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Introduction

What is emotional intelligence all about?

Take a look at the following people. Do they remind you of anyone you know?

Anthony is trying to decide whether to cash in a savings bond to buy a classic car he wants. The trouble is, if he keeps the bond for another six months, it will mature and he will get an extra £5,000. But the car will have gone and it’s special. He wants it badly. He’s already got three other cars but he’s not good on delayed gratification. Things would be easier if he had regular work.

Sue doesn’t get on with her chief executive despite doing a really good job. He’s incredibly dismissive, doesn’t respond to her reports on things which need looking at or approaching differently – and he never looks her in the eye. Her colleagues see her as a role model for good practice. She wants a good career but isn’t sure about the next step.

Peta hasn’t met her sales targets again. Her customers just like to talk about their problems. She doesn’t have anything in common with those sorts of people and would rather just get on with the job.

Peter gets very frustrated at home. His wife has changed. Nothing seems to satisfy her anymore and he has only the vaguest notion why. She seems frustrated or depressed all the time, in equal measure. She thinks he’s always at fault so he gets angry, slamming doors and walking away.

Like many people, these individuals are all struggling with situations and difficulties which are troubling to different degrees. At first sight, it seems as though logic, rational decision-making and perhaps good common sense are the answer – in theory, that is. But these examples come from the real world. Anthony, Sue and the others are real people. And that means they aren’t always logical. They don’t always use rational decision-making, or common sense, for that matter.

Instincts, feelings and personal values take over and become a major part of the dilemmas facing our four people. Conflict between our thinking and our feelings makes things complicated. Gut instincts or intuition rely a great deal on emotion and feelings. The real world is a place where both feelings and instincts are major influences on our behaviour.

Anthony for example is having difficulty resisting temptation. He could wait for a lot more money – his logic might tell him – but the demands made by his emotions are in conflict with this. What actually happened was that, as usual, he gave way to his emotions and cashed in his savings bond. A year later he was in dire financial circumstances – not just because of the car, but because the struggle between logic and emotion was always won in the same way. His feelings seem to take over his thinking: he makes a great case to himself for anything he wants.

Sue is trying to balance her own anxieties with the way her organization is changing and the effect of this change on the views and approaches of her colleagues. Her need for recognition is very high. She works with people who don’t express themselves emotionally nor understand the importance of this for motivating staff. A year on, she has left her job. The organization has lost a real asset.

Peta hoped that her sales performance could be good enough without engaging too closely with her customers. She is uncomfortable getting too close to people. She finds small talk difficult and has always coped by concentrating on things she is interested in. Her product knowledge is good but it doesn’t seem to affect her performance. She is now working in a back-office role, at a lower salary.

Peter is struggling to find ways of bringing his relationship under control. He and his wife are strong characters but he has never felt able to confront problems between them. He thinks it is better to walk away when he is angry because he has difficulty controlling strong emotions. His wife thinks he has become cold and is now wondering whether her life could be more fulfilling.

In each of the situations described above, the people involved will benefit from improving their emotional intelligence (EI). Their doing so will also make life easier for those who have to interact with them. EI is a valuable set of ideas you can use in the workplace and in the home; as a parent, teacher or manager.

It’s about being aware of feelings in yourself and in others, understanding them and managing their impact. It’s about being in control, interpreting body language, coping with negativity, working with others and building psychological well-being.

So what is this book actually about?

Emotional intelligence is an assortment of mental abilities and skills that can help you to successfully manage both yourself and the demands of working with others.

Developing your own EI enables you to:

Know yourself reasonably well
Control your own emotions
Show empathy with the feelings of others
Use social skills in an effective as well as simply pleasant way.

This involves:

Mindfulness: being aware – understanding yourself and others
Being in control of your own thoughts, emotions and needs
Being positive and self-motivated particularly in the face of setbacks
Using empathy: being able to put yourself in others’ shoes
Communicating effectively to build productive and positive relationships
Using emotional reasoning: being able to use emotions to enhance rather than restrict your thinking.

Hundreds of books have been written about emotional intelligence. It has been defined in many ways, usually depending on the interests or academic discipline of the person writing about it. As the idea has been explored and different models developed, it has become one of the most talked-about ideas in popular psychology, industrial training, in management, education and social care. Emotional intelligence has been touted as an explanation of what your brain does, a means to achieve your goals, a basis for improving your family life and relationships, improving your job prospects and being more successful at work. Outcomes at one level are managing stress better, coping with depression and overcoming anxiety. For others it is a way to become a better negotiator, getting better deals or increased sales. I have even seen a cookery programme on TV which suggested that emotional intelligence is the key to good dinner parties!

If all of this is true, EI must be one of the most significant areas explored in psychology over the last 50 years. At the very least, it can be a real stimulus for exploring psychology – and in the process helping to make some of its powerful ideas relevant and accessible to living and working in today’s world.

At its most basic, emotional intelligence is the ability to manage the impact of emotions on our relationships with others. It involves recognizing accurately how you and others feel at any particular time and the way emotions are affecting the situation. It involves keeping feelings sufficiently in control so that we can act effectively. And in no small part it involves using good interpersonal skills to create positive relationships with both individuals and groups. Our ability to express the emotions we feel in a constructive way is the cornerstone of staying in control.

EI is based on an important feature of relationships: ‘behaviour breeds behaviour’. Our own approach may be the cause of others’ reactions. Emotional intelligence requires us to be mindful of the effect we have.

A general consensus amongst the more recent models of EI is that, whether in work or personal relationships, emotional intelligence can be learned. Teaching ourselves to be mindful about the way both we and others feel can help us work towards mutually rewarding relationships. And in times of economic difficulty, the difference between productive and unproductive relationships can make the difference between surviving or not.

So the goal of this book is simple. It’s to provide you with a practical understanding of how the idea of emotional intelligence emerged, what people say it is, why it is important for you, and some tools to help you develop your own EI.

Sound useful? Good. But emotional intelligence is not really new, and the skills and abilities involved have not always been a positive thing. As long ago as the 16th century, Niccolo Machiavelli was writing about ‘accounting of feelings and needs’ as an important set of tools in his attempts to seek influence with the Pope to become more powerful himself. Manipulation, politics and deceit may all owe much to the emotional intelligence of those practising the dark arts for their own advancement. And if you believe the press about the devious machinations of our current politicians, that view may be more true today than ever before.

On the one hand, there are times when being clear, firm or even tough with others is a necessary part of being effective. But on the other, as we gain more experience in both personal and working relationships, it is clear that being forceful isn’t right for all situations. Social skills like understanding others’ needs, generating shared goals, knowing their motivation and aspirations, negotiating, providing support, and diplomacy may be needed. Conflict resolution, with restraint and self-control at times, are important tools for getting on with others.

I recently heard a leading academic who is responsible for running a major university say, ‘Everything would be fine if it weren’t for the students and the staff! Sometimes I don’t know which is which.’ Most of us already know that whilst intellectual skills are important, you can’t get through life without having to deal with other people. Maybe that academic needs to use her emotional intelligence every bit as much as her intellectual skills to create the impact she would like.

Some of the more specific benefits of developing EI include the ability to:

Overcome difficult situations
Express yourself clearly but warmly
Build better relationships
Keep your emotions under control
Communicate mutual respect
Avoid skewed thinking
Say the appropriate thing at the right time
Value and obtain commitment from others
Become resilient in difficult times
Have clear values and share them with others
Increase your own well-being.

So why do people appear to have very different levels of emotional intelligence? There is a great debate about EI as to whether it comes from nature or nurture. Is EI is a set of innate skills like numeracy and logic? (Perhaps they simply haven’t developed yet in some people.) Or is it something which is akin to personality – perhaps traits or characteristics which are genetic or acquired over time? Perhaps some people are simply ‘people people’. Leaving the academic debates to one side, it is clear that there are certain skills and abilities which have been found to be of real and practical value in the most surprising situations.

Can emotional intelligence save your life?

James Dozier, a brigadier general in the US Army was kidnapped in 1981 while on duty in Italy. His captors were the notorious Red Brigade terrorists. Writing about his experiences, Dozier noted the effect of media coverage on the kidnap team: ‘they were bouncing off the walls with anxiety and pressure and were becoming explosively dangerous. A wrong look could have got me killed.’ It was an increasingly risk-laden situation. Dozier’s training had included some aspects of emotional management and he decided to try to minimize the risks by using what we might now call emotional intelligence. He set out to manage his own feelings of anxiety and to see what effect it could have on the Red Brigade terrorists. Although bound, he tried to make himself communicate as calmly as possible, showing concern for his captors and modelling the behaviours he thought were needed to reduce the terrorists’ own anxiety. As he hoped, their tension and tendency towards spontaneous reactions reduced as the captors began to respond to his confident, slow and reflective manner.

After his release, Dozier explained that his experience led him to believe that understanding the emotional dynamics at work in the situation, and his ability to manage his own emotions and behaviour, actually saved his life.

How to use this book

Throughout the book there are a number of activities for you to try, notes for you to read and things for you to remember.

Within this introduction, we will explore the foundations on which emotional intelligence is based, including what we know about intelligence itself, what causes the emotions which drive us, and how our brain’s control system is ‘hard-wired’ to them. We will also look at the opposite of EI: keeping a ‘stiff upper lip’, and why being tough and hard has been prized for so long.

In Part I, ‘The Emotional Intelligence Framework’, we will explore the practical skills and knowledge which emotional intelligence promotes.

Part II of the book, ‘Emotional Intelligence in Practice’, deals with some specific uses of emotional intelligence. We will look at what occupational psychology tells us about the workplace – the area where EI exploded into life 20 years ago. We will also explore its use in education, parenting and healthcare, and look at how it can be used for simply making your life better.

If you use any of the questionnaires in this book, remember that they are guides, not fully validated psychometric tests. They have been tested in various companies and occupational groups, in adult education and with different ethnic groups. They seem to be useful – but see what you think!

Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

If you are prepared to do some thinking, to reflect on ideas from other people’s experience and to both challenge and discipline yourself to improve, this book should help you understand EI. But if you are the sort of person who believes that changing your personality or behaviour is not possible – that ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ – you need to know something before you read on.

You possess one of nature’s great miracles – your AMAZING BRAIN! We will look at the way it works and some of its physical structures later. But from an old dog’s point of view, you need to know before you start that, if you want to, you can change yourself and your approach. It’s something your brain can do for you and involves something called ‘plasticity’.

Whatever age you are now, your life so far has been spent building up behavioural templates, which are stored in your brain and used for reacting automatically to situations. These are pathways between brain cells that get more fixed as feelings and thought patterns are repeated. They are physical things – proteins attached to your DNA and neural connections controlling your behaviours. They are central. They define you.

You are not starting from scratch. If nothing else, your experience of living and working with others will have already have given you opportunities to develop your emotional intelligence. As a teenager, your brain rapidly developed pathways to deal with particular situations in certain ways. You may have become good at evaluating things, calculating risks or working out solutions. You may or may not have developed pathways which help you deal with other people and emotional situations. You can use this book to assess how well you have done so far.

One of the key discoveries in neuroscience over the last fifteen years has been that we are able to make our brains actually grow. It happens through a process called neurogenesis in which brain cells or neurons grow and proliferate, migrating to where they may be needed. Pathways or routes of interconnecting neurons develop through daily use – in the same way that a path down a bank might be developed when it is used daily by an animal going about its business.

Every time new knowledge is acquired, the connections communicate differently and, through repetition, become faster, more efficient and instinctive. The ability of our brains to develop in this way is described as ‘synaptic plasticity’. So the good news is that we do change. Unlearning old behaviours and forming new emotional intelligence templates happen all the time – if you have the motivation and the space for thinking it out.

The bottom line is that we all have the capacity to develop new thinking and behaviour if we are sufficiently motivated. So not only can you learn about EI, you can learn to put it into practice.

In the remainder of this introduction we will go on to discuss the foundations and context for EI. For starters, though, try the following questionnaire to start forming an idea of your own levels of EI.

Measuring emotional intelligence

Here is a quiz, which is an example of the many tests that are now available. The results you get from this quiz are NOT a comprehensive picture of your EI but will provide some useful insights into both the skills it involves and how tests measure them.

There are ten situations. For each, read the four actions and choose which of them is closest to the way you would be likely to behave if you were in a similar situation. Choose your actual behaviour rather than what you think you should do. Make a note of your choice and go through the scoring page carefully. In addition to getting a ‘quick and dirty’ measure of your own EI, the answers will give you a sense of the key skill sets involved.

1. You are on an aeroplane that suddenly hits extremely bad turbulence and begins rocking from side to side. What do you do?

Continue to read your book or magazine, or watch the movie, trying to pay little attention to the turbulence.
Become vigilant for an emergency, carefully monitoring the cabin staff and reading the emergency instructions card.
A little of both A and B.
Not sure – you probably never noticed.

2. You are in a meeting when a colleague takes credit for work that you have done. What do you do?

Immediately and publicly confront the colleague over the ownership of your work.
After the meeting, take the colleague aside and tell her that you would appreciate in the future that she credits you when speaking about your work.
Nothing, it’s not a good idea to embarrass colleagues in public.
After the colleague speaks, publicly thank her for referencing your work and give the group more specific detail about what you were trying to accomplish.

3. You are a customer service representative and are speaking to an extremely angry client on the phone. What do you do?

Hang up. You aren’t paid to take abuse from anyone.
Listen to the client and rephrase what you gather he is feeling.
Explain to the client that he is being unfair, that you are only trying to do your job, and you would appreciate it if he wouldn’t get in the way of this.
Tell the client you understand how frustrating this must be for him, and offer a specific thing you can do to help him get his problem resolved.

4. You are a college student who had hoped to get an A in an exam that was important for your future career aspirations. You have just found out you achieved a C–. What do you do?

Sketch out a specific plan for ways to improve your mark and resolve to follow it through.
Decide you do not have what it takes to make it in that career.
Tell yourself it really doesn’t matter how well you do in the course; concentrate instead on other classes where your marks are higher.
Go and discuss your results with your tutor and try to talk her into giving you a better mark.

5. You are a manager in an organization that is trying to encourage respect for racial and ethnic diversity. You overhear someone telling a racist joke. What do you do?

Ignore it – the best way to deal with these things is not to react.
Call the person into your office and explain that their behaviour is inappropriate and is grounds for disciplinary action if repeated.
Speak up on the spot, saying that such jokes are inappropriate and will not be tolerated in your organization.
Suggest to the person telling the joke that he attend a diversity training course.

6. You are an insurance salesman calling on prospective clients. You have had no success with your last fifteen clients. What do you do?

Call it a day and go home early to miss rush-hour traffic.
Try something new in the next call, and keep plugging away.
List your strengths and weaknesses to identify what may be undermining your ability to sell.
Sharpen up your resumé.

7. You are trying to calm down a colleague who has worked herself into a fury because the driver of another car has swerved dangerously close to her car. What do you do?

Tell her to forget about it – she’s OK now and it is no big deal.
Put on some of her favourite music and try to distract her.
Join her in criticizing the other driver.
Tell her about a time something like this happened to you, and how angry you felt, until you saw the other driver was on the way to the hospital.

8. A discussion between you and your partner has escalated into a shouting match. You are both upset and, in the heat of the argument, have started making personal attacks which neither of you really mean. What is the best thing to do?

Agree to take a 20-minute break before continuing the discussion.
Go silent, regardless of what your partner says.
Say you are sorry, and ask your partner to apologize too.
Stop for a moment, collect your thoughts, then restate your side of the case as precisely as possible.

9. You have been given the task of managing a team that has been unable to come up with a creative solution to a work problem. What is the first thing that you do?

Draw up an agenda, call a meeting and allot a specific period of time to discuss each item.
Organize an off-site meeting aimed specifically at encouraging the team to get to know each other better.
Ask each person individually for ideas about how to solve the problem.
Have a brainstorming session, encouraging each person to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how wild.

10. You have recently been assigned a young manager in your team, and have noticed that he appears to be unable to make the simplest of decisions without seeking advice from you. What do you do?

Accept that he ‘does not have what it take to succeed around here’ and find others in your team to take on his tasks.
Get an HR manager to talk to him about where he thinks his future within the organization might lie.
Purposely give him lots of complex decisions to make so that he will become more confident in the role.
Engineer an ongoing series of challenging but manageable experiences for him, and make yourself available to act as his mentor.

Scoring

There are up to ten points available for each situation, as described below. So adding together the points for each of your answers will give you a score out of 100 – your EI percentage score.

1. The only answer which doesn’t indicate emotional intelligence is D. It suggests a lack of awareness of what is going on. Attempts at managing your own emotions and being both vigilant and aware of how others are acting are important EI skills. So you get 10 points for choosing either A, B or C.

2. Answer A suggests an emotionally driven confrontation and a lack of skill by trying to get behaviour change through a public confrontation. Doing nothing (Answer C) would leave the problem unresolved and the potential resentment may fester and grow in the future. The solution for this one is to work collaboratively with the colleague in future but also to manage your own feelings. You get 5 points for choosing B and 10 points for D.

3. An important part of emotional intelligence is sensitivity to others’ feelings and a positive attitude towards helping both them and yourself to resolve difficulties. Showing that you understand the client’s concerns but also helping him to feel that his concerns are being resolved would be the emotionally intelligent options. 5 points for B and 10 points for D.

4. Failure at something almost always generates strong emotions and frequently guilt. In the short term, such emotions can overwhelm rational thinking and lead to skewed decision-making. Keeping control involves trying as hard as possible to use logic and analysis as well as accepting both our strengths and weaknesses. A gets you 10 points and C scores 5 points.

5. Racism is unacceptable in any situation. Ignoring it can seem like an endorsement. Whilst action subsequently might demonstrate your position, the emotionally intelligent person has a clear set of values, is confident in their own beliefs and prepared to speak up, even if their views are different. So B scores 5 points, C scores 10 points and D also gets 5 points.

6. Self-management is a core characteristic of emotional intelligence; it involves managing disruptive emotions and impulses. Being positive, resilient and focused are characteristics of someone in control, so B gets you 10 points and C is 5 points.

7. Empathizing with someone who is in a state of emotional arousal is one of the best ways to mollify them. Attempting either to distract them or to minimize their concern is likely to lead to even stronger emotion being displayed and is unlikely to be effective. C gets 5 points for building empathy and making the colleague feel positive and accepted about her viewpoint. D, however, gets 10 points because in addition to empathy, you are giving your colleague a rational analysis and getting them to think of potential negative consequences for the bad driver. This engages cognitive processes to help reduce the level of emotion, showing good relationship management.

8. The emotionally intelligent person has two problems here, managing the partner’s emotionality and managing their own. Time for a break. Continuing will make things worse. A gets 10 points.

9. Helping a team to work in a creative manner involves acknowledging the link between feelings and creative thinking. A team is only as good as the quality of relationships and ability to collaborate. So relationship management, finding ways to help people build on each others’ work, and being non-traditional are required for this situation. B gets 10 points; D gets 5 points.

10. Empathy with a young manager in a new situation, together with the uncertainty of his decision-making, suggests a need for support and incremental building of confidence. Exposure and threat would merely build anxiety. Supporting him and challenging him at the same time are the best options for growth. B scores 5 points and D gets 10 points.

This questionnaire has been trialled recently with more than 200 people. The average score for 30- to 50-year-old participants was 65 and for younger people 60. Eleven per cent of the total group volunteered that they had problems with relationship management or self-awareness. There were no statistically significant differences between the scores for men and women

Ten questions cannot give you a comprehensive measure of your existing level of emotional intelligence, but this quiz was designed to give you a sense of the skills involved in emotionally intelligent behaviour and where some of your own strengths might lie.

The foundations of emotional intelligence

What is ‘intelligence’ anyway?

When you think about intelligence, what comes to mind? A short-sighted scientist perhaps, with nights spent huddled under a reading lamp or in front of a computer screen, doing abstract calculations long into the night? If you are thinking along these lines, you are not alone. Alfred Binet developed the first IQ test in 1905 and measuring intelligence has been a preoccupation of psychologists ever since. Whilst these tests have been useful for predicting academic success, until recently they only measured someone’s ability to handle information in the abstract – ignoring other skills or abilities. Research in 2002 suggested that this type of intelligence was responsible for less than 25 per cent of someone’s chances of success in later life. A review of 52 studies in 1994 put the figure closer to 5 per cent – other factors accounting for the remaining 95 per cent. Whatever intelligence is, shouldn’t these ‘other factors’ count?

Other views of intelligence have been proposed, including Thorndike in 1920, Kelly in the 1950s and Howard Gardner in 1983, all of whom challenged the idea of a single, problem-solving intelligence measured by classical IQ tests. They proposed that we have a number of different types of intelligence for dealing with others – which is often described as ‘social’ intelligence. This idea underpinned the work done over the 1980s and 90s (notably by John Mayer, Peter Salovey, David Caruso and Richard Boyatzis), and Reuven Bar-On coined the phrase ‘an emotional intelligence’ in a 1980 dissertation. Then came the smash hit of 1995, Daniel Goleman’s bestselling book Emotional Intelligence.

The work before Goleman’s book had focused on social or emotional intelligence as an innate ability, one of the key perspectives which some people take today. Goleman was a science journalist with experience in clinical psychotherapy and meditational psychology. Now a leading management psychologist, he argues that there’s more than an innate ability involved, using evidence garnered by, amongst others, David McClelland about the competences and behaviours of leaders and high performers in industry, commerce and the public sector.

Psychologists identify various forms of intelligence. Emotional intelligence incorporates at least two of them:

Cognitive intelligence – the ability to think rationally, act in a purposeful way and manage your environment. It’s your intellectual, analytical, logical and rational skill set.

Social intelligence – the ability to understand and manage situations which involve other people. It is your ability to be aware of yourself, to understand yourself, to manage relationships and understand the emotional content of behaviour.

Researchers looking at both forms of intelligence have designed different ways of measuring emotional intelligence which demonstrate their perspectives. But there’s a problem with measurement. Many ideas behind emotional intelligence, like managing your own emotions, are difficult to measure reliably and validly because of the subjective nature of emotional experiences. There are also many tests of the ‘traits’ view of EI (this is the view that says EI is merely a function of personality), which look essentially like traditional personality tests.

A question of culture – stoicism and the ‘stiff upper lip’

Being stoical, the ultimate belief in the ‘stiff upper lip’, was difficult for ordinary human beings to live up to even in Ancient Greece, but it has been the prevailing idea in Western culture throughout most of history. Stoics argued that thinking, logic, intellect and reason were the only reliable ways of living. Creating structure and order in life were prized along with inner solitude, forbearance in adversity and the acceptance of fate. They believed that emotions stemmed from false judgements. Feelings were too idiosyncratic and subjective so an unreliable basis for living and working together.

Jean Martin Charcot linked emotion to hysteria in the late Victorian period; ‘giving in to emotion’ was seen as either a physical (convulsive) disorder or a psychological problem. Histories of psychology acknowledge that defining emotions in this way involved a pretty sexist perspective. For many years, the mainly male perspective was that emotion was a female problem.

In contrast, writer Georg Simmel saw urban and workplace life in the 1950s as a dangerous place to be. He pictured modern industrial life as an endless flow of impersonal stimulation, contrasting with the warmth of a village life more rooted in emotional connections. The village life, he argues, creates a sense of empowerment and purpose with good community relationships as a result. The typical modern view of life, Simmel claims, is ‘blasé’. He suggests that the stiff upper lip was widespread across the twentieth century with ‘reserve, coldness and indifference always in danger of turning into hatred.’ It was in this context that research into emotional intelligence began.

In the US, the stiff-upper-lip approach was challenged – in the acceptance of ‘therapy’ and in some cases the ‘touchy-feely’ extremes of modern management. Both of these can be traced back to two periods in history: the years before the First World War and the 1960s.

Psychoanalysis found a resounding echo in the academic and clinical worlds, the newspapers, popular culture and in management after Freud spoke at Clark University in the USA (1909), and Jung’s subsequent lectures (at Fordham University 1912 and in London 1913 and 1914). Newspapers supported the expansion of technology and the development of new ideas, including the “new science” of the mind. It was taken up almost as a social experiment by wealthy people and only gained credibility as the science of psychology matured. In the 1960s, movements like the California ‘humanistic psychologies’ rooted in social change and the Esalen Institute’s human potentiality workshops also questioned the role which emotions played in human interaction.

Over the last 50 years, stoicism and emotional importance have ebbed and flowed often correlating with economic success. When times are tough, the stiff upper lip re-emerges. In 2012, the drivers for stiff-upper-lip behaviour continue. Levels of poverty may be very different to the nineteenth century but banking crises, recessions and economic instability over the last ten years have set an adversarial climate. Even after retirement, say older people’s charities, many pensioners have to fight for recognition and the rights they are due. The media are often guilty of sensationalism and certainly both television and newspapers are constantly full of adversarial images depicting war, poverty and violence.

The idea of emotional intelligence affirms that, as social animals, we need to use our social and emotional skills to deal with others effectively. For some, the drivers may have changed but they will still be more comfortable avoiding dealing with feelings.

The stiff upper lip questionnaire

The following questionnaire is designed to assess the significance of the ‘stiff upper lip’ culture in your outlook. Below is a list of personal qualities. Decide how each quality applies to you – either positively or negatively and to what degree. For each one, you need to give yourself a score between minus 10 (the quality doesn’t feature in your behaviour at all, ever!) and plus 10 (it is very characteristic of how you behave, all the time). Write down your scores next to the qualities in the list. When you have completed the questionnaire to your satisfaction, look at the scoring information to get your stiff upper lip score.

Qualities

Decisive
Forceful
Stubborn
Restrained
Cool
Persistent
Results-focused
Dominant
Resilient
Strong personality
Tough
Demanding
Strong
Flexible
Purposeful
Powerful
Risk taker
Emphatic
Challenging
Cold

Scoring

Combine all your negative scores and all your positive scores. Subtract the negative from the positive to obtain your overall ‘stiff upper lip’ score.

Interpretation

140–200 (very high)

You have a rating in the top 10 per cent of stiff upper lips! You are probably really effective in crises or in situations where there is a need to push policies or ideas through against opposition. You will be most effective in situations which do not involve major change or when dealing with people who have little interest in taking any responsibility. People like you sometimes make successful entrepreneurs but, equally, many prefer to go into some other business, once their original start-up has begun to grow. They report that others may have difficulty opening up to them. Using your emotional intelligence will make working with you easier and help you deal with more motivated people in rapidly moving situations involving change.

95–139 (strong)

Thirty per cent of people doing this test score in the same range that you do. They tend to be assertive and successful people, but in organizations and situations where the culture is quite competitive. Many seem to be employed in sales occupations or as entrepreneurs. They also seem to have relationships (as opposed to acquaintances) which are either very long term or new and not very deep. Emotional intelligence can help you to further your understanding of others and build more open and loyal relationships.

0–94 (average)

Thirty per cent of people doing the test score similarly to you. They often describe themselves as people who have a sense of purpose and a clear image of themselves, and who enjoy team leadership roles. They are rated by others as independent and enjoyable to work with, without being overly pushy. As with those who score strongly (above) they are sometimes seen to succumb to stress when the going is tough, sometimes not recognizing the effect of pressure on themselves. Emotional intelligence can help you to become self-aware, understand others, manage your stress and build better long-term relationships.

Below 0 (low)

Thirty per cent of people have negative scores. They seem to be people who are less confident in situations where they act alone and other tests suggest that they may doubt their own abilities, particularly in decision-making, setting personal goals and ‘persistence’ (carrying through projects). On the other hand, many people with these scores seem to be skilled communicators who value working with others. Emotional intelligence can help you to think through your own feelings and approach and help you become more assertive about your own values and priorities.

Using your stiff upper lip score

The earlier descriptions of emotional intelligence and stoic behaviour are not intended to promote one and devalue the other. Neither should be thought of as the only skill set needed. There are many situations in which strong and independent character is important. But emotional intelligence is an essential requirement where there is a need to work with, influence and seek cooperation with other people. It is a complement to stoicism and strength of character.

So just watch out for extreme scores in this questionnaire. Anything above 140 suggests you may make much less use of emotional intelligence than situations require.

Emotions and emotional intelligence

You don’t need to be a psychologist to understand emotional intelligence. But an important part of the foundation for EI is an awareness that our emotions are hard-wired into the brain – and that there is a purpose for them.

What is emotion? A feeling? Then what is a feeling? These terms are difficult to define and even more difficult to understand completely. People have been attempting to understand the phenomenon for thousands of years. Over that time, there has been a wide range of scientific opinion regarding the nature and importance of emotions. Some psychologists have felt that the idea of emotion is unnecessary – behaviour is the central issue and stimulus or threat produces instinctual responses. Others believe that ideas about arousal or ‘activation’ are less confusing than complex theories of emotion and development. Some psychologists maintain that emotion is the body’s primary motivational system, a visceral function of the organs triggered by the autonomic nervous system, whilst others say human beings are essentially rational beings – our ‘reason for being’ is essentially cognitive/intellectual and it’s our logic and judgment that is core.

Whatever the truth of these ideas, people surround themselves with people and objects to which they become emotionally attached, and for many people the ‘reason for being’ is the warmth of that attachment. Most psychologists acknowledge the immense power emotions have to shape our understanding, our ways of thinking, the decisions we take and the habits or attitudes we adopt. Cognitive science has repeatedly demonstrated the role that emotion plays in decision-making, to the extent that if logic and feeling point in different directions, most people go with their instincts.

In everyday life, people universally experience the difficulties of both coping with their own emotions and the practical difficulties created by those of others. Emotional disorders affect huge numbers of people. In 2010, the UK government estimated that 15 per cent of people will have a bout of severe depression at some point in their lives (women are twice as likely to suffer from depression as men, although men are far more likely to commit suicide). Two per cent of teenagers in the UK are diagnosed with emotional disorders before the age of eighteen; and emotional disorders in old age is also a major, and increasing, problem. Emotional intelligence is important for our own mental health and gives us the capacity to understand both ourselves and how we deal with the pressures we face.