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FIGURE 2.1 Continued AREA OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE DEFINITION COMPETENCIES • Goal orientation: Setting goals for oneself and living and working toward goals • Optimism: Having a tendency to look at the bright side of things and to be hopeful for the best • Flexibility: The ability to adapt and bend to the needs of others or situations as appropriate Mastery of Purpose and Vision Ability to bring authenticity to one’s life and live out one’s intentions and values • Understanding one’s purpose and values: Having a clearly defined purpose and values • Taking actions toward one’s purpose: Taking actions to advance one’s purpose • Authenticity: Alignment and transparency of one’s motives, actions, intentions, values, and purpose Endnote 1. Adele Lynn, The EQ Difference (New York: Amacom, 2005). 14 THE EQ INTERVIEW CHAPTER 3 Self-Awareness Self-Awareness Inward Inward Outward Competency 1—Impact on Others Competency 2—Emotion and Inner Awareness Competency 3—Accurate Assessment of Skills and Abilities 15 S elf-awareness is the ability to fully understand oneself and one’s impact on others and to use that information to manage emotions productively. It includes three competencies: 1. Impact on others, which is an accurate understanding of how one’s behavior or words affect others; 2. Emotional and inner awareness, which is an accurate understanding of how one’s emotions and thoughts affect one’s behaviors; and 3. Accurate assessment of skills and abilities, which is an accurate as- sessment of your strengths and weaknesses. Understanding how one’s emotions and thoughts affect one’s behavior, and then understanding how one’s behavior impacts one’s teammates, peers, customers, vendors, and most other members of the human race, are critical and fundamental skills in emotional intelligence. When one understands the direct relationship between how one behaves and how others react, this breakthrough connection enhances one’s ability to get along with others and achieve results. This revelation is at the heart of self-awareness. It is also at the center of many workplace values such as teamwork, customer service, and respect. But these values aren’t just nice words that appear on the company values list. They are central to getting work done and building organizations and businesses. Competency 1: Impact on Others Consider the sales representative who has no idea that he just insulted a customer by directing her to a “more affordable” alternative. The customer felt insulted by the way the salesperson communicated. The sales representative said, “Well, you’d probably be better suited to our lower-price brand.” The customer felt that the salesperson judged her ability to pay and felt that he was demeaning. The customer quietly left the store to find another place to spend her money. The sales representative’s intentions were in fact to help the customer find the most affordable alternative. As consumers, we’ve all suffered these little insults. However, now research clearly links the emotional intelligence competency of self-awareness to sales performance. The research 16 THE EQ INTERVIEW states that salespeople’s performance is enhanced with emotional intelligence competencies such as self-awareness.1 Another painfully unaware individual, a physician, interrupted as the patient talked, thus missing an important symptom that the patient was about to reveal. In fact, statistics suggest that patients have only twelve seconds to speak before the physician interrupts.2 Of course, the physician probably meant well. Perhaps the mounting pressures of a waiting room full of patients led to the physician’s impatience. In another example, an IT help person waltzed into an executive’s office to offer tech support on a computer problem. The IT employee said nothing; instead, after a quick inspection of the problem, he shook his head and sighed. Then his fingers flew across the keyboard as he implemented a quick fix of the problem. The executive said that the tech’s dismissive attitude insulted him. The tech saw this problem as a waste of his time that could have been avoided if others on his team had installed the software correctly. He wondered what he could do to avoid this problem in the future. The executive, however, read his behavior as curt and dismissive. Yet another employee complained to the manager that a coworker routinely made comments about her in front of others that she found insulting. The coworker said she’s just teasing and suggested that the employee was too thin-skinned. In fact, the coworker said she really likes the employee and thought that these little barbs kept everyone laughing and having a good time. A common morale complaint lodged against some leaders is that they often don’t say good morning. Employees criticize these leaders as lacking common courtesy and respect and setting a sour tone in the workplace. The leaders who are guilty of this infraction don’t even realize that the employees feel snubbed. All of these examples of lack of self-awareness create costs in terms of productivity and profit. In the case of health care, lack of self-awareness can also cost lives. You’ll notice that the examples cut across industries, job function, and education levels. You’ll notice, too, that in each of these examples, the perpetrator did not have bad intentions. In each case, the person responsible for the action was either preoccupied or even trying to be helpful. In fact, we find that most persons who behave in a manner that others find disturbing actually have SELF-AWARENESS 17 good intentions. They simply are blind to how their behaviors are impacting those around them. Awareness of how our behaviors and moods affect others is a universal EQ competency that all hiring managers and interviewers should include in their interview strategy. No matter what the job, the hiring manager or interviewer should craft questions that will give some indication of a potential applicant’s understanding of his impact on others. It’s also valuable for the interviewer or hiring manager to gain information with questions aimed at assessing the candidate’s observation skills. Assessing whether a candidate can astutely observe herself and the impact she has on others allows the candidate to monitor her behavior. It also gives the interviewer information as to whether the candidate can read nonverbal cues and other signals and adapt her behavior accordingly. A study published in the IT Managers Journal found that IT professionals who had the ability to read nonverbal cues and adapt accordingly displayed better problem awareness, solution generation, and decision making.3 A study of certified public accountants found that those who were able to read and respond to nonverbal cues were able to build more trusting relationships and to attract high-net-worth clients.4 Questions to Assess Impact on Others Q: Tell me about a time when you did or said something and it had a positive impact on a coworker, a customer, or an employee. Q: Tell me about a time when you did or said something and it had a negative impact on a coworker, a customer, or an employee. Q: Tell me about a time when you were surprised about the positive impact your behavior or words had on a coworker, a customer, or an employee. How did you learn this information? • What did you do when you learned this information? Q: 18 Tell me about a time when you were surprised about the negative impact your behavior or words had on a coworker, a customer, or an employee. THE EQ INTERVIEW • How did you learn this information? • What did you do when you learned this information? Q: Describe a time when you knew you did or said something that caused a problem for a coworker, a customer, or an employee. • How did you know it caused a problem? Q: Can you think of a time when someone interpreted something you said or did in a negative way, even though you didn’t intend for it to be negative? • Tell me about that. Q: How do you know if your words or behaviors have a positive impact on others? Q: How do you know if your words or behaviors have a negative impact on others? Questions to Assess Observation Skills Q: Have you ever noticed that someone at work was having a bad day? • How did you know? • What did you do? Q: Have you ever decided to delay presenting an idea to someone at work because the timing wasn’t right? • What did you base that decision on? • What did you do? Q: Have you ever noticed that you were annoying someone at work? • What did you base that on? • What did you do? Q: Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you needed to adjust or modify your behavior? • How did you know? SELF-AWARENESS 19 KEY POINTS TO CONSIDER WHEN ASSESSING ANSWERS Most candidates should be able to come up with an example of something they did that caused concern for others. Watch for how they incorporated this awareness into future encounters. One candidate, surprised when his boss told him that he interrupted his customers, said that he didn’t believe his boss and that his boss didn’t know enough about him to make that statement. Without realizing it, the candidate proved his boss’s point when he interrupted the interviewer as the interviewer asked a clarifying question. Emotional intelligence requires a person to be aware of and to read cues in different situations and then adapt accordingly. This kind of adaptability to the environment ensures success. The questions listed above give you important information about a person’s awareness of these types of cues. You also learn how the person adjusts his behavior according to the cues he reads. Because a person may be reluctant to admit that he may at times annoy others, the interviewer may need to introduce the question with a comment such as, “Everyone can be annoying at some time. Would you tell me about a time when you annoyed someone at work?” As the interviewer, you can help the candidate feel at ease so that you can extract the most honest answers from the interview. Competency 2: Emotional and Inner Awareness Self-awareness must incorporate an accurate understanding of one’s emotions and the impact that one’s emotions have on performance. Athletes, performers, and others talk about being “on.” But the concept of being “on” applies to all of us. If we’re distracted, angry, fearful, depressed, or preoccupied, it can affect performance. It can also affect our relationships with others, including coworkers, peers, and customers at work. So self-awareness includes an awareness of our emotions and moods and an understanding of how those impact our performance. For example, the customer service representative who feels insulted by the customer on the telephone may respond differently to that customer than to a customer she considers to be pleasant and mild tempered. Yet, the customer service representative’s job remains the same—to resolve the problem or situation. The customer service worker’s feelings may define her behavior or performance in 20 THE EQ INTERVIEW these interactions. Likewise, if a team member feels that her ideas are less useful than the ideas of her teammates, these feelings of selfdoubt may cause her to be silent with her opinions. These feelings of self-doubt drive her behavior or performance. A basic understanding of emotions and how they affect performance forms a strong foundation of self-awareness. Because emotions often surface in our internal self-talk, awareness of our internal self-talk helps bolster self-awareness. Self-defeating self-talk may cause us to experience strong self-defeating emotions such as resentment, hostility, anxiety, depression, and the like.5 These emotions can affect relationships and performance at work, especially if they are not acknowledged and resolved. During the interview process, the interviewer should ask questions to establish the candidate’s awareness that emotions may interfere with desired behavior or results. Triggers influence emotional reactions. Everyone has triggers. For some, walking into a messy workplace causes an instant flash of anger. For others, feeling ignored by a coworker produces an emotional reaction. People who exhibit strong self-awareness understand these triggers and the state of mind, situations, and other factors that are apt to foreshadow certain negative behaviors. When a person understands himself, he is better able to exercise restraint or control in his reactions. Interviewers and hiring managers who include questions on triggers gain insight into a candidate’s self-knowledge that proves useful in interactions with customers or coworkers. How we reflect on our past behavior also conveys important data. For example, if someone criticizes our behavior, how do we reflect on this criticism? Do we defend our actions? Do we put down the source? Or do we take the criticism and determine its usefulness? If we take the comment in and evaluate its usefulness, this can lead to improved self-awareness.6 However, common errors often creep into our reflections. These common errors stop us from examining our own behavior. If we defend our behavior, blame others, justify, or rationalize, then it’s doubtful that we’ll be able to use these past experiences to change or grow. In a study of the impact of behavior that others found offensive, individuals who perpetrated the behavior had certain thought patterns as they were asked to reflect on their actions. Those thought patterns included (1) denying responsibility and instead blaming the situation on circumstances, (2) denying the signif- SELF-AWARENESS 21 icance of the action by minimizing the impact on the other person, (3) stating that the victim brought on the action by some sort of behavior on the victim’s part, and (4) stating that they (the perpetrators) are not alone and that many others have engaged in the sort of behavior that they engaged in. On the contrary, when these same individuals were the victims of similar behaviors, they had a much higher sense of injustice than when they were the perpetrators of such behaviors.7 These common reflection errors do little to mitigate the recurrence of negative behavior. However, if we reflect on our experiences and ask ourselves how we could have avoided or improved the situation, then the chances of changing behavior increase. It’s important to assess how a candidate uses reflection about past experiences. Introspection and mindfulness produce positive clinical results in changing behavior and have important implications for emotional intelligence.8 In addition, self-reflection is the key to self-fulfillment. Nothing is more valuable than deepening your sense of who you are.9 In fact, just about all of the questions in this book will help you to understand how candidates use reflection and whether or not their reflection is riddled with the common errors listed above. Questions to Assess Awareness of Emotions or Thoughts Q: Tell me about a time when you were distracted or preoccupied about something. • How did you know? • What impact did that have on your performance? • What impact did it have on others at work? Q: Tell me about a time when you were in a good mood at work. • How did that affect your performance? • What impact did your mood have on others at work? Q: Describe a time when you were angry about something at work. • How did that affect your performance? • What impact did it have on others at work? 22 THE EQ INTERVIEW Q: Tell me about a time when the mood or attitude of your coworkers, employees, or others affected you. Q: Describe a time when you were aware that your mood was affecting how you were behaving at work. Questions to Assess Awareness of Triggers Q: Tell me about some situations or people that annoy you in your present (or previous) position. • Tell me what you do about these situations or people. Q: Tell me about a time when you were able to avoid a negative situation at work. • How did you know it was going to be negative? • Tell me what you did. Q: Describe some situations or circumstances that bring out your best at work. • How do you behave during those times? Q: Describe some situations or circumstances that bring out your worst at work. • How do you behave during those times? • What do you do about those times? Q: Tell me about a time when you purposely prepared yourself to deal with a situation that you knew would be negative. • What did you do? How did it work out? Questions to Assess Reflection Skills Q: Tell me about a time when something that you had responsibility for at work didn’t go well. Who’s fault was it? (This is a leading question—it’s assuming blame. The candidate should consider his or her own role in the problem.) SELF-AWARENESS 23