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The Reload with Sean Hansen
The Reload with Sean Hansen
Elevate Your Leadership through Emotional Literacy - 217
Unlock the secrets of emotional literacy and transform your leadership style with insights from my years as a performance coach. Ever wondered why some leaders excel in logical thinking but stumble when it comes to emotional awareness? Discover how enhancing your emotional literacy can empower you to manage stress, build stronger teams, and achieve collective goals with ease. Through candid insights and a sprinkle of humor, this episode promises to equip you with the tools to manage yourself effectively and avoid the pitfalls of emotional ignorance.
Embrace the journey towards becoming an emotionally literate leader who can accurately identify and label emotions. Explore the common confusion between emotions and analytical thoughts, a mix-up that can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. With a focus on corporate executives and leaders, this episode sheds light on the importance of fostering curiosity and understanding over emotional reactivity, enhancing both personal and professional dynamics. Dive into the complexities of maintaining team alignment and learn how a nuanced understanding of emotions can elevate your leadership skills.
Immerse yourself in the world of emotions using tools like Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions, and learn how to interpret the wide spectrum of emotional experiences. Hear how recognizing both positive and negative emotions can lead to personal growth and more effective leadership. We'll guide you in identifying emotional triggers and mastering emotional responses, ultimately cultivating environments that naturally inspire positive emotions. This exploration into emotional intelligence encourages you to experience profound emotions daily, fostering a richer and more connected existence.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. All right, today is going to be mostly off the cuff, so I was driving around the other day and was reflecting on some of the common themes that I've seen with all of my clients and by that I mean over the last what eight years or so and there seems to be this common pattern of emotional illiteracy. Illiteracy, yes, a lack of emotional literacy, and, at the risk of this being one of my least downloaded episodes ever, I thought it'd be useful to actually dive into this topic of emotional literacy. Who happen to be generally very logical, very cerebral, very IQ-driven sort of neck-up kind of people who typically, if they have a plan B in terms of decision-making how they interact with the world, they're going to be looking to their intuition and then, last and certainly least, in their mind, their heart, their emotions Ah gosh, do we really have to go here? I'm afraid we do. Okay, so when we speak about emotional literacy, I think it's useful to frame the conversation and, as always, you are more than welcome to speed up the playback speed to whatever speed makes me sound more intelligent than I probably am. But I do recognize given that I do not script my shows, I speak only from bullet points that sometimes my brain is not moving as fast as my mouth. So feel free to speed up the playback.
Speaker 1:Now, to frame this conversation, what do we benefit from looking at? I would say that we benefit from trying to understand what is the first and primary responsibility of a leader or manager, anyone who is attempting to create some sense of teamwork and to foster a joint or communal effort to achieve some mutual goal, some collective goal that's out there in the future, somewhere, not yet achieved, obviously. Is it to create a strong team? Or perhaps to create a clear mission and values? Or perhaps it's to create cohesive culture, and this list is never-ending. And all of those things that I did mention are wonderful and I would say that they do go into the job description of being a leader.
Speaker 1:However, I would submit for your rumination, your contemplation, your analysis that first and primary is to manage oneself. Manage oneself. If you are an individual who solely wants to be an inventor, let's say, or, in modern parlance, a founder, you just want to be the person who came up with the idea, and then you're willing to hand it off to somebody else to turn it into an operationalized and, in some cases, commercialized concept, well then, maybe this doesn't apply to you, in which case feel free to turn this off. Feel free to turn this off, but if you are the individual who is a founder, had the great idea and then went one step further and said you know what, actually, I think I might be able to do this, I might be able to create something around this idea, whether it's a company for profit, whether it's a non-profit organization, whatever. If you're the person who is thinking that I want to advance this concept into some sort of marketplace, then managing oneself, I believe, comes first and primary. Now, why am I saying that? Because aren't first and primary synonyms? Don't they mean the same thing? Well, the distinction that I'm making, in my mind at least and that might be a murky place indeed is first in terms of yes, I want to make sure that, in the long list of things that I have on my plate that I'm going to continue to do this first, every day this shows up first I don't get to take a break from managing myself and then primary in terms of its importance. So it's not only a sequential thing, but it is also a matter of importance, and if you would like to argue me on that, argue with me. Thank you with me on that, you're welcome to.
Speaker 1:Obviously, one of the things that I have noticed across my clientele is that when they put managing themselves on the back burner, it is not a long period of time before trouble shows up, whether that's interpersonally with folks on their team, whether that is interpersonally with members of the board, key investors, key suppliers, key whatever, or alternatively, it can show up physically. I've already mentioned how I have a number of clients that have had heart attacks early in life because of, in large part, a failure to manage their own health, their own well-being, and some of that was physical and some of that was mental-emotional, where they were allowing their stress to get the better of them. So it's a big deal, I would say. Now, if we look at this notion of managing oneself, this, my dear friends, is where the concept of emotional literacy comes forward. We're not even talking about the concept of emotional awareness at this point. No, no, no, no, my friends, we are taking a step way back to the fundamentals. Why is that?
Speaker 1:Well, and I'm going to try not to sound like too big of a dick here, but if I'm speaking bluntly, most of my clients have piss poor emotional literacy. If I had to use one word, I would say crap. If I had to use two words, I would say crap twice. Hopefully you got a little bit of a laugh at that. I am trying to infuse a little bit of humor here.
Speaker 1:So when we look at their lack of emotional literacy, I don't believe that it is their fault and if you've listened to my episodes on fault versus responsibility, you'll know that I find fault to be a very limited concept in terms of how applicable or useful it is in any context. Really, fault is so retrospective and while it can feel in the moment somewhat, I don't know, redeeming or emotionally cathartic in order to pin blame on someone else or, in some cases, pin it on ourselves, if we happen to be the masochistic type which many of my clients are. But ultimately, I want people to be looking at responsibility. So if you are an executive listening to this and most of the people that do listen to the show are executives and you begin to wonder, hmm, how is my emotional literacy? And if you come to a determination that it's poor or crap, as I said earlier, that's not your fault.
Speaker 1:Why is it not your fault? Well, generally nobody, no parent. Well, I shouldn't say no. There are very few parents and even fewer schools that explicitly teach and train children to be emotionally literate. So it is not your fault if you are not emotionally literate. So it is not your fault if you are not emotionally literate, but it is your responsibility to become emotionally literate. And the reason that I really enjoy trying to help people focus on responsibility versus fault is responsibility is prospective. Responsibility is a place of ownership, blame is typically a place of assigning right. There's even that phrase we assign blame. It's like, yeah, get it off me, I'll put it on you. But then we take or we own responsibility and it helps us zero in on and set our sights on what needs to be different in order for this to be better tomorrow. So it is prospective. So it's not your fault if you are not emotionally literate, but it is your responsibility to become emotionally literate, literate. So when we speak about emotional literacy, what do we even mean? Okay, thank you for that segue.
Speaker 1:As is so often the case, I love going to the dictionary. Which dictionary Probably doesn't really matter? The one that I go to, merriam-webster. Why? It was the first thing on the interwebs, the first time I did this. So, in an attempt to be consistent, I go to the same place. So here we are. Now looking at the term.
Speaker 1:Literate can be both noun or adjective, yay, and when we look at it, the first definition as an adjective is educated, cultured, and believe it or not, believe this or not, the way that they give greater context for that definition is literate executives, I cannot make this up. Oh my God, we're having so much fun today, all right, anyway. So, educated, cultured, also able to read and write, also versed in literature or creative writing, also lucid or polished. And lastly, as an adjective, having knowledge or competence. All right. So when we look at that, we want to be able to have knowledge and competence. We want to be educated about emotion, why? Why does it matter?
Speaker 1:Well, interestingly enough, when I ask clients what they feel, I would argue that 90, a little over 90% of the time. So almost always, they tell me an analysis, I feel that, and then all of a sudden, the analysis shows up, which tells me that they're not connected to what they're feeling, they're connected to what they're thinking, they're connected to a narrative. And so then I say, well, that's not a feeling. Ah okay, thank you for a feeling. Ah okay, thank you for clarifying. Thanks, sean, appreciate that. All right, let's try it again. All right, cool, well, I feel that you're doing the same exact thing. I mean, this is literally how these conversations go. I am not making this up, and I think that the reason that I'm bringing that up is because I think that it is demonstrative of the whole.
Speaker 1:In our education, I don't think they even begin to understand how to name the emotion they feel, except for very, very high-level broad strokes, category titles, anger, sadness, joy. And again, it's not their fault. Nobody has trained them to identify and to distinguish between emotions. You might think, well, okay, what does it matter? I mean, I've got a lot of stuff to do, sean. Why do I then also have to develop a competency in labeling correctly my emotions? Well, you are just asking amazing questions today. Thank you very much, doing a good job. I appreciate you Well. Part of the reason why it's important to be able to correctly name our emotions is because when we correctly name what is actually inside of us, what we are actually feeling, then we can create an appropriate response to deal with that emotion.
Speaker 1:Anger and sadness are not treated the same way. I know this is like groundbreaking news, right? But so frequently I have clients who are confused about what they are actually feeling and then when they attempt to resolve the feeling that is making them uncomfortable which is like a whole separate topic about being uncomfortable with our emotions, but for now, let's just suffice it to say that they are attempting to do something about the emotion that they don't like, which desire is in and of itself, an emotion. So they end up in this place where they don't understand that they are dealing with I don't know. Just for the sake of example, let's say it's annoyance and that that fits in the anger family, and how do we deal with annoyance versus dealing with confusion?
Speaker 1:Things start to get trickier when we start to be in a place of confusion, and many people, when there is a disconnect right, that is a very corporate term that often gets thrown around oh, there's a disconnect here or we're misaligned, and very often it's the one that's in power that's saying that to the person that is subordinate and the real message is you better figure out how to get on my program. Now that is also a separate topic about whether teams really truly run most effectively in that manner. Some people would say yes, other people would say no. I would say probably it depends on the circumstances and the makeup of the you know. Blah, blah, blah Anyways. So back on track. Properly label something or to properly identify something allows us to then put corrective measures in place more effectively than if you were stumbling around having misidentified the root cause or the root issue. Hopefully that is not overly controversial issue. Hopefully that is not overly controversial.
Speaker 1:Now, the way that some of these gaps have shown up in the clientele that I work with and if you are new to the show, I work predominantly with corporate executives. Sometimes I do work with special operations, combat veterans, because that's part of my background, and then, of course, I also do some work with entrepreneurs, but generally they're also in a position of leadership. So, anyway, the way that I've seen it show up, with really, really smart people who are very talented is, there are certain gaps in how they end up leading. Oftentimes, if we go back to that notion of being confused about something or sensing that there's some sort of misalignment, it often invokes this emotional reactivity or volatility instead of being actually curious about why it is that somebody who is on our team right? This is the the fascinating part for me as a coach is that often there are these big blowups that happen with an individual that you hired, and that you ostensibly hired because they had a resume that met the goals for this role that you had in mind, and that you thought, oh wow, this person really has a lot of attributes.
Speaker 1:And if we want to go even further, there's often a lot of arguments happening with one's partner, like romantic partner, who I'm assuming also went through some sort of selection process, not like a formal hiring process, obviously, but like dating, because most of my clients are married and it's like well, how did this person get into your life If you're going to start now treating them as though they're idiots who can't possibly put an intelligent thought out into the world, when in reality what's happening under the hood, so to speak, is that the client has become emotionally volatile because they are confused about something and instead of tapping into curiosity, they are tapping into irritation. Those are different emotional families, they carry out in different ways and the response that they elicit from the other person are also vastly different. So it can become quite relevant and quite practical to understand emotional literacy and to be able to recognize oh, am I showing curiosity right now? And just so we're clear, because I've had clients do this, they sometimes tap into an artificial curiosity that is actually truly in the anger family and that is something to the effect of I don't know how you could be this stupid. Well, okay, that's kind of curious, I guess, but not really the curiosity. It's not genuine curiosity. We're not actually connected with the other person and really truly interested in trying to understand their perspective, especially when we disagree with that perspective.
Speaker 1:Now you might say well, who would ever say something like that? I mean, that's very unprofessional and very egregious. Well, people say all kinds of crazy things when they're stressed out, and a lot of my leadership clients. They don't sleep a lot, their nutrition is often off, their exercise is often non-existent and they very frequently are very cranky people Not with me so much, thankfully. And if you're one of my clients listening to this. This is not an invitation to all of a sudden become a cranky person with me, but there are certain factors in play that cause my clients to show up in a grumpy and less than collegial way. And so part of managing oneself is also that physical component. How do we take care of the body so that the mind is equipped, I guess, as best as possible to flourish and to render good decisions and good analyses, et cetera, et cetera?
Speaker 1:Now, another aspect of emotional literacy right, there's this phrase that I heard once. You have to name it to tame it. And again, if we look at this sense of uncertainty and how it inspires so much angst and what's funny is that angst, you know, as we say it in English, american English angst well, there's a German word, angst, and that is actually where we get the American English word angst. Angst from German is fear, and very often, when we're confronting uncertainty, we as human beings this is not any one particular demographic, but human beings we tap into fear when we are faced with uncertainty, and so being able to name our emotions helps us in our own internal struggle with doubt, with uncertainty.
Speaker 1:Now, especially in positions of leadership, we don't have all the answers, we don't have all the data, and yet we are still expected to move forward or, in military parlance, to pull the trigger to commit the bullet to, to going downrange. And that's part of what creates the sense of consequence Once you pull the trigger, that bullet is leaving and it is on its flight path and it will go where you pointed it. And especially when I work with new CEOs, this is especially relevant here, especially relevant here. They had no idea previously how much putting on the CEO title would connect them and everyone around them with this ever-present awareness or observation. Ceos, more than anybody else, are constantly under scrutiny. Sometimes that scrutiny is positive in terms of getting affirmation and validation and kudos and et cetera, et cetera, and very often that scrutiny or that observation feels heavy. There's a lot of retrospective judgment, there's a lot of prospective skepticism and in many ways, being in that CEO role is a very thankless job and it does come with a lot of pressure, and that pressure gets worse when we don't know how to name our emotions.
Speaker 1:So hopefully, up until this point in the conversation, I've convinced you, or at least maybe not convinced you, but at least opened your mind to the possibility that emotional literacy and again we're not even talking about emotional awareness yet Emotional literacy and again we're not even talking about emotional awareness yet In case you're wondering what that means emotional awareness is actually being able in real time, especially if you are being triggered by something, to be able to recognize. Ah, I am currently, right now, feeling dot, dot, dot and having the appropriate label to put in there. That's a separate skill and I would say that that is a more difficult skill to acquire. So, hopefully, this notion of emotional literacy, you've begun to at least open your mind to the prospect that this is something important and this is something worth working on. How do we go about working on it? I'm very glad that you asked that, and, if I can get my web page up here real quick, one place that you can go to is www.6, number six, not spelled out, sixsecondsorg. Oh my gosh. Nevermind, the rest of the link sucks. So, anyways, google instead.
Speaker 1:Six seconds, emotion wheel, and that is going to take you to Plutchik's wheel of emotions. And there is an entire article written by the fine folks at Six Seconds who also offer assessments, by the way, in case you ever want to get one done on yourself. And additionally, there are YouTube videos galore to help understand the relevance and the importance of mastering one's emotions and what impact that can have on performance. Yes, ultimately I am a performance mindset coach. I happen to do that work with executives for the most part and I unlike many, I guess, executive coaches I tend to believe that there is a lot of merit coaching at the intersection between heart and soul and traditional leadership, performance issues. And it's that, looking at that intersection of where those domains cross, that we begin to really truly recognize some of the obstacles that we've inherited from early on in our lives and that are playing out in a contemporary fashion in the way that we lead. That's my shtick.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, if you go over to six seconds, plutchik's and that's P-L-U-T-C-H-I-K for Dr Robert Plutchik, who is a psychologist, and he came out with this graphic representation of eight basic emotions joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger and disgust. Oh, disgust. Anyways, the nice thing about emotion wheels and you don't actually have to go to six seconds just type in emotion wheel and you will be bombarded with imagery. Find one that you like, for whatever reason, print it out and look at it and there are words on there where you're like huh, I'm not really sure what that means. Look it up, it is not difficult. It's time consuming, I will give you that, but it's not difficult.
Speaker 1:Part of the reason why I go to the dictionary so frequently and I know my regular listeners are probably like oh my god, why do you keep talking about this? Because we get new listeners and they don't know, so I have to explain it to them is that our words form the boundaries of our understanding, and until we are able to express a concept and have a meaningful definition of what that concept represents, then it's very difficult for us to actually achieve mastery. We don't have a clear taxonomy in mind about the way sixsecondsorg has organized its representation of Plutchik's emotion wheel is that if you tap on any one of these emotions, then it will also give up amplifying information, as in how can I use my feelings to improve my performance or what else might I be feeling here? Because there are certain observations about, you know, emotions that are often paired together or, conversely, emotions that are often in contrast with one another. So it's not necessarily that the butterflies that you feel in your stomach may be nervousness or it might be excitement. How do you distinguish? What process do you go through to begin to ask yourself huh, is this a thing that should make me smile or is this a thing that should make me frown? Do I want to move towards this or do I want to move away from this?
Speaker 1:And so the wheel that's represented on the Six Seconds website, which was originally founded by Dr Plitchik, helps you better organize your understanding of how emotions travel together or stand in opposition to one another. Can one be excited and fearful at the same time? Yes, it's crazy, crazy, crazy. Humans do crazy stuff all the time, even the most rational data-driven individuals out there. You know it's funny and I've mentioned this on multiple podcasts, but I'm gonna mention it again because it is worth repeating.
Speaker 1:Most of my clients pride themselves on being very logical, analytical, data-driven people, and when I push them on that, they say, well, I don't want to be one of those touchy-feely kind of volatile, emotional people. And it's like, well, you just told me about what you want. And again, if you were listening a few moments ago, desire is also an emotion. So what we do in life is rooted in emotion. And even the individuals who say, well, no, I make purely rational decisions. You think you make purely rational decisions, and it's usually not until we get deeper into the coaching that some of the inconsistencies begin to pop out.
Speaker 1:And what could create that? Some of it is emotion, and some of that emotion is rooted in conditioning that we received when we were little. And again, it's not your fault, but it is your work. It is your responsibility to identify it and to overcome whatever limits have been placed upon you. Whether you tap into the fear family, or whether you tap into the anger family as a default, or whether maybe you shut down, you go into sadness, that doesn't matter. It's in the discovery process that we begin to learn. Okay, this is how I responded to the stressors and the traumas and the micro traumas and the conditioning that I received, when I was not at full strength, let's say. But now, as an adult, it is my responsibility to identify it and resolve it, to close that gap. So looking at an emotions wheel is tremendously illuminating and educational and it provides us with a working framework to be able to say oh huh, interesting.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize this part about myself. How does it show up? Where does it show up? Is there one person with whom I particularly struggle? Here's an inside tip for you. Look at the people that are closest to you. Yes, yes, yes, they tend to push the buttons the most, but recognize that it's your button that's being pushed so you can take ownership of it. And I know that sounds simple, but it's not easy, and I know this because I have my own struggles with this. I have my own ways where things from my own childhood, things that I've interpreted throughout my life, have created certain filters or lenses through which I look. And where is it that I am receiving criticism where none exists, but I am interpreting the input or the stimulus as criticism, as just one example.
Speaker 1:So homework, right, download any emotion wheel out there, take a look at it and just spend a few minutes with it. You know you don't need to do like a full day workshop on this or anything. Just spend a few minutes and try to really truly recall when you were connected to that emotion. And if it's been a while, maybe you're not really seeing it or maybe you don't fully understand it. In which case, look up the definition and then try again. Okay, where did I have I been pensive? Where have I been pensive? Where have I been pensive?
Speaker 1:And one thing I will say is the emotion wheel on the sixsecondsorg website is not as comprehensive as some of the ones that are out there. So you know I would if it was me, and I've done this, so I'm speaking from first person experience. I will look at the six-seconds emotions wheel and then I will also look at other emotion wheels that have a greater diversity of emotional terms, and there are things on there that I was like gosh, I don't know what this means. I mean, I have a sense but I don't really know what it means. And so I look it up it's not a big deal and then I try, like I said before, to figure out where I have tapped into that in my life, and especially if we look at the quote unquote good emotions, maybe there are ones that I haven't felt in a long time. Hmm, okay, that would be fun homework.
Speaker 1:What do I need to do in order to put myself in an environment or a set of circumstances that would likely trigger some positive emotion? Ecstasy, without actually doing ecstasy? Ha, a subtle difference there. Where do you feel joy? Where do you feel trust? Where have you felt inspired? Where have you felt awe, real powerful awe?
Speaker 1:Most adults have trained themselves out of feeling awe A-W-E, of feeling awe A-W-E. And that's sad, because awe is such a powerful and uplifting emotion. It has this unique quality of simultaneously allowing us to feel small and insignificant, but that it's okay and that we're wrapped up in something bigger anyway. And that it's okay, and that we're wrapped up in something bigger anyway, and that it's fine not just fine as in like it's fine, but that it is genuinely okay, that you're safe, you're good to be in awe of something. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, hopefully you enjoy this, hopefully it is helpful and give it a shot. I mean, what's the worst that's going to happen? You're going to become more knowledgeable, more literate, and you might be able to work through some sort of conflict or tension much more quickly because you can recognize oh, right, now I'm feeling a mix of confusion, annoyance and, potentially, surprise. Right, surprise is going to be a tricky one, right? Because if it's a good surprise, then okay, it can go well. But if it's a bad surprise, like oh no, don't tell the boss, like bad surprises, don't go well. Anyway, I'm beating a dead horse. If you did like this episode, I would love it if you would. You know internet stuff like subscribe, follow, share, blah, blah, blah or don't, it's totally up to you.
