. At every level, from all points of view.?All of us. And we must tackle it.

EQ/EI, anything you want to call perceiving, understanding and naming our own emotions and those of others around us is lacking across the board.

What does that mean? It means the tens of articles you’re reading to do with emotions, soft skills, mental health states and being compassionate all have one theme in common - no one has the knowledge -or the practice!- to do the things we now truly need them to do: namely understand and express their emotions and the emotions of those around them.?

Why should they know? When were they taught or told it matters or even that it is permitted? When have they been trained in this or even reassured that it's ok to feel and allow others to feel as well at work?

We tell leaders they are to enter this new era of servant leadership that’s compassionate and caring. But compassionate leadership needs empathy. The very definition of empathy is relating to the emotions of others and how is any leader -or anyone else for that matter-expected to do that when they can barely name emotions leave alone do they know when they occur, how they are felt or what triggers them.?

We tell everyone that these are no longer just “fluffy topics” fit for once a month on a Friday afternoon but do nothing to help with the education that would guide them through it. We say we want them to do self-care and be responsive to others but how are they to do that without the EQ?

We tell employees it is a new era when they are expected to put down the day-to-day-task-only and to tackle this much bigger mountain that is understanding their relationships with others but give them no education and no tools to do so.

We say that EQ is cornerstone to team performance but we don’t say how to get more of it.?

This is all sped up by the traumatic few years we have had. We would have arrived at this moment anyhow, this moment where all the sterile talk translates to real life. When we are expected to delete the false demarcation between “private” and “professional” and when the latter includes this emotions-reading ability. This moment when it is all getting serious. We would have gotten here anyhow indeed but the pandemic has precipitated it as it has with so many things when it comes to the future of work.

The fact that we are humans before we are resources could no longer be evaded, the proof that we have feelings was undeniable to all and the fact that the dialogue took serious tones when discussing burnout or mental health issues just meant we are finally holding space for these hard conversations and are willing to admit we need them.

But the other side of all this openness and willingness to rethink work through the prism of humanity is exposing a glaring gap in our abilities. No one is trained in emotions. No one has the knowledge to comprehend them or even name them. How are we expected to take them into account and mitigate our reactions to them if we can’t even label them??

So step one has to be “Naming emotions 101” and quite frankly absolutely every company with a goal of minimising their HumanDebt? should have already started an intensive internal program to train everyone in recognising them. A pure basic educational piece, allowing people to understand the various types of emotional states, what they feel like, what they look like in facial expressions or behaviours, and just what they are each called is a minimum of what each organisation owes their employees after having seemingly employed them to do anything but so far.?

We won’t have had to all turn into being a trainee psychologist in the least. All we need is to be able to fumble our way around the terms with enough goodwill to recognise them in ourselves and others and to spend some time thinking of them.

It truly is not rocket science.

Who reading this can name even the 6 basic emotions, forget some 10-15 nuances of each of them off the top of their heads with ease? Until that changes, we are in crisis. One that we must address because the world around us keeps throwing majorly scary events at us and we are more emotional than ever.?

We feel more things because we are raw. And tired. And wary.?(Or worried and mad and guilty for our friends who are in the midst of unbelievable hardship and surrounded by death.)

We say more about human topics. We read more. We contemplate more.?

We experience a whole array of emotional states and we collectively, for the most part, just push them deep down and try to close the lid tight and ignore them because we can’t even name them. We don’t know what they even are for the most part outside a vague okayness or unlabelled discomfort. When we do end up feeling them they have already done untold damage to our psyche and our ability to cope leave alone thrive.

That has to change.?

And yes we may need many other things such as organisational permission to do this work or the time and frame of mind to tackle it ourselves. We have to do this learning, this ABC of emotions, it’s incredibly urgent and it’s incredibly easy. All of us. Leaders or not. Professionally and privately. Whether they help or not. Let’s promise each other we will put in the work and start learning. Even better if we learn together.?

We at PeopleNotTech have considered designing an “EQ Injection” team action/play for our team software following on from our work on the EQ Trainer feature we had discarded as an idea for just leaders last year, but is it really needed? Can’t we each google “names of emotions and how to recognise them” and start from there? Of course, we can and we definitely should.?

Join us tomorrow for more practical ideas on how to get started with increasing your EQ because it is absolutely needed nowadays.?

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are:?Understand,?Measure?and?Improve

At?PeopleNotTech?we make?software?that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us?about a demo?at?[email protected]??

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