A Wizard of EI Came A Calling
(A short story)
Jeffrey Abbott
CRS 580 – Creativity Measurements
State University of New York @ Buffalo State
An ordinary office, on an ordinary day, we see a man having a phone conversation with a friend and colleague. This man is not having a good day, week, month, or year of the job. He is not satisfied with his lot in life. He thinks, just if things could be better for him, if people would just give him a chance, that they are holding him back. Listen as we eavesdrop on the current conversation as it unfolds.
“I tell you, Reeves, Mike has it out for me! Everything I do, he has to come off with something I can do better. For once, I would like to know I am doing a good job. After this last presentation, I was about to walk out the door. All I can say is this; they better get my pay up around six figures. After hearing what the director makes, I want to know what he does that he makes 3 times my salary, God Damn it.”
“I don’t know Chris, the way the economy is going, you probably should be thankful you have a job. Besides, I don’t see how your job is all that bad. I mean, what is so bad about it.”
“I could go on for days. Why does my boss constantly correct me? Am I doing that bad of a job? It just sucks. This is almost as bad as when I was in services, they always were squeezing you to do more with less. People there, I understood why they were fearful. They would ask you to work extra hours, but say ‘don’t charge it to the customer’. Then every time we had an all hands meeting, their pitch was how bad the market was and nothing was there for bonuses. It was complete crap.”
“Well you aren’t there now, so why dwell on it? How are things with your new boss?”
“Well, besides the criticism on the last presentation? I don’t know. I have a one on one meeting this Thursday with him. I bet he has some bad news for me about my review. I talked to Dave the other day about his, and he said to not to expect too much. Dave said this department can suck like services did.”
“Alright Chris, I really got to run, the wife and kids made me a special dinner tonight. I might be online from home, later this evening. Talk to you soon.”
Just at this moment Chris’s computer blinks that he has an incoming email message, “Alright man, anyway it is what it is. I will be looking outside if stuff doesn’t change. I will let you be, I just got a late email. I probably will have to be here to clean up someone’s mess. Talk to you soon. Bye.”
Chris hangs up the phone and opens his email. In the email there is the just the subject of “Hello” and a single link to a website within the company intranet. Looking at the “From” line, he sees it is from someone within the company domain, but not someone he knows.
“I bet it is spam” he says, as he clicks the link. His video player begins to load and caches a movie. He is about to close the window when a wizened old man with a purple suit and green pointed hat pops into the video, and says “Chris, wait. Don’t close this video just yet. I have something to show that may change your life!”
Thinking it is one of his colleagues, he looks around. Being after 6:30 PM, most have gone home for the evening. He is about to click on the close button and the old may says, “Now darn it, I said don’t close that window. Don’t you want to know how to make your job more productive and you feel good about doing it?”
“Alright guys, where is the camera? Can you hear me as well? This joke is not funny!”
“This is no joke Chris. I have something to tell you. You have a lot of potential and have a lot of intellect, but you let yourself be hijacked by your emotions. I can help you with that. Now just listen. Can you listen for 5 minutes?”
“Ok, I will humor you for now. But when I find you, I am calling HR. As a practical jokes go, you have too much time on your hands. I thought this was a place of business. How does anyone have time to do stuff outside of work?”
“OK then”
Chris is a little taken back and wide eyed asks, “How the hell did you do that? This is…”
“Now just hold on a minute. I said listen. I want to show you how you handled your situation today with your boss after your presentation from a different perspective. Your perspective is what is getting in the way of your success. You are intelligent, and hard working, however, your emotion controls you, in such a way that thwarts your progress. Have you ever heard of Emotional Intelligence?”
“Not particularly. Listen, I don’t need some damn self-help nut-job with a flare for theatrics…”
BOOM!
Suddenly, a gag appeared over Chris mouth and he was tied to his chair.
“Now just wait a minute and listen. Are you ready to listen?”
“MRRRMM MRRRMM”
“Oh, sorry,” Pulling off the gag.
“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!!?!”
BOOM!
And the gag appeared back on Chris’s mouth.
“Now I said listen, if you cannot, I will leave it in place. Are you ready to listen?”
Chris nods yes.
Removing the gag, the old man asks “Ok then. I know you don’t see what was going here, so I will introduce myself. I am an Emotional Intelligence Wizard. My goal is to help you raise your Emotional Intelligence Quotient. Unlike IQ, EIQ can be more valuable than brains. I know your IQ, it is 140. You are a bright fellow. Do you know your bosses IQ? Of course you don’t. It is actually 125. Lower than yours. I bet that rubs you the wrong way. You know why he does so much better than you? He has a lot more Emotional Intelligence. Thing is, you could be doing just as well for yourself if you listen to me and watch for certain behaviors in yourself. Are you ready to consider what I have to say?”
Looking at the old man like he grew three heads, Chris thought, “If I am crazy, listening won’t hurt to what the old man as to say.”
“Sure, I will listen to your pitch, go on.”
“Alright, a couple of things we should cover”
With a flick of his wrist, there appeared in front of the old man was an easel with some charts on it.
“OK, here I first have a diagram of your brain. In regards to emotional intelligence, you have three parts. The first part is the Neocortex and Cortex, or your logical brain. The next part is the Autonomic portion which controls breathing, heart rate, etc. Last, we have your Limbic brain. This is the part of the brain responsible for flight or fight and emotional scenarios. It is also the center of your emotional hijacking. Got it? Next chart.“
The wizard flicks his wrist again and the chart changes. However in looking at the chart, Chris sees it colored with what looks like crayon drawings of lions and clowns and elephants. Frowning, the wizard flicks his wrist and the chart shows:
The 5 Aspects of Emotional Intelligence: *
1. Mastery of purpose and vision – Ability to bring authenticity to my life and live out my values.
2. Self-awareness – Ability to fully understand myself and use that information to manage both positive and negative emotions productively.
3. Empathy – Ability to understand perspective of others.
4. Social Expertness – Ability to build genuine relationships and bonds and express caring, concern and conflict in healthy ways.
5. Personal Influence – Ability to positively lead and inspire others as well as myself.
“That is better, kids went to the circus last weekend, I guess they got into my charts. Moving on! As you can see in emotional intelligence, there are 5 aspects. Due to my limited time, I am going to focus on Self-awarness for you, since you seem to lack the most in it.”
“I think I am completely self-aware thank you!”
“Oh? Lets look back today at your presentation. Just watch your video on the screen”
The old man sits down to the PC and mutters to himself, “don’t you have the QuickTime plug-in installed. Alright, I will use the Windows Media Version, but man, upgrade your plug-ins.”
The video player finishes caching the video and a scene unfolds, one from earlier in the day with Chris just wrapping up a presentation to the director and a few customers.
As the director escorts the customers out, he turns to Chris’s boss and says “thanks for doing this Mike, Chris, great presentation.”
Chris exclaims, “Thanks you sir, I know I can do better next time. I will practice it more.”
Mike interrupts with a sideways glance at Chris, “Thanks Dave. Please, debrief me when after the customers leave?”
“You got it, talk to you soon.”
After the director leaves, Mike closes the door and looks at Mike and smiles. “Your presentation went well. I can see you have the potential to be very good at doing them and will only get better with practice. My only suggestion would be you come up with script for presentations you are going to give regularly or practice the ones you don’t give regularly before hand. All in all, you did a good job.”
“I am sorry sir. I know I could have done better. I have never been good at presentations or public speaking all my life. I get nervous. This was handed-off to me from Reeves two days ago. If he would have just given me some more notice.”
“No, you did fine. Don’t take it as rebuke, just some coaching”
“Well could you tell me what I did wrong?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, just things could have been done a little differently that might have been more effective. Example, assume they know nothing of the product, so don’t slip into our company lingo unless you have to and explain it when you do. Don’t ever defend the product against something else without being asked about it.”
“I knew that, I guess I don’t know the product that well. I wish Reeves had not gone on vacation before this presentation. I think he should have some responsibility if they don’t purchase.”
At this point, the old man hits the pause button and looks at Chris, “You want to see how you could have better handled this? I am going to tell you anyway. There are 2 concepts I want to share with you. One is called Emotional Triggers. Emotional Triggers are situations that closely resemble a situation in your past that left an emotional memory in your Limbic brain where you either ran, or fought in the situation. This was good 10,000 years ago when a micro second could save you from sudden peril, but today in the business world, it usually leads to unwanted outcomes. This chart here shows you the triggers”
As the wizard waved his hand, the charts fluttered, but remained the same. Looking sheepish, he reaches out and changes the chart by hand.
“I guess I need to practice that one”
The chart on the easel now read:
Emotional Triggers:*
1. Mood
2. Mood and attitude of others
3. Prethinking / Foreshadowing
4. Rumination / Dwelling
5. Personality
6. Hot Words / Hot Buttons that make you angry
7. Perceived criticism
8. Illness / Physical conditions
9. Physical Environment
The wizard looks at Chris and asks, “So, based on these, do you know which triggers to which you succumbed?”
Chris looks at him and shakes no.
“Sigh, they never do. First you started with Perceived criticism, then you moved into Rumination and Dwelling, and then moved into Mood. Do you understand?”
“I think I am starting too.”
“Do you know how you can stop from doing this? First, you need to know where your triggers lie. Think back to the moments that lead up to your emotional hijacking. You exhibited multiple triggers, and usually this contributes to such a hijacking. To help you, here is a list of behaviors, known as the Dirty Dozen of Flawed Rational Thinking that people should be on the lookout for.”
This time, the old man didn’t even attempt to flick his wrist to change the chart, but changed it manually. The new chart contained:
Flawed Rational Thinking (Dirty Dozen):*
1. Needing Approval – “Everyone I work with must approve of me at all times”
2. Making Mistakes - “I must prove that I am thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving at all times.”
3. Changing Others - “I have an obligation to change others who act unfairly or obnoxious.”
4. “Catastrophize” - “When I get very frustrated, treated unfairly, or rejected, I have to view things as awful, terrible, horrible,, and catastrophic.”
5. Others Cause Misery - “My emotional misery comes from external pressures that I have little ability to change.”
6. Worry, Fret, Fear - “If something seems dangerous or fearsome, I must preoccupy myself with it and make myself anxious abut it.”
7. Avoidance - “It’s easier to avoid facing difficulties and self-responsibilities than to do something about them.”
8. The Past - “My past remains all-important and, because something once strongly influenced my life, it has to keep determining my feelings and behavior today.”
9. Unrealistic Expectations - “People and things should turn out better than they do, and I must fix them.”
10. Competition - “My worth can be measured by competitive situations.”
11. Source of Problems - “The people and conditions in my life are the sources of my problems.”
12. Negativity - “Certain occurrences or events are negative by nature.”
The wizard, suddenly tired looking, stares head on at Chris and asks, “So, looking at this list, do you see any behaviors you demonstrated after the presentation? Also, think about the phone call you had with Reeves right before he left. Remember anything from it on this list?”
“Um, yes, now I think I do. I have a need for approval. I don’t like to make mistakes, I have unrealistic expectations sometimes, and I blame others for my problems… sigh”
“Yes, it is a hard realization that you maybe the locus of control for your own problems. Emotional Intelligence can help.”
“So what do I do next?”
“Ah! Good then. Go and get the book by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence. Read it. Then begin to follow its steps. Cover the five aspects of Emotional Intelligence. Also, don’t worry, you will not change overnight. Sometimes you will fall off the wagon. Just remember you are changing long learned behaviors, so it will take a bit to change. You can make mistakes, and strive for excellence, not perfection. With that, I got to go, kids have soccer practice tonight.”
BOOM!
A blast of light, and the old man was gone, and all his props. Chris looks around a little bewildered and peers over the cube walls to see if anyone else is around. He hears the door open and sees the cleaning crew coming down the aisle way. Looking back at his computer screen, he sees the email is still there. He clicks on the link, but it just pops up the Amazon.com entry for Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. He tries to send an email back, but it comes back as “MAILER-DAEMON Failed to Deliver Message”.
He sits back in a reflective posture and pauses. Then he clicks on the link again while getting his credit card out of his wallet.
*Note: Charts referenced in the short story are reproductions of charts in the slide decks covered under “C 2002. Adele B. Lynn All Rights Reserved.”
2 comments:
Informational and enjoyable; thanks for posting.
best of luck with the MS
-Nate
Thanks Nate! Let me know how you fair up in Tampa. It has to beat Buffalo snow this time of year (unless of course you are into the snow).
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