Relationships are dynamic, alive and responsive to the choices, attitudes and behaviors we bring to them. Research shows that we really are living in organic networks in which we are constantly impacting others and the social environment as the social world impacts us. The competencies associated with Emotional Intelligence directly and powerfully transform interactions and ongoing relationships with others. These skills can be learned and every day is a new opportunity to practice them.

1. Words & Music:
Using The Competencies of Emotional
Intelligence To Transform
Relationships
Jude Treder-Wolff, LCSW, RMT, CGP
Lifestage, Inc
www.lifestage.org
www.livesinprogressnewsletter.blogspot.com

2. Objectives
1. Describe the competencies associated with
emotionally intelligence that power positive
change in relationships;
2. Identify the mind and skill set for developing
these competencies;
3. Identify techniques that can be used
immediately in real time to practice these
competencies in relationships;

3. Emotional Intelligence is the expression of a rich
interplay of conscious feelings, thought-action
repertoires, and attitudes
“Emotional Intelligence
(EI): Our ability to engage
our emotionality in
effective ways in order to
facilitate positive
outcomes in our
relationships.”
Dr. Michael E. Rock. one of a few specialists in
the world currently licensed to certify
professionals in the understanding of, the
statistical research background in, and the
interpretation and use of the BarOn EQ-i

4. Abraham Lincoln displayed a natural emotional
intelligence that is a model for how to engage
with others around high-stakes problems
After winning the presidency,
Lincoln made the
unprecedented decision to
incorporate his eminent rivals
– all with more fame and
political experience than he -
into his political family. Their
presence might have
threatened to eclipse him, but
“Abraham Lincoln became the
undisputed captain of this
most unusual cabinet, truly a
team of rivals.” Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham
Lincoln, Simon & Schuster, 2006: xvi

5. Relationships and social interactions
can be a significant source of stress.
Patterns of
responses and
relationship
dynamics tend to
show up over and
over.

6. The skills associated with Emotional
Intelligence can be learned.
Every day is a new opportunity to practice.
“Every response you give to another
person involves your intellect and
your emotions. The intellect
composes the message, and the
emotions provide animation and grace.
Emotion is to the message what music
is to the lyric. Without the tune, who
would ever remember the lyric? The
skill to combine intellect and emotion
in this dramatic and powerful fashion is
emotional intelligence, and it
possesses the power to elevate even
the common exchanges of everyday
encounters from the base level of you-
and-me to the sublimity of I-and-
Thou!”
Howard Hopkins, retired teacher, Montreal
www.canadone.com/ezine/july04/eq_interview.html

7. Everyone can develop these
skills. Some people just need
more time than others…
“I'll give you a
winter
prediction: It's
gonna be cold,
it's gonna be
grey, and it's
gonna last you
for the rest of
your life.”Bill Murray as
Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993)

8. Same day, different guy
“When Chekhov saw the long
winter, he saw a winter bleak
and dark and bereft of hope.
Yet we know that winter is just
another step in the cycle of
life. But standing here among
the people of Punxsutawney
and basking in the warmth of
their hearths and hearts, I
couldn't imagine a better fate
than a long and lustrous
winter.” Bill Murray as Phil Connors in
Groundhog Day (1993)

9. Competencies of Emotional Intelligence
That Transform Relationships
• Self-Awareness and Self-Control – an accurate understanding of how
one’s behavior and words affect others
• Emotional and inner awareness – an accurate understanding of how one’s
emotions and thoughts affect behaviors
• Accurate self-assessment of skills and abilities – an honest assessment of
strengths and weaknesses
• Conscious planning of communication – the ability to be proactive rather
than reactive when approaching conversations, with the aim of achieving
the best results
• Respectful listening – listen deeply and seek to understand what others
are saying
• Creativity and sense of play – the ability to take one self lightly and
engage with serious situations in a creative way
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, Bantom Dell, 2006

10. “What we call society is really
a vast network of mutual agreements.”
U.S. Senator S.I. Hayakawa
“People are embedded in
social networks and the
health and wellbeing of
one person affects the
health and wellbeing of
others. Human happiness
is not merely the province
of isolated individuals.”
•“Dynamic spread of happiness in a large
social network: longitudinal analysis over 20
years in the Framingham Heart Study” British
Medical Journal 4 December 2008

11. Social networks and relationships
change behavior
•Every facet of health examined so far appears
to “spread” from person to person.
•The strength of a network effect depends on
the strength of a friendship.
•“Friendship as a health factor” Science, Volume 323 23 January 2009,
www.sciencemag.org

12. Happiness grows or diminishes
through network effects
• “Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the
network, and the relationship between people’s happiness
extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to
the friends of one’s friends’ friends). People who are
surrounded by many happy people and those who are
central in the network are more likely to become happy in
the future.”
• “People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others
with whom they are connected. This provides further
justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective
phenomenon.”
• “Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the
Framingham Heart Study” British Medical Journal 4 December 2008

13. Our emotions are impacted by the social environment.
And our emotions have an impact on the environment.
Human emotions are highly
contagious. Seeing others’
emotional expressions – such as
smiles or tears - often triggers
the corresponding emotional
response in the observer. By
enhancing the synchrony of brain
activity across individuals,
emotions may promote social
interaction and facilitate
interpersonal understanding.
•“Emotions promote social interaction by synchronizing brain
activity across individuals” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science, May 24, 2012

14. Emotions are contagious
Research about partners •Researchers recruited Israelis
getting past difficult conflict and Arabs for a study in which
found that the capacity to subjects read stories about the
recover from conflict well suffering of members of their
predicts higher satisfaction own groups or that of conflict-
and more favorable group members.
perceptions of a relationship. •Brain activity in the areas that
And the partner of someone respond to emotional pain was
who recovers well benefits identical when reading about
equally as much. suffering by one's own group
or the conflict group.
• “Social cognition in members of conflict groups:
University of Minnesota (2011, February 14). You benefit if behavioural and neural responses in Arabs, Israelis
your romantic partner recovers well from spats. ScienceDaily and South Americans to each other's misfortunes”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, 2012

15. Kindness is catching
When we see someone else help another person it gives us a good feeling, which in
turn causes us to go out and do something altruistic ourselves
A recent study - the first of its
kind to systematically
The report
document this tendency in concluded that
human nature - showed that
individuals who witnessed
kindness has
good deeds experienced what “substantial
is termed “elevation” –
loftiness of thought and
implications… for
feeling - and were prepared to the health and well-
put twice as much effort in
helping someone with a
being of the
tedious task compared with populace.”
those who had not seen any •“Elevation Leads to Altruistic Behavior” Psychological
altruistic behavior. Science, January 2011

16. Fake kindness does not have the same
effect as authentic kindness.
“This kind of interpersonal behavior cannot, and
must not be faked. If you don't have genuine
enthusiasm, empathy, and a real desire to make
people happy, then your efforts to be contagious
will be transparently phony. If you fake it, you won't
infect people with happiness -- you'll just make
them queasy.
Michael Hess, “Contaminate Them With Kindness” MoneyWatch, www.cbsnews.com/8301-
505143_162-57538286/when-its-good-to-go-to-work-contagious/?tag=nl.e713&s_cid=e713

17. We send emotional signals in every
encounter, and those signals affect those
we are with.
“The more adroit
we are socially,
the better we
control the signals
we send.”
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, Bantom Dell, 2006

18. Self-knowledge is key to social
harmony
By directly involving themselves in certain situations, individuals high
in EI assist other individuals and groups of people to live together with
greater harmony and satisfaction.
Discovering one's level of EI means knowing whether and how much to
be self-reliant in emotional areas, and when to seek others' help in
reading the emotional information others are giving. Whether one is
high or low in emotional intelligence, is perhaps not as important as
knowing that emotional information exists and that some people can
understand it. Knowing just that, one can use emotional information,
by finding those who are able to understand it and reason with it.
• John D Mayer, Emotional Intelligence Index www.unh.edu/emotional_intelligence/index.html

19. Positive emotions generate positive
interactions
The “Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions” maintains that
unlike negative emotions, which narrow people’s attention and
cognitions, positive emotions broaden attention and thinking. Over
time, the expansive mindsets triggered by positive emotions help
people to discover and build a variety of personal resources—
psychological, cognitive, social and physical—which ultimately
contribute to well-being. The broaden effect of positive emotions has
now been supported experimentally across multiple laboratories.”
“The theory states that positive emotions widen people’s outlooks in
ways that, little by little, reshape who they are.”
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001), “The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of
positive emotions,” The American Psychologist, 2001 Mar;56(3)

20. “The capacity to experience positive emotions may be
a fundamental human strength central
to the study of human flourishing.”
Joy, interest, contentment, and love have the effect
of “building” an individual's physical, intellectual,
and social resources. Empirical evidence supports
this broaden-and-build model of positive emotions,
and the implications for emotion regulation and
promotion of health and well-being through
expanding physical, intellectual and social resources
“What Good Are Positive Emotions?” Review of General Psychology 1998 Sept, 2 (3)

21. Serious fun: the conditions that foster
creativity within groups and teams
In tasks that require creativity, or new insights, or new learning, we do better
when we are not being evaluated—when we are just playing, not stressed,
not afraid of failure. In physically demanding tasks, like lifting heavy weights,
and in tedious tasks, like counting beans, we do better when we are being
evaluated than when we are not.
You can’t be more creative just by trying harder. To be creative, you have to
back off of yourself in a way that permits the full engagement of certain
unconscious mental processes—processes that generate unusual associations
and new ideas. Those unconscious processes work best when you are playing,
not when you are striving for praise or some other reward.
Amabile, T. (1996). Creativity in context: update to the social psychology of creativity, Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press. Also, Hennessey, B., & Amabile, T. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 61,
569-598.

22. Creativity activates the brain
chemistry of reward and achievement
“We feel rewarded when we create new objects or
actions, and since creativity is based on the
decisions made by the creator, the reward system
kicks in when we are in control and inventing things
that we have thought of ourselves.”
•James Zull, “Arts, Neuroscience and Learning,” New Horizons for Learning (March 2005):
para. 10. 20 Nov. 2005 www.newhorizons.org

23. Create agreements about
how to express critical comments.
Evaluation, when it is not
asked for, and when it has
consequences as it does in
school, is a threat. It narrows
the mind and inhibits the
processes of “building up.” It
inhibits new learning, new
insights, and creative
thought—the very processes
that some people think school
is supposed to promote.”
“Unsolicited Evaluation Is The Enemy of Creativity”
Creativity Post
www.creativitypost.com/psychology/unsolicited_eva
luation_is_the_enemy_of_creativity

24. Trust is key for judgment, evaluation,
and criticism to promote collaboration
In order for there to be relevant creative ideas generated in
collaborative efforts, there needs to be strong trust and
openness among team members. Trust because people are
not likely to share alternative points of view or different ideas
that others could build on if there is fear of being shot down.
Fear is creativity killer number 1. Fear makes us hold back,
hesitate, and shuts down the creative problem solving parts of
our brains. Doing actions that foster trust within a team can
mitigate fears and set the stage for new thinking.
Ben Weinlick, “How to Avoid the Wet Blanket Phenomena In Creative Collaborations”
www.creativitypost.com Oct. 20, 2012

25. Before delivering criticism or expressing
disagreement, do a self-check
Inept criticism is cited as the greatest reason for
conflict on the job – over mistrust, personality
conflicts, or disputes over power or pay.
If the recipient becomes defensive – makes excuses,
evades responsibility or stonewalls discussion of
possible solutions to the problems – our delivery of
the message may have played a role.

26. Reflective Openness Can Transform A
Tense Encounter
Reflective openness leads to looking inward, allowing our
conversations to make us more aware of the biases and
limitations in our thinking, and how our thinking and
actions contribute to problems” p. 261
“Rather than saying nothing or telling the other person
why you think he or she is wrong, you can simply say,
That is not the way I see it. My view is, . . . Here is what
has led me to see things this way. What has led you to see
things differently?” p. 33
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Random House (2006)

27. Listening is the first rule for
transforming relationships
• Accept what is
• Accept people as they
are
• Take in what is being
expressed and build on
it

28. Catch people doing something right
Acknowledge a person’s effort for a task; be
specific in your praise. Rather than say “you’re
doing great” say “what you’re doing is great
because you take such consistent action”
“12 Most Timeless Principles for Bringing Out the Best in People”
http://12most.com/2011/08/22/12-timeless-principles-bringing-people

29. Transform relationships by:
• Encouraging others to share their perceptions,
thoughts and feelings;
• Being receptive to others’ narratives as valid and
openness about our own;
• Being conscious about how evaluative, judgmental or
critical feedback is delivered;
• Listening rather than assume what others’ motivations
are;
• Bringing our best game to each interaction and taking
responsibility for what we inject into the dynamic;
• Recognizing and seeking to understand the roots of
strong emotional reactions

30. “Neurons that fire together, wire
together” Dr. Dan Siegel
• This training includes experiential exercises
that demonstrate these principles and provide
an immediately useful repertoire of
techniques for applying them in daily life at
home and work. To discuss a training for your
staff, group or conference contact Jude
Treder-Wolff at 631-366-4265 or
lifestage_2000@yahoo.com