The Emotion Roadmap

A tool for becoming more Emotionally Intelligent

 

 

Gain knowledge & power from knowing your emotional abilities

 

People who experience the MSCEIT often feel like a veil has been lifted. It helps them understand why certain strengths they have are difficult for others to duplicate and why some emotional abilities are harder for them than for others.  Just like analytical intelligence, the Mayer Salovey Caruso model of EI measures ability and potential.  Knowing how you score, what the scores mean, and how it applies to what is important in life is a very powerful learning experience that can lead to more effective performance.

 

Emotional Intelligence is a major part of the puzzle of human behavior and knowing one’s scores and potential can have a significant impact on performance. The lower your scores the more it is important to understand what they mean. You will want to build on compensating strategies and learn how to develop new ones.  If you are high in EI our workshops will help you to teach others what you intuitively have been doing and it will increase your knowledge about how to leverage these strengths.

 

Learning about Emotional Intelligence and the Emotion Roadmap:

 

We focus on the Mayer-Salovey theory of EI - a unique, powerful, and very useful model.  The model includes two major branches and four abilities.  The two branches are Experiential and Strategic.  The four abilities are identify, use, understand and manage emotions. Following is a somewhat simple explanation of the Emotion Roadmap followed by an example of how you might use the Emotion Roadmap in a business setting.

 

Identify emotions: The Emotion Roadmap begins by helping to identify emotions you are feeling, and what others are feeling.

 

Use emotions: The next step is to decide what emotions you want to feel based on what you are trying to do.

 

What you are feeling reflects your current situation and what you wish to feel is your ideal future state. 

 

Understand emotions: Next the Emotion Roadmap requires thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to go. This is the understanding emotion part of the model.  What do you know about yourself and the key people you are dealing with?  What might make you and the others feel the way you want? What do you know about the science of emotions and how emotions work that will help you with your planning.

 

Managing emotions: The last part of the Roadmap is managing emotions and it involves executing your plan based on what you are able to do and what you are willing to do.

 

For example:

 

Identify - Recognize emotion

You are experiencing a high level of anxiety about a presentation you are to make later in the day.  Your entire team is counting on you to be able to sell the leaders of your organization on investing resources in the plan you have put together with your team.

 

Use - Match emotion to task

You want to experience or feel more confidence and less anxiety. You want senior management to feel enthusiastic, confident and hopeful about your proposal.  You want your team to feel proud and excited about the presentation of your work together.

 

Understand – Strategically determine the cause of your feelings and what might change them.

The presentation you have to make in the afternoon is critical to your team’s success and all your colleagues are depending on you.  You would like some additional time to review your notes and practice giving your presentation.  You had planned some additional time in the morning for a final review.  Unfortunately your immediate supervisor unexpectedly asked you to handle some important business for him that morning.  You have two scheduled meetings with colleagues coming up that are also important, but not necessarily critical.  You begin to consider not attending so you can finish your review for the presentation later in the day.

 

Manage – Determine what you are able and willing to do about your feelings in order to make effective choices.

You decide the presentation is too critical and so you decide to cancel the other meetings.  You realize that the people you will be meeting with will be upset with you.  To manage their emotions intelligently you contact them right away, indicate how sorry you are, and assure them that you will contact them to reschedule as soon as this presentation is complete.  You then close your door and finish your final review, confident that you have made the correct choice!