Let's check what is interesting in that tool and how it can be used in our daily life and work.
✏️ Emotions Mapping. That's ability to recognize emotions in yourself, your colleagues, and your partners. One of the helpful techniques is mirroring — matching the other person’s speech rate and tone of voice. On the neurophysiology level it means “This person is like me!”, that makes communication more pleasant, gives the sense of safety and increases the chances to reach agreements.
✏️ Task Selection. The Mood Map helps to choose tasks for yourself or your team based on current emotional states. For example, anxiety can sharpen focus, happiness and joy are good for creativity, contentment improves chances to come to a consensus. The key idea is to either pick tasks that match your current state or shift your state to suit the task. This applies to the teams too: "If you have a brainstorming session and the team seems anxious, that’s not a good match. As a leader, you either have to change the tone of the room or change the agenda to match the tone".
✏️ Understanding. What makes you happy might not make someone else happy That's important to understand and learn what motivates and inspires your team members. At the same time, emotions have universal reasons. If you understand the root of someone’s behavior, you can address it effectively.
✏️ Changing Emotions. Agreements are hard to reach if you and the other person are in different quadrants of the Mood Map. Ideally, everyone needs to move to the `green` quadrant to reach a consensus. However, jumping directly from `
red` to green is almost impossible. Instead, you can guide someone through smaller transitions, like red -> blue -> green. For example, if someone is in the red quadrant, speaking slowly and calmly can help reduce emotional intensity and shift them toward blue.I used to be skeptical about emotional intelligence techniques, but that tool looks to be helpful and practical.
Additional trick there: during complex conversations, if emotions are escalating, pause and ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now? Why?”. Reflection helps to shift your brain from the emotional side to the logical side. Once you’re back in a logical state, you can better manage the situation and improve your chances of success.
References:
- David Caruso Youtube Channel
- Can emotional intelligence be learned?
- Emotional Intelligence in a Changing World
#softskills #leadership #communications #productivity