Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Emotional Literacy

Human beings are emotional as well as rational. Regardless of the context, we function best when these two parts of our whole are in balance. There is a great deal of research on emotional intelligence and its benefits in all walks of life, including our professional lives. In the world of finance, business, and technology, more and more companies are recognizing that it is not intelligence which creates a competitive advantage but the collective emotional intelligence of their staff: the ability to understand self and others is acknowledged as the new advantage in today’s market.

We live in a global village that must learn to relate and communicate. As educators, we know how to help our students find and develop their intellectual strengths. But how much of our time is devoted to helping students understand themselves, to recognize and enhance the strengths of their emotional intelligence?

I believe the first step to enhancing emotional intelligence is to develop emotional literacy. Schools have done well with the literacy of rational thinking. By the time they graduate, our children speak fluidly about a huge range of topics of the intellect, but ask a young person about his feelings or his relationships or his understanding of himself and watch the fluency dwindle to a halting, embarrassed stutter. The language of our humanity is somewhat lop-sided.

Literacy begins with vocabulary. The next time you do a check-in with a group of kids, ask them how they are feeling and do not allow use of the words good, great, fine, okay, etc. See how they do. We need to be developing emotional vocabulary from a very early age. Parents need to label affective states for infants and toddlers. Identification through observation. “You feel happy.” “She feels worried.” “I feel frightened.”

Next we need to connect the words to feelings through discussion of experiences. “When the dog was lost, I felt worried.” This exercise is not limited to little children. We need to do this with kids throughout their development. It strengthens understanding of the terms when they are little and, as they grow older, it provides insight into how we each respond to events. We need to understand that a situation may create different feelings in different people. How easy and erroneous it is to assume that others are seeing and experiencing things the same way we are.

Thirdly, we need to teach recognition by connecting feelings to body sensations. “Worry makes my stomach jumpy and my hands want to move.” “When you were angry this morning, where in your body did you feel your anger?” The ability to recognize emotions in the body is the first step toward control of emotions in small children. As we grow older, trusting the information our body provides about our emotional responses may help us to avoid the mixed messages we often send when there is a conflict between what we feel and what our mind tells us we should feel. Our bodies do not lie.

When children can recognize and name their own emotions, they can begin to read emotions more accurately in others. We can help by pointing out opportunities to practice. “How do you think it felt for her when that happened?” “When you saw his face, how do you think he was feeling?” The benefits of this ability to read the emotions of others are obvious. It is surprising then, that we assume this skill is inherent and do not provide opportunities for practice beyond a very early age.

Lastly, we can teach and model “I messages” which shift comments away from blaming and shaming and allow for more accurate communication. “I feel nervous when you don’t listen in the gym.” “I feel unappreciated when you complain about the field trip I planned.” Clear I messages are harder for kids to misinterpret as simply, “You’re bad.”

With a little mindfulness and a watchful eye, the everyday events of our days can provide many opportunities to develop emotional literacy without adding another class to the curriculum. Imagine the difference it will make in our families and in our classrooms when we manage to raise a generation who speak easily about their own strengths and weaknesses, about their hopes, about their relationships.

The business world also awaits this generation. In the words of Daniel Goleman:
". . . imagine the benefits for work of being skilled in the basic emotional competencies – being attuned to the feelings of those we deal with, being able to handle disagreements so they do not escalate, having the ability to get into flow states while doing our work. Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal. And in terms of managing our own career, there may be nothing more essential than recognizing our deepest feelings about what we do – and what changes might make us more truly satisfied with our work."
p. 149 Emotional Intelligence

Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."