Emotional Intelligence in a Digital world event report

Lysa Morrison, of Cintra HR and Payroll Services, gave a presentation on the topic of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ in Derby on July 23rd 2019 to a roomful of APM Midlands Branch followers.

Lysa started her presentation by asking ‘what is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?’ and explaining it using the following changes in the way we work:

• Cognition & Learning – don’t learn in traditional ways
• Change Readiness – open to change
• Increased Diversity – including learning and personality styles
• Ethics & Beliefs – what is right, what is wrong?
• Human-Machine Interaction – must use technology in a way that AI can’t
• Shifting power – change of who is making decisions

Emotional Intelligence also requires a high level of self-motivation, referring to Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ Lysa outlined the importance of knowing ‘what drives you’.

As an introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Lysa explained that the human brain has 2 parts. Firstly, the Limbic system, which provides the immediate fight/flight/freeze reactions and secondly the Pre-frontal cortex, which provides slower, more analytical thinking. (This brought to my mind 2 best-selling books – ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Prof. Steve Peters and ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman).

After Lysa had introduced an interactive exercise for everyone designed to highlight the need for empathy when considering each other’s differences (what time would you arrive at the station to catch a 3pm train?) she continued a discussion of NLP.

Using examples, Lysa described the 4 key principles of NLP, the 4 pillars of ‘the temple’:

In terms of personal language and behaviour preferences, Lysa explained that there are many patterns. As an example, she outlined 3 motivational triggers:

1. Motivational Direction Filter (Away from <-> towards). Using the example of a buying a car, members’ responses were ‘want a car that gets from A to B’, ‘has air-conditioning’, ‘don’t want it to breakdown’. This shows the difference between what someone ‘wants’ (towards) as opposed to what someone ‘doesn’t want’ (away from).
2. Decision Factors filter (Sameness <-> difference) Do you tend to ‘compare’ or ‘contrast’ when looking at relationships of things?
3. Attribution filter (Sort for bad <-> sort for good) Are you a ‘glass half-full’ or ‘half-empty’ kind of person?

Lysa concluded that the main advantage of high emotional intelligence in a digital world is how it helps people work more effectively as a team, recognising each person’s differences.

Adrian Turner, APM Midlands Branch Volunteer.