Oral presentation

General Outline

Shell 87

Oral Presentation

October 23, 2001

Working With Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman

Chapter 8

Pg. 163-185

The Arts of Influence

I. Emotions are Contagious

1. The Group Heart

2. Handling the Other Person’s Emotions

a. Competencies

-Influence

-Communication

-Conflict Management

-Leadership

-Change Catalyst

II. Influence

1. Build Rapport

2. Failure to Convince

a. Signs of weakness in the ability to persuade:

-Failure to build a coalition/get “buy in”

-Over reliance on a familiar strategy

-Bullheaded promotion of a point of view

-Being ignored/failing to inspire interest

-Having a negative impact

III. Communication

1. Mood and Meaning

2. Keeping Cool

IV. Conflict Management

1. Reading the Signs

2. Negotiating Channels

3. Resolving Conflict-Creatively

a. Classic Moves for Cooling Down Conflict:

-First calm down, tune in to your feelings and express them

-Show willingness to work things out

-State your point of view in neutral language

-Try to find equitable ways to resolve the dispute

V. Leadership

VI. Conclusion

VII. Websites

Presentation

This chapter is called “The Arts of Influence.” The art of influence entails handling emotions effectively when dealing with other people. Star performers in a business are artful at sending emotional signals, which makes them powerful communicators, able to sway the audience making them leaders.

We influence other’s moods. Influencing another person’s emotional state for better or worst is natural. This emotional exchange constitutes an indivisible interpersonal economy it is part of every human interaction, but too subtle to notice. The transition of mood is very powerful. Emotions are contagious. We transmit mood among us with such ease because they are vital signals for survival. Our emotions tell us what to focus on and when to be ready to act. These powerful messages convey crucial information without necessarily putting it into words. Emotions are a hyper efficient mode of communication.

Emotions as a signaling system need no words, evolutionary theorist say that, “one reason why emotions have played such a crucial role in the development of the brain is because long before words were developed, humans were able to communicate without verbal language. This means that our radar for emotions attunes to those around us, helping us interact more smoothly and efficiently with others. The emotional economy is the sum of the total of exchanges of feelings among us. In subtle or not so subtle ways we all make each other feel better or worst as a part of our interaction. This can have immense benefits for a business.

The moods people catch from each other at work are crucial, yet most often times unnoticed. In the following exam0le you will notice how moods are transferred from one person to the whole group and understand what I’ll be talking about a little better.

At Yale University the School Management did a project showing how emotions can be transferred throughout group and the impact it has on the groups overall performance toward a common goal. They had a group of volunteers who had to act the part of a manager and allocated bonuses; one of the people in the group was an actor that was supposed to mediate the overall emotional tone of the group. He used emotional keys when working with the group; he was cheerful and enthusiastic, relaxed with serene warmth, depressed and sluggish, and unpleasant and hostile.

The emotions that this actor implied spread like a virus. When the actor argued with cheerfulness or enthusiasm, those feeling spread throughout the group making the group more positive throughout the meeting and vice versa. When the actor argued while being depressed and hostile, those feelings spread making the group have a more negative attitude throughout the meeting. Good feelings spread more powerfully than band ones and the effects boosted cooperation, fairness, collaboration and overall group performance.

Emotional competencies require being able to sort through emotional undercurrents that are always at pay rather than being pulled and manipulated by them.

In the example of the bus ride from hell there was a group of children and parents that had a long day at Disney World. The children were over stimulated and the parents were just worn out, everyone was cranky. The bus driver sensing the mood of his passengers began sings a song from the Disney movie the Little Mermaid and slowly children and their parents began joining in. The bus driver knew exactly what he was doing because singing in the bus while driving passengers to and from Disney World is an intentional strategy Disney uses to help mellow customers.

This strategy takes advantage of our emotional contagion. We are all apart of each other’s emotional tool kit for better or worst; we continually prime each other’s emotional state. The most effective people in business know this kind of strategy very well. They use their emotional radar to sense how others are reacting and they fine-tune their response to push the interaction in the best direction. The essence of good communication involves the use of facial expressions, voices, gestures and body movements to transmit emotions. People who have this ability to adapt to others’ emotions are better able to move and inspire and captivate their imaginations.

There are 5 competencies of effective people skills. They are:

-Influence-wielding effective tactics of persuasion

-Communication-sending clear and convincing messages

-Conflict Management-negotiating and resolving disagreements.

-Leadership- inspiring and guiding

-Change Catalyst-initiating, promoting or managing change

People with this competence are skilled at winning people over, able to fine tune presentations to appeal to the listener, use complex strategies like indirect influence to build consensus and support and are able to orchestrate dramatic events to effectively make a point.

At the most basic level, influence and persuasion hinge around specific emotions of the other person, whether it be respect for power, passion for a project, enthusiasm for out doing the competitor or outrage over unfairness. People who are good at influencing others are able to sense and anticipate their audience’s reaction to their messages and can effectively carry the audience along toward the intended goal. Critical in this skill is being able to notice when logical arguments are failing and when appeals that are more emotional may add impact.

The strategy used by top performers in business companies include impression management, appeals to reason and fact, dramatic argument, building coalitions and behind the scenes support, emphasizing key information and more. Knowing when and where to apply these strategies is what makes top performers in business companies highly influential. Under influence there is building rapport.

I looked up the word rapport and according to the Webster dictionary, the definition of rapport is, a relationship, especially one of mutual trust and harmony. With that in mind, empathy crucial in building influence. It is difficult to have a positive impact on others without first sensing how they feel and understand. People who are bad at reading other peoples emotional cues are bad at social interactions and poor at influence. The first step to influence is building rapport.

Persuasion comes together with the identification of a common bond, taking time to establish rapport is not a detour but an essential step. The single most common reason for the failure of influential plans is that the executives are impervious and they try to impose their ideas instead of building consensus with the group. This leads to failure and is like having a good support system with one weak link. It can make everything else fall apart.

Next there is the failure to convince. People, who despite their good intentions fail to connect emotionally with their audience, fall at the bottom of the influence competence hierarchy. They may mean well, but they lack the means to get their message across. For instance, the example in the book about a woman who is speaking to a group about her new preschool will help you understand. In this example a woman is trying to inform a group of people about the new preschool she has opened for the children of poor, single mothers. Her intentions were good, and for a good cause. The way that she went about her message, however, was all-wrong. She went on for an hour telling the audience of her background and the background of the preschool. A presentation that should only have taken ten minutes took way too long. The audience was completely bored and soon lost all interest in the underlying message. She was not emotionally in touch with the audience.

An audience must be emotionally engaged in the message, but mediocre presenters rarely go beyond the same dry facts. Sometimes flashy displays may catch the attention of the audience, but never take into effect the emotional temperament of the audience. Without and accurate reading of how the listener is taking to the idea, that idea, no matter how good the intentions may be, nay fall on deaf ears. No how brilliant we may think we are, the brilliance of the message we are presenting will fail to be significant if we are not persuasive. There are five

Signs of weakness the ability to persuade and they are…

1.Failure to build a coalition /get “by-in” support system

2.Over reliance on a familiar strategy instead of choosing the best one for the moment

3.Bullheaded promotion of a point of view, no matter the feedback

4.Being ignored/failing to inspire others

5.Having a negative impact

The second competency of effective people skills is communication. People with this competence are effective in give and take relationships, registering emotional cues in attuning their message, deal with difficult issues straightforwardly, listen well, seek mutual understanding and welcome the sharing of information fully, foster open communication and stay receptive to bad news as well as good. Examples of people with good communication skill are Bill Gates, Martin Edelston and Jerry Kavlov.

Bill Gates of Microsoft keeps good communication skills with his workers by having an e-mail account that his employees can freely e-mail him about any interests or concerns that they may have about the Microsoft Company. Martin Edelson, president of the Boardroom, Inc, has an old fashioned suggestion box that he checks regularly and addresses any problems or concerns. Jerry Kavlov, the CEO of Cobra Electronics has a phone extension that only his employees have the number to; that he answers personally every times it rings and addresses anything his employees have to express. Although these men are all the part of billion dollar companies, they still make time to keep up good communication with the employees no matter what position the employee may hold.

Within communication there is mood and meaning. Listening well is the key to empathy and is crucial to competence in communicating. Listening skills, asking astute questions, being open minded and understanding, not interrupting and seeking suggestions

All account for a person’s evaluation of whether a person is an effective communicator. Listening is one of the most taught business skills.

Being in control of our moods is also an essential part of good communication. How well people handle their emotions determines to the degree in which those around them prefer to deal with them. In dealing with peers and subordinates, calmness and patience is key. Bosses would rather deal with employees who are not overly aggressive. It does not matter what mood we are in…the challenge is to stay cool and collected. Aiming for a neutral mood is the best strategy in anticipation for dealing with someone else. It makes us an emotional clean slate and allows us to adapt to whatever the situation may call for. A neutral mood leaves us ready to be more fully involved, present rather than emotionally removed.

There is also keeping cool. Being caught up in a strong mood is a blocker to smooth communication and interaction. The ability to “keep cool” helps us to put preoccupations aside for the moment, while staying flexible in our emotional responses. People who can stay calm and collected in an emergency situation are able to enter smoothly into conversation and stay effectively involved. People who are burdened by their emotions are much less available for whatever the present moment demands.

A study of mid and upper level managers found that those employees rated as best communicators shared the ability to adopt calm, composed and patient manners no matter what emotional state they may be in. Efficient communicators are able to exercise emotional control, keeping cool so they are able to stay open to what they are hearing, then fine-tuning their responses to show that they are truly listening.

Keep in mind that being socially outgoing and extroverted is not in itself a guarantee of being skilled at communication. What constitutes an effective communicator in one situation may not apply in the next.

The third competency of effective people skills is conflict management. People with this competency are able to handle difficult people and tense situation with diplomacy and tact, spot potential conflict, bring disagreements into the open and help de-escalate, encourage debate and open discussion and orchestrate win-win situations. An excellent example of this is the example of the banker and the researcher.

A banker wanted to sell a copper company to investors and needed someone with mining experience to write a letter to the investors telling them how great this deal would be for them. The banker assigned the researcher the task of writing the letter because he knew the mining company the best, but the researcher refused. The banker didn’t understand why the researcher didn’t want to write the letter. The researcher was over whelmed with working eighty hour weeks, he had to complete analysis of eighteen companies by the end of the end, and make hundreds of phone calls along with going on business trips to and from Boston. The report would have taken him another forty hours, which he definitely didn’t have time for. Once the researcher had calmed down and talked to the banker to explain his situation the banker understood and gave the letter writing assignment to someone else. One step to conflict resolution is spotting trouble as it is brewing and taking the right steps to calm all of those involved. The art of listening and empathizing are crucial. Once the banker understood the researchers situation, he became more accommodating and the conflict ended.

To manage conflict one must read the signs. The ability to read feelings of the opposition during a negotiation is crucial to success. It is mainly psychological, contracts are emotional, it’s not just what the words say, but how the parties involved think and feel about them is what really matters. Those who have mastered the art of the deal realize the emotionally charged nature of any negotiation. The best negotiators can sense which points matter the most to the other party and concede there, while pressing for concession at the same time. Those who can resolve conflict a head of trouble are the kind of peacemakers vital to any organization.

You must be able to negotiate channels. Most channel relationships are long term. A channel relationship is the relationship that is formed between, manufacture and retail store. When negotiations are typically aggressive between channels it may threaten the future companies involved. The negotiations need to be sensitive to all parties involved and attempt to cater to all parties. It is up to the effective communicator to be able to negotiate between channels effectively.

To manage conflict one needs to be able to resolve conflict creatively. There are some “Classic moves for cooling down conflict,” and they are:

-First calm down, tune into your feelings an express them

-Show willingness to work things out

-State your point of view in neutral language

-Try to find equitable ways to resolve the dispute

The fourth competency is leadership. People with this competency can articulate and arouse enthusiasm for a shared vision and mission, step forward to lead as needed, regardless of position, guide the performance of others while holding them accountable, and they must lead by example.

In conclusion I hope that you have a little better understanding of some of the arts of influence. Know that emotions are contagious and we must be able to handle other peoples emotions as well as our own. There are five competencies to effective people skills and they are, influence, communication, conflict management, and leadership, there is also change catalyst, but that is in the next section.

Websites:

1- Search engine-google.com

Keyword: influence

Influence at Work~

www.influenceatwork.com

Keyword: communication

Learn Tips for Effective Communications At Work~

http://208.45.172.123/sh/employment/stories/employment--570020010205-090243.html

2- Search engine-yahoo.com

Keyword: business conflict management

Organizational Transformations~

www.orgtrans.com