Personal and Emotional Competence

Intelligence

Preface

This is a practical guide not for passing examinations but to pass off as an effective and competent person in the life of work.

Academic excellence may give a person excellent opportunities in life of work initially. But soon the employer shifts his attention from the qualification to qualities. All people are endowed with some in-born qualities - traits and instincts. But habits are different. They are the result of up-bringing and cultivation. Not all habits make one effective. There are some wrong habits which one might get into unintentionally and unwittingly. The only way to wipe them off is to cultivate the right ones. This book shows the way.

This book is divided into three chapters - Personal Effectiveness, Workplace Reality and Emotional Intelligence. First deals with the rational part of work life. It contains topics on personal effectiveness, role effectiveness, role stress, effective habits, and effective use of time - all are of vital importance to the success at workplace. But they are not enough. One must be emotionally competent.

Second chapter titled ‘Workplace Reality’ is more about our emotions, moods and temperament. Concepts are presented along with cases to understand and study reality involving the ideas. Knowledge of concepts is necessary to practice and perfect.

In the final chapter the concept emotional intelligence is presented with illustrations. Success in life depends both on intelligence and emotional competence as mentioned above.

The book on the whole is made readable. But it is important to keep in mind the practical value of the book. Decades of class-room instruction and preparation of support print material has culminated in this work with an intention to reach out to the wider audience who may not have the opportunity to attend the workshops and seminars on the subject.

A few self-assessment instruments are appended at the end of some of the sections for which keys are given at the end. These instruments are designed and developed by experts like Prof. Udai Pareek. I am grateful to all of them.

Varanasi Bhaskara Rao

Chapter - 1

Personal Effectiveness

1.1 Introduction

Personal Effectiveness is the ability to harness other’s resources for the sake of achieving our objectives. The starting point for Personal Effectiveness is self-awareness.

SELF-AWARENESS

Self-awareness can be considered at three levels. The outer self, the inner stable self, and the inner fluid self.

The Outer Self

Appearance, Behaviour and Communications - our ABC of outer self may not be known to us entirely. It is visible to others with whom we interact. They can observe and give us feedback, if we bother to ask of them and listen.

Asking questions and listening to the answers are social skills, without which we will be poorer in self-awareness. However, others may not give us feedback unless we cooperate in disclosing more about ourselves. Self disclosure, what and how we reveal ourselves and how much is an important social skill that we must acquire in order to improve our awareness.

Inner Stable Self

Memories, Attitudes, Talents, and Experiences: our MATE. The inner MATE may elude us if we are not vigilant. However, our team mates can help us in being in touch with our stable self.

Inner Fluid Self

Our SWIFT moving Sensations, Wants, Intuitions, Fantasies, Feelings, and Thoughts. They come and go, some of which may be lost for ever if we are not sensitive to them. Calm contemplation and counselling can help us to capture the fleeting sensations etc.

JOHARI WINDOW

The Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham gave a good model, a matrix to understand Self-Awareness. The matrix below shows 4 quadrants A, B, C, D.

Quadrant ‘A’ represents ‘Open Self’ or ‘Arena’. That part of the psychological space, our ideas, feelings, motivations, perceptions, experiences and various other personal data known to us as well as those of ‘others’ with whom we interact. The other significant persons are family members, friends, entourage (team mates or colleagues) and even sensitive acquaintances. Even total strangers to us may be observing us and have opinions about us. If what they know, about us is what we know it belongs to space ‘A’.

What Joseph and Harry suggest is that the area ‘A’ should be larger in comparison to ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ to be successful and personally effective.

‘B’ represents our ‘blind’ space - certain aspects of our inner and outer selfs are not known to us. But ‘others’ who observe our outer self - appearances, behaviour and communications - can know them. The acquaintances, colleagues, and even strangers can gauge our outer self easily. But our parents, friends, team mates and spouse know more about our inner stable self. But our inner fluid self may not be known to others. But we can know them if you pay enough attention to them. This is our concealed self ‘C’ - that which is known to us but hidden from ‘others’. This may be due to our habit of secrecy - acquired from childhood. It may be due to a lack of trust in ‘others’ that we conceal our feelings and thoughts.

The advantage of disclosing our feelings and personal data is that it builds trust and others will become more open with us. It is through mutual disclosure that we build relationships, vital for personal effectiveness.

Finally, ‘D’ represents the dark and the unknown area inaccessible to ourself and others too. This is usually revealed through special techniques such as psychoanalysis or psycho-dynamics. Probably we may be able to fathom the unknown or the hidden area through our interactions in an open, perceptive, and receptive atmosphere.

The suggestions of Joseph and Harry is that sharing, openness, and trust are essential for improving our personal effectiveness.

Self-Discovery

Every new born comes into the world crying. In that cry the mother sees: ‘I want to live’, the cry for survival and responds with feeding and contact for warmth. There is the perfect communication between the child and mother.

Gradually, thanks to mother’s intimacy the child gets an identity: first she becomes conscious of her own body, voice, and everything else. As the child grows the physical self becomes less important and the abilities and skills become more important. Her image in the eyes of ‘others’ and the self concept begins to develop. A healthy child develops sense of pride in herself for her individuality. This healthy growth may suffer on account of false assertions of self and futile defenses.

False Assertions & Futile Defenses

Principally there are four ends every one seeks, Physical prowess, Possessions, Prestige, and Power in varying degrees. All these ends can be acquired in their own way without entering into any kind of competition. But most people do it otherwise.

Further we want to appear good, intelligent, reasonable, and laudable in the eyes of others. If we try this without insisting on others that they must accept us as we wish we are, there is no harm. But we strive to impress others to perceive us in a way which they cannot share.

Both competition with others and acceptance from others, make us adopt ways of false assertions of the self. These ways are deceptively PRAISE worthy ways:

Putting our self in winning situations:

Some of us set so low goals as to make sure that we are always in a winning situation. We rarely stretch ourselves for fear of failure. Thereby we get a false sense of victory each time.

Recalling past unfinished business:

There are others who talk of laudable tasks started in the past but discontinued for reasons beyond their control. They never admit that they lacked certain qualities like perseverance.

Associating with important individuals or groups:

When these individuals or groups get name we are too glad to pose, in the group photograph.

Identifying with them

When we associate with the important individual, we find ourselves imitating them and identifying with them. It is like a two-year old imitating his father wearing his glasses or his shoes. He imagines he is daddy now at other times according as he wishes. This habit of imitating continues into adulthood with many people.

Surrounding self with yes-men:

This is some what opposite to the above two - association and identifying. We manage to get a few yes-men who make us feel important. When they praise us, we feel the prestige we want.

Emphasising the brighter side of the self:

In this case we do speak facts about us, only partial truth. That is not all facts. There is a vulnerable part of which we are careful not to show. For example we may boast we are always punctual to a meeting, but do not say a word, of not saying a word in those meetings.

These are the ways we want to gain prestige, look good, intelligent, reasonable and laudable persons in the eyes of others.

In fact they are self-deceptions. They will not allow us to be worthwhile human beings. This is an aspect of our blind self ‘B’.

Defense of Self

When our self-image is threatened our defenses SPURT up. There are a few mechanisms.

Suppression

Technically suppression means forcing the whole business completely out of our memory.

Projection

If we cannot achieve the suppression we may use what is called projection. Sometimes, when we cannot bear the reality of our impulses and the guilt associated with it, we may blame to some one else.

Undoing

Undoing is what we attempt one step before suppression. Here we carry on acts that erase the past without trying to banish it from the conscious memory; and the guilt will remain with us.

Rationalisation

Rationalisation is finding justification for our less laudable motives. This is what Arjuna did in Mahabarata war. He was emphasising on certain virtues of not fighting the war. This is true of most people in the modern society, finding good reasons for bad deeds.

Turn Away

When every other defense fails, we turn away from the unpleasant situation as a last resort. Simply blinding ourselves to the reality like the ostrich burying its head in the sand.

To discover our true self is the first step for healthy a growth. It means the size of ‘A’ should increase by minimising the other quardants.

Self Actualization

Life’s aim is to realize one’s full potential which is called self actualization. Self actualization is a complicated process of interaction between personality characteristics, observed behaviour and situations. The hidden personality characteristics are partly revealed through our interactions with others. It is revealed partly to others through our outer behaviour. This can help us in opening the ‘Blind’ shutter. This can only happen if we disclose our selves without fear, keeping in mind, the appropriateness of disclosure, perceptiveness of the situation, people and their feelings. Our behaviour is then rewarded or punished so that we may change our behaviour for better and improve our personal effectiveness. This is the sure way towards realisation of our full potential.

Thus self discovery, self disclosure, openness to feedback, perceptivity to others are important dimensions of personal effectiveness.

On PAR with the Self

In the previous section we saw how false assertions of the self-owing to a meagre understanding of self lead to futile defenses. In the end we are left with guilty feelings. With a better understanding of the self we can find better ways to assert ourselves.

First our inner fluid self-sensations which make us aware of the surroundings in relation to us; our wants, our intuitions that come in advance before all data is in, our fantasies that reveal us the scientist or the artist in us, waiting to be realised, our thoughts about the past, present and the future some positive and some negative - gain momentum as we become aware of them more and more.

Second, our more stable mate - memories, attitudes, talents and experiences - when contacted help us draw our balance sheet of strengths and weaknesses and gain a more balanced picture of the self.

Finally, we can sharpen the outer self-appearence, behaviour and communications through self awareness and awareness through others. We can also open the ‘blind self’ and the ‘concealed or hidden self’ by active listening and candid self-disclosure, both of which are important social skills.

Three Positive Ways of Asserting Self

Armed with better self-awareness, we may adopt three ways of self-assertion:

Pursuing activities that interest us

Pursuing certain activities like music, painting, reading literature, sports, or acting and hobbies for their direct value. We enjoy these activities. It is pursued to know more and enjoy more rather than knowing more than others. We do not have to outshine or outsmart others. We can break our own previous record. Indeed, we engage ourselves in these activities not for status or prestige but for pleasure and self-esteem.

Furthermore we may pursue these activities in collaboration with other like minded people. Music circles and Quality Circles are cases in point. We derive self-satisfaction and sense of belonging by being members of such circles which will give mutual benefit and synergy - synthesis of energies.

These individuals attain the highest satisfaction derived from serving society at large pursuing their inner prompting.

Accepting and giving love

People want to be loved for. This is a natural want that remains unfulfiled in some when they lack rewarding social experiences. By associating