emotional intelligence

You receive an e-mail which can consist of a policy you’re totally against, a criticism from a friend or some feedback that just gets your blood boiling.  Immediately you want to type out a reply to prove to the other person that they are wrong.  Dan Goleman (more here) would describe the above with the phrase emotional hijacking, where your emotions over power your cognitive thought.

President Lincoln understood the importance of overcoming the emotions that go along with criticism.  When Lincoln perceived criticism he would wait twenty four hours before he returned the response.  In waiting this time Lincoln was better able to reflect upon the criticism without his emotions getting in the way.  He often realized that his critics had some valid points which helped Lincoln improve as a President.  This advice is probably more important today than ever before with the 24 hours scrutiny of social media

John Harbaugh (Raven’s Head Football Coach) and Steve Bisciotti (Raven’s owner) have a similar arrangement.  They have both agreed that talking about the game right after it is completed is not going to do either one of them any good.  There is still too much raw emotion for constructive feedback to take place.  So they do not discuss the game until 24 hours have passed.  This gives both of them time to recognize and understand each other’s emotions.

Nobody likes criticism, what we have to realize is that it is more important to get things right then to be right.  So recently while listening to a podcast I heard a psychologist discuss how she handled criticism of her work.  She decide not to dig her heels in and defend her work.  Instead she joined forces with the person who criticized her so that she could better understand the perspective he and others had on her work.  This type of mindset allows you to be open to learning and taking different viewpoints.  It allows you to improve upon your work instead of defending it.

So being a New Yorker, I have the tendency to push back harder when I am pushed.  What I have observed in my own behavior is that within a couple of hours I regret my actions.  Now what I am trying to do is make generous assumptions.   So instead of thinking the person is attacking me I try to think that they are trying to help me.  The whole change in mindset often allows me to respond differently to the criticism and use it more as a learning tool.   Instead of emotional back and forth, I am getting a more constructive conversation in which I am learning and growing.

Now have I perfected this?  No.  Sometimes I still have to go home, take a deep breath and admit that my emotions were hijacked.  How would of the conversation been different if I had made a generous assumptions?  Why did I take it personally?  What are the different perspectives that I was not taking into account? 

So the next time you receive criticism, take a deep breath, remember the examples above, and try to give yourself time to gather perspective.  LISTEN LIKE YOU ARE WRONG.

As always your feedback is welcome

Trust

 

In the last couple of weeks, people have asked me how do you find your critical friends.  Who do you know to trust?  When I worked in the business world our company slogan was. “It is the 1,000 little things that make us great” I think it is the same thing about trust, it is the little things that earn trust.

My first day at my present school I was walking down the hall going to my class.  A teacher stopped me and said, “You are going to have a great experience here, let me know what I can do to help you”.  That opening comment started a friendship that to this day is built on trust and mutual respect.

John Gottman (gottman), a psychologist who studies relationships, call these small moments’ sliding door moments.  They are these everyday opportunities in which you can build or lose trust.  I remember when I first heard about sliding door moments I realized how many times things slip away not from being malicious but from being mindless.

I remember one day I started reviews with students at 7:00 AM.  During my off period and lunch, students were in my room for help, and making up some work.  When I was done helping the last student I realized that I had about five minutes to relax before my next class and a review session after school.  As I sat down to relax a student came up to me and asked, “Can you grade my free response now?”

My first response was no.  When I saw the look on her face when the no came out of my mouth I realized I had made a big mistake.  I quickly said, “come back I will grade the free response with you” I will never forget the look on her face as she came back to my desk.  Her face showed me that I made a remarkable recovery and saved this sliding door moment.

Now could I have rationalized that I had been teaching all day?  Of course, nobody would have argued that I did not deserve that five minute break to myself.  However it is these micro moments in which I truly believe that trust is built or broken.  I had built a better relationship with a student and that was certainly worth the five minutes of my free time.

Trust is also never built upon gossip.  While most people love to pass along gossip to each other, friendships that are built upon gossip are very rarely ones of trust.  You cannot help but wonder what do these people say about me when I am not around?  How can I trust someone who reveals others secrets so freely?

Do the big things matter, yes they do.  I have some friends who I will say, this stays in the vault.  Which means what we just discussed stays between us.  Those friends have had many sliding door moments in which they have earned my trust so it is easy for me to become vulnerable with them.

I will close with a quote from Henry Stimson, Secretary of War under FDR, Trust takes years to build, seconds to lose and forever to repair” Make the most of those sliding door moments.

 

As always your comments and thoughts are appreciated.

Stress

In talking with my students, I realized how stressful their senior year can be.  They start their year crafting their college essays, then begin the application process, then the waiting game of do I get in or not, then some rejections, and then where do I go?  During this time, they also are thinking about their grades, what do I wear to prom?  Whom am I going with?  And of course, how am I going to ask them?  With all that in mind I thought I would just put together some thoughts on stress.

They did a study of 30,000 adults across the United States.  They asked them two questions.

1.      How would you rate the amount of stress you have in your life?

2.      Do you think stress is good or bad for you?

The bad news is that 43% of these adults died within the eight-year period that this group was followed.  What they found out however, is that everyone who died thought that stress was bad for them.  That people with high stress were healthy if they thought stress was good for them.  So, the fact is, that it is not stress that kills you, but the fact that you think that stress is bad for you that kills you.

Now think for a second what stresses you out?  I would say my family (worried about them) my job, my friends and my students (also worried about them).  Think for a second if you wiped out all the things that stress you out you would have a pretty empty life.  So, to have a fulfilling life we need stress in it.  Why not make it our friend.

Now often when you are about to take an exam, teachers will tell you to relax and not to worry.  Our intentions are good since we want all our students to be successful.  In another research project they took college students and split them into two groups.  The control group was told to relax before the test and take deep breathes.  The experimental group was told

               That stress is just showing you that you are excited

               That stress is allowing more oxygen to go to your brain to help you during the test

               That stress is an energizer to help you

               Lastly that research shows that students who feel stress will perform well.

When the results came back the students in the experimental group outperformed the students who were told to relax.  That feeling stress before the test was used by the experimental group to enhance performance.  The same way athletes use the excitement of a big game to enhance their performance.  This positive mindset about stress probably will carry over into other stressful events such as job interviews, speeches etc.

How do you change your mind set about stress?  First thing is to acknowledge the event that might be causing you stress.  Then I try to think about how the stress is just preparing me for the event that is occurring.  That my mind and body are just getting ready so that I can handle the event.  Secondly, try to help someone else during these times.  While this is often difficult to do when you feel overwhelmed, I have found being compassionate during these times energizes my body.  Lastly, just continue to talk and think that stress is good for you.

Hope this helps.  As always truly appreciate your thoughts and your feedback

Step into the arena

Below is a quote from Teddy Roosevelt.    

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

What prevents many people from stepping into the arena is fear and self-doubt.  How many great ideas, how many great questions go unheard because people are scared?   While it would be great to promise you that nobody is going to judge you, the truth is that there will always be the critics.  What we need to do is tune out the people who criticize us but are too scared to get into the arena themselves.

The second critic we would need to shut out is ourselves.  Many of us are our own worst critics which often prevents us from the triumphs of high achievement.  What we must realize is that most often what we are trying to accomplish is bigger than us.  That we will make errors along the way but if we continue to follow our passion we will love the journey.

This is not to say that we do not need constructive criticism. I send these essays to two people each week before I publish because I trust that their feedback will make the essay better.  We all need those critical friends who will tell us when we are going down the wrong path, who will pick us up when we fall (we all fall).  What I have found is those who are successful fall at a six and bounce back like a ten.  What we do not need is those people who crush dreams or ideas because they themselves are too scared to enter the arena.

I once worked with a boss who told me “if I am not thinking about firing you every 90 days I am going to fire you” At first this seems like a crazy statement which would increase fear.  However, what my boss wanted was for me to push the envelope so far that it made him uncomfortable.  To take risks because he realized that you could not have a great company if you were doing the norm.

What made my boss special is that he celebrated failures and those who took risks. As you might suspect many successes came out of those failures.  It developed a thought process of if it is not broken break it.  That change is difficult but almost always needed.

So, I will leave you with some questions you can ask yourself as you try to change your mindset to be more comfortable entering the arena.  What did you disagree with today?  What did you learn from somebody who disagreed with you?  What have you failed at recently?  Is there another way to solve that problem?

Look forward to seeing you in the arena.

As usual your feedback and comments are always wanted.

Student walkout

                                                            Student Walkout

I wanted to wait a couple of weeks before I addressed this topic.  Time allows me to gain some perspective over the event.  In our school a group of students decided to organize and lead the student walkout.  They met once a week in person while communicating electronically throughout the week.  They met with the principal to keep him informed and everything seemed to be going smoothly.

The Friday before the walkout, administrators and our SRO (school police officer) started pulling students out of class to talk with them.  For some of the student leaders, this was 90 minutes of interrogation which none of them were used to.  At the end of the day they were told that they could not communicate with students through our traditional school platforms of announcements and homerooms. 

When I heard this at first, I was extremely upset.  Why was the administration not more supportive?  How can anyone not be supportive of non-violence in schools?  Why is not every teachers, administrator and student walking out together in protest of school violence?

Now with some perspective, I am glad that every student did not walk out of the building.  There were adult cynics who were claiming that students were just walking out to get out of class.  The fact that many students stayed in the building showed that the students who left were just leaving to support a cause they believed passionately about.  So, by everyone not leaving the students proved the adult cynics wrong.  That students are not about missing class but standing up for what they believe in.

Secondly, it was very impressive to see that the students who left, did not put any pressure on the students who stayed. The students who stayed did not pressure those who were leaving to stay in school.  While there were opposing arguments, both sides showed great respect for each other something our adult politicians could learn from.  In one of my classes we discussed the walkout and again both sides argued passionately to support their side of the argument but listen intently to the opposing viewpoints.

  If the school stood behind the student leaders, if everyone walked out together, it would have seemed way too easy.  The truth is that making real change in the world is difficult and that the student leaders were forced to face obstacles thrown at them from different directions was good.  It forced them to think, was this a cool thing to do or is this really something I am passionate about doing.  It made them realize that making change in the world is a difficult thing to do and no matter how right you think you are there are always going to be those who pushback.

At the end of the day I realize that you need to give things time before you make judgements.  That things worked out for the best because there was opposition which allowed all of us an opportunity to learn.  I now feel more optimistic about our country than ever before since I know that our students will play an active role in the process