The Emotionally Intelligent Manager [Electronic resources] : How to Develop and Use the Four Key Emotional Skills of Leadership نسخه متنی

What Is Understanding Emotions?

Where does happiness come from? What about joy? Is joy the same as happiness, or is it qualitatively different? If excitement gets out of control, what happens to that person’s emotions?

The ability to understand emotions is the most cognitive, or thinking-related, of the four skills of emotional intelligence. It involves a great deal of knowledge about emotions, as well as the ability to understand what causes emotions, what the relationships among various emotions are, how emotions transition from one stage to another, and how to put all this into language.

Considering these skills suggests an idea that many people find objectionable: there may be one correct way to feel. One of the premises of emotional intelligence is that there are indeed more and less likely ways to feel, given a certain event. There are times when one’s feelings will follow a certain trajectory; our responses to events are influenced by emotional rules as well as by our interpretation of events and our past emotional history. But we reject the idea that there is necessarily a correct way to feel, per se.

A New Vocabulary

All areas of knowledge have their own vocabulary. The language spoken by IT managers may not be readily understood by the people in marketing, and a sales manager’s vocabulary probably differs from the vocabulary of a finance manager. The specific words these managers know and use can be hard to understand if you don’t have the same experience or training they have. People who lack the language of sales, marketing, finance, or programming will struggle to understand the nuances of those fields; the same is true for emotions. There is a vocabulary of emotions that you need to possess in order to engage in sophisticated reasoning about emotions.

How many emotion words do you need? Is there is a finite number of human feelings, or is each person unique, experiencing his or her own blend of emotions? There exist a wide variety of individual experiences of emotions, but the basic emotions are almost universally experienced by human beings.[1] In fact, Darwin, in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, makes a forceful case for the existence of basic, universally experienced emotions, not just in people but in other species as well.

A century later, psychologist Paul Ekman described a theory of emotion that includes a set of basic human emotions such as anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust.[2] Other researchers have their own models, with perhaps one of the more comprehensive emotions model being devised by Robert Plutchik.[3] A few lists of basic emotions, as described by Plutchik, Ekman, Tomkins, and Izard, are shown in Exhibit 5.2.[4]

So what would a new vocabulary sound like? Something like this: “How are you doing?” you might ask. Rather than answer with an “okay” or a “fine,” individuals who understand emotions distinguish among different and more subtle feelings and reply, “ excited and expectant.” The understanding of emotions, whether one’s own or those of another person, can be quite sophisticated; this person understands how he or she feels.

There may be only shades of difference among emotion terms. The exact word can convey a precise emotional meaning. Consider the difference between envy and jealousy. What about irritation, anger, and rage? Am I annoyed or frustrated or angry? The words are different, and the meaning of each emotion term is different. To convey emotion accurately requires us to have a rich emotional vocabulary and to use it effectively. Our communications improve when we provide the other person with more precise information about our feeling states.

Emotional Cause and Effect

Emotions can be thought of as mathematical equations of the form “if X then Y” or, more precisely, “if event X then emotion Y.” We’ve made the point repeatedly that emotions contain information or data about ourselves in relation to our environment. What is that information? The information in a feeling tells us about the event that gives rise to that feeling.[5]

Our ability to connect emotions to various events provides us with this emotional linkage of cause and effect. If we hear that a colleague has lost a valuable account, we may guess that he is feeling sad. If we later hear that he lost the account because one of his fellow sales people knowingly stole the account away, then we may guess that our colleague is feeling angry.

Emotional Complexity

Emotions are complex, and so are our feelings. Some emotions consist of combinations of simpler emotions. The emotion of contempt, for example, includes elements of disgust, anger, and even happiness. Situations can also give rise to complex or multiple emotions that may seem contradictory. Can you feel love and anger at the same time? Absolutely! Just ask any young lover whether he or she has been angry with a loved one. Can you feel both surprised and sad simultaneously? Just consider your own reaction if you received some unexpected bad news.

Indeed, some emotion theorists, including Plutchik, explicitly recognize the existence of emotional blends and the similarity of various emotions. And some individuals are more aware of this kind of emotional complexity than others.[6]

Emotional Progressions

Emotions by their nature change, develop, and progress. They are usually not static; instead, they follow a certain course as the feeling lessens or intensifies. This knowledge of emotional changes, and of their rules, represents a sophisticated understanding of emotion systems.

We can perform another type of emotional simulation (or what-if), whereby we predict the emotional future. Take a person who feels a certain way because of a given event. Because emotions arise from certain causes, if the cause of that emotion continues and intensifies, we should be able to predict how the person’s feelings will change. For example, if you are feeling content, and the feeling grows, you will next feel happy.

[1]See, for example, Ekman, P., and Davidson, R. J. The Nature of Emotions: Fundamental Questions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 (especially the first chapter). But for an opposing point of view, see Ortony, A., and Turner, T. J. “What’s Basic About Basic Emotions?” Psychological Review, 1990, 97, 315–331.

[2]Some years ago, Ekman modified his views regarding basic emotions, but he continues to argue that certain emotions appear to be experienced universally.

[3]Plutchik, R. The Psychology and Biology of Emotion. New York: Harper-Collins, 1994.

[4]See also, Izard, C. E. The Psychology of Emotions. New York: Plenum, 1991; Tomkins, S. S. Affect, Imagery, and Consciousness: The Positive Affects. New York: Springer, 1962; Tomkins, S. S. Affect, Imagery, and Consciousness: The Negative Affects. New York: Springer, 1963.

[5]For detailed discussions of this idea, see the contributions to Scherer, K. S., Schorr, A., and Johnstone, T. (eds.), Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, and Research. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

[6]Lisa Feldman Barrett calls this emotional granularity. See, for example, Barrett, L. F., and Fossum, T. “Mental Representations of Affect Knowledge.” Cognition and Emotion, 2001, 15, 333–363.