Project Bloom: A Yogi's Wisdom for the Workplace by Kevin Wilson

Author:Kevin Wilson [Wilson, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2012-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

16

Emotional Intelligence

Along with the HR Diversity Task Force and the management interview sessions, everyone in the HR department attended an emotional intelligence workshop. It was one of the three things Samantha and her leadership team had offered as a response to the employee survey and feedback sessions.

I knew emotional intelligence was a hot topic in corporate training circles, just like diversity, but I really didn’t know any more about it. The class was conducted by a pair of industrial psychologists who explained that emotional intelligence was the study of how emotions affected our energy, commitment, and motivation. Our emotions determined how we saw other people, whether we liked or disliked them, accepted or rejected them, approached or avoided them.

At the root of it all was our personality. Our emotions were layered like an onion with the first layer shaped by our age, race, gender, and physical ability. The next layer included our marital status, religion, income, education, work experience, and geographic location. The outer layer was influenced by our job type, management status, seniority level, work location, and group membership. Dealing with individuals across these differences could trigger powerful emotional responses.

Emotional intelligence wanted us to look inside ourselves to find out what makes us tick. We needed to get comfortable within our own skins, and understand our likes and dislikes and trigger points. We needed to develop the skill of maintaining a positive attitude in the face of upsetting emotions. We needed to develop empathy toward others, so that we could look beyond our initial emotions and be more accepting of the differences between people. Finally, we needed to learn how to communicate effectively to resolve conflicts and build productive relationships.

The emotional intelligence workshop involved a variety of group activities that helped demonstrate the concepts. Everyone also got a nice full-color workbook with questionnaires and diagrams that were supposed to assist you in developing your emotional intelligence skills.

While I enjoyed the class, when it was over I couldn’t recall many of the concepts. Needless to say, that meant I couldn’t really employ any of the techniques back on the job. I realized that was the difference between these corporate training initiatives and a meditation practice. By practicing yoga and taking time to meditate, all of the onion layers of emotional bias fell away naturally. There was no need for workbook exercises or decision-making flowcharts. It just happened naturally without having to think about it.

Sadhguru had talked during the business roundtable about the advantages of having a purposeful personality. It was a personality that you created consciously—the way you wanted it to be.

“The word ‘personality’ comes from the word ‘persona,’” Sadhguru said. “Persona comes from Greek drama. They used to use a mask to play a certain role because the same actor used to play multiple roles in the drama, so there are different masks here. So, you want to play a particular role, you take that particular mask, hold it this way with the handle, and speak in a particular way.

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