Emotional Intelligence

Today I finished my two day training course on Emotional Intelligence, a required course at work.

I had heard a bit about this before: various teachers I know had talked about it. The result of incorporating into schools seems to involve making sure kids aren't held accountable for anything so they don't get their feelings hurt. I can See where the principles behind EI can lead to that. If the people don't get it, it can get way misinterpreted.

It boils down to "Know Thyself". If you know what you react to and how you react, you can correct any negative reactions. I'm overgeneralizing of course.

A couple years back I did that sort of thing: took a good, hard look at my life and who I was, and what I needed to change. Overall the exercise was a success (still more work) but I did it strictly on the fly: no self-help books for me.

One thing that we did was one of those self-assessments. Turns out I am an "Amiable-Analytic". Amiable meaning I like to make sure everyone gets along (peacemaker) and very, very defensive of my peer group (geeks). Analytic of course is very logical, studied, thinks things through, sticks to the facts etc.

So really the Amiable was a bit of a surprise, but like I said I've been working on things.

The big revelation was part of the test profiles you in stress situations. I went from Amiable-Analytic to Driver-Analytic. A Driver is a type that is task driven, charges ahead and generally damns the torpedoes. That was the category I was dead last in the "normal" situations.

That actually explains a lot.

A lot was made at my previous job on my "leadership abilities" which I really didn't agree with. yeah I'm a nice guy and get along with people but leadership? Nah, too much work. But again and again I found myself in charge principally because nobody else would. This led to me telling a variety of managers, a couple of directors and a vice-president to "Lead or get the hell out of my way". I'm actually amazed (still) that it actually worked (on most occasions).

It probably also also led to the comment that when in a crisis, people in my way feel like they have been ravaged by a bunny rabbit.