"How We've Been Misled by 'Emotional Intelligence'" | Kris Girrell | TEDxNatick

Summary

In this talk, the speaker explores the concept of emotional intelligence, particularly in the context of leadership. He recounts his experience creating a 'periodic table of emotions' to engage a group of highly intelligent but emotionally binary individuals. The speaker then delves into a personal journey through grief and loss, culminating in 'The Dark Night of the Soul,' a transformative period that opened him up to a deeper emotional understanding. He argues that true emotional intelligence is not just about recognizing and categorizing emotions, but about achieving emotional intimacy, which fosters genuine connection and compassion.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The idea of communicating through equations was introduced as an ineffective method for emotional communication, highlighting the importance of emotional cues in human interaction.
• 🌟 Emotional intelligence is crucial for leadership, but it's not innate for everyone, suggesting that it can be learned and developed.
• 📚 The speaker's journey began with writing a book about long-term married men, which hinted at a lack of emotional tools in many individuals.
• 🔬 The exploration of 'The Dark Night of the Soul', a theological concept representing a crisis of faith or meaning, was connected to emotional upheaval.
• 💊 The pharmaceutical firm's senior R&D managers, all highly intelligent, needed to learn emotional intelligence to transition into leadership roles effectively.
• 📊 The creation of a 'Periodic Table of Human Emotions' was a creative approach to engage emotionally binary individuals in a scientific community.
• 😅 The speaker humorously assigned atomic weights and symbols to emotions, making the concept of emotional intelligence more accessible and less intimidating.
• 💔 Personal experiences of grief and loss triggered the speaker's 'Dark Night of the Soul', leading to a profound emotional awakening.
• 🤝 Emotional intimacy, not just intelligence, is key to forming deep connections and understanding others on a profound level.
• 🌐 The speaker concludes that emotional intimacy has the power to change the world for the better, making us more compassionate and connected.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the transcript?

The main theme of the transcript is the exploration of emotional intelligence and the importance of emotional intimacy in personal and professional relationships, emphasizing the transformative power of experiencing and understanding emotions deeply.

Why did the author create a periodic table of human emotions?

The author created a periodic table of human emotions as a tool to facilitate a conversation about emotions with a group of senior R&D managers who were not accustomed to discussing emotions and to make the topic more approachable and engaging for them.

What is the 'Dark Night of the Soul' mentioned in the transcript?

The 'Dark Night of the Soul' refers to a period of deep emotional and existential crisis where one's previously held beliefs and understandings no longer provide comfort or explanation for their current situation, often leading to profound personal transformation.

How does the author describe the emotional state of the R&D managers he worked with?

The author describes the R&D managers as 'emotionally binary,' meaning they could only express their emotions in very basic terms like 'good' or 'bad,' and they were not adept at recognizing or managing more complex emotional states.

What was the author's strategy to help the R&D managers understand different emotional states?

The author's strategy was to introduce a playful and scientific-sounding 'periodic table of human emotions' to help the R&D managers differentiate between various emotional states and to encourage them to engage in discussions about emotions.

What personal experiences did the author share that led to his own emotional awakening?

The author shared experiences of losing his best friend, a team member's death, and the closure of an early childhood education center he was running due to lack of teachers. These events collectively triggered his 'Dark Night of the Soul,' leading to a profound emotional awakening.

How does the author define compassion in the context of the 'Dark Night of the Soul'?

In the context of the 'Dark Night of the Soul,' the author defines compassion as the ability to suffer with and bear another person's feelings, which is born out of personal grief and emotional openness.

What is the significance of the 'hole in the chest' mentioned by the author?

The 'hole in the chest' is a metaphor for the author's emotional vulnerability and openness that resulted from his 'Dark Night of the Soul.' It signifies a deep connection to his emotions and the empathy he gained for others.

Why does the author suggest that 'emotional intelligence' might be better described as 'emotional intimacy'?

The author suggests that 'emotional intelligence' might be better described as 'emotional intimacy' because it's not just about recognizing and understanding emotions but also about deeply connecting with oneself and others on an emotional level.

What is the author's final message about the impact of emotional intimacy on the world?

The author's final message is that if everyone could learn and practice emotional intimacy, the world would be a better place, and each person would become a blessing to everyone they meet.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

The speaker begins by humorously suggesting that if we could communicate through equations, we might be better off, reflecting on the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) in leadership. Despite the complexity of emotions, EI is crucial for effective leadership. The speaker shares his journey of exploring EI, starting with writing a book on marital longevity, researching 'The Dark Night of the Soul,' and consulting for a pharmaceutical firm's R&D managers. He faced the challenge of discussing emotions with a group of highly intelligent but emotionally binary individuals. To engage them, he created a 'Periodic Table of Human Emotions,' a playful and visual tool to facilitate conversation about different emotional states.

05:01

😔 The Dark Night of the Soul and Emotional Awakening

The narrative shifts to the speaker's personal experiences, which he terms as 'The Dark Night of the Soul,' a period of intense emotional turmoil. He recounts the deaths of close friends and the painful decision to close a beloved early childhood education center due to lack of师资. These events led to profound grief and a deep emotional breakdown, which in turn opened him up to a new level of emotional awareness. He describes the transformative power of this period, which allowed him to connect with his emotions and develop a heightened sense of compassion. The speaker suggests that such experiences, while painful, are necessary for emotional growth and understanding.

10:01

🌟 Emotional Intimacy: The True Measure of Emotional Connection

In the final paragraph, the speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of emotional intimacy over mere emotional intelligence. He suggests that true emotional connection comes from being intimately acquainted with one's own emotions, which then enables deeper connections with others. He shares that his studies and the creation of the 'Periodic Table of Human Emotions' were academic until he experienced his own 'Dark Night,' which provided him with a profound understanding of emotions. The speaker posits that emotional intimacy is a universal human experience that transcends differences, and by embracing it, we can enrich our relationships and become a positive force in the lives of others.

Keywords

💡Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand, and manage both one's own emotions and those of others. In the video, it is discussed as a crucial skill for effective leadership, but the speaker suggests that it's not just about managing emotions; it's about the deeper connection and understanding that comes from being intimate with one's own emotions. The speaker's work with senior R&D managers at a pharmaceutical firm exemplifies this, where he had to find a way to engage individuals who were not accustomed to discussing emotions.

💡Equations

The script begins with a metaphorical suggestion that if we could communicate through equations, we might be better off, which is a nod to the analytical and logical nature of equations. However, the speaker quickly counters this idea by emphasizing the importance of emotional cues and communication beyond words, which equations cannot capture. This sets the stage for the discussion on the limitations of purely rational communication and the necessity of emotional intelligence.

💡Emotional Toolbox

The 'emotional toolbox' is a metaphor used in the script to describe the set of skills or abilities one has to manage and express emotions. The speaker mentions having a 'fairly skimpy emotional toolbox,' indicating a lack of emotional skills, which is a realization that propels him to explore emotional intelligence further. This concept is central to the narrative as it drives the speaker's journey to understand and improve emotional connections.

💡The Dark Night of the Soul

This concept, originally a theological principle, is used in the script to describe a period of deep emotional and existential crisis where one's previous understanding of the world and one's place in it is challenged. The speaker's personal experiences, including the death of loved ones and the closure of a business, lead him to this dark place, which ultimately opens him up to a deeper understanding of emotions and compassion.

💡Periodic Table of Emotions

The speaker created a 'Periodic Table of Emotions' as a tool to engage with individuals who were not comfortable discussing emotions in a traditional way. This table categorizes emotions in a structured, scientific manner, with lighter emotions at the top and heavier, more complex ones at the bottom. It's a creative approach to facilitate a conversation about emotional states and their nuances, making the concept more accessible to those who are more comfortable with logical and systematic frameworks.

💡Chemical Symbols and Atomic Weights

In the 'Periodic Table of Emotions,' each emotion is assigned a chemical symbol and an atomic weight, adding a playful and scientific twist to the concept. For instance, 'love' is given the weight of 'pie' to reflect its importance in making the world go round. This creative naming and weighting system is used to make the discussion of emotions more engaging and relatable, particularly for an audience that might be more accustomed to scientific terminology.

💡Emotional Binary

The term 'emotionally binary' is used to describe individuals who can only express their emotions in very basic terms, typically categorizing them as either 'good' or 'bad.' The speaker uses this term to describe the R&D managers he worked with, highlighting the challenge of helping them understand the complexity and value of a broader emotional spectrum.

💡Compassion

Compassion is defined as the ability to suffer with and bear another person's feelings. In the video, it is presented as a critical outcome of the 'Dark Night of the Soul' experience, where the speaker is deeply moved by grief and learns to connect with others on a more profound emotional level. Compassion is portrayed as the glue that holds relationships together, especially during challenging times.

💡Intimacy

The concept of 'intimacy' in the context of the video refers to a deep, personal connection with one's own emotions and those of others. The speaker suggests that 'emotional intimacy' might be a more accurate term than 'emotional intelligence' because it emphasizes the closeness and understanding that come from being fully present with one's emotions and those of others.

💡The Dark Night of the Soul (Personal Experience)

The speaker's personal experience of 'The Dark Night of the Soul' involves a series of profound losses and challenges that lead to an emotional breakdown. This experience is pivotal as it forces the speaker to confront and engage with a wide range of emotions, ultimately leading to a transformation in his emotional understanding and capacity for compassion.

💡Emotional Vocabulary

The 'emotional vocabulary' refers to the collection of words and concepts one uses to describe and understand emotions. The speaker notes that many people, particularly those in technical fields, may have a limited emotional vocabulary, which can hinder their ability to communicate and connect on an emotional level. The 'Periodic Table of Emotions' is introduced as a tool to expand this vocabulary and facilitate deeper emotional conversations.

Highlights

The idea that we could improve communication by speaking in equations is critiqued as it overlooks the importance of non-verbal cues in communication.

Emotional intelligence is identified as a key trait in effective leadership, but the speaker questions whether it can be learned.

The speaker's journey into understanding emotional intelligence began with three significant events that converged around the same time.

Interviews with long-term married men provided insights into the emotional toolbox, suggesting a need for better emotional understanding.

The concept of 'The Dark Night of the Soul' is introduced as a period of crisis that challenges one's understanding of the world.

The speaker's work with a pharmaceutical firm's senior R&D managers highlighted the challenges of discussing emotions with individuals who are not accustomed to such dialogue.

A creative approach was taken by developing a 'periodic table of human emotions' to facilitate discussions on emotional intelligence.

The periodic table of emotions was designed to be both technical and playful, with each emotion assigned a chemical symbol and atomic weight.

The speaker emphasizes that emotional intelligence is not just about academic discussion but requires practical application and personal experience.

Personal experiences of loss and business closure led the speaker to a profound emotional breakdown, illustrating the power of 'The Dark Night of the Soul'.

Grief is described as a catalyst for compassion, which is essential for forming deep, empathetic connections with others.

The speaker suggests that 'emotional intimacy' might be a more accurate term than 'emotional intelligence', as it emphasizes the personal connection with emotions.

The Dark Night of the Soul is portrayed as a transformative experience that can lead to a rewiring of one's emotional connections.

The speaker concludes that emotional intimacy has the potential to greatly improve the world and our interactions with others.

The talk ends with a call to action for individuals to learn and practice emotional intimacy to become a blessing to those they meet.

Transcripts

[Music]

you know we'd all be a whole lot better

if we could just learn to speak in

equations that's what a scientist once

told me once when when I was working

with him on his leadership

skills of course you you and I know how

awful that would be because most of what

we receive in communication happens

beyond the words we speak in the form of

the cues that we pick up from each other

and people who are able to pick up on

those cues are said to have emotional

intelligence research also tells us that

that great leaders are also good at

emotional

intelligence but my question is what if

you're not so good

is something that you can

learn is there something that opens up

that emotional can of worms inside and

helps us better understand what's going

on inside us and our friends and our

co-workers well about 5 years ago I

experienced a perfect storm of three

things coming together that opened this

conversation for me and I'd like to

share with you what happened in the

process the first was I had just written

a book called A married man's Survival

Guide which was based on having

interviewed a bunch of men who had been

monogamously married for 35 to 60 years

so I had a fresh set of clues that

perhaps I was not the only man around

who had a fairly skimpy emotional

toolbox the second thing was I had begun

researching a theological principle

called The Dark Night of the

Soul which is that scary place where

everything that you hold to be true in

explaining how the world

Works no longer explains your current

situation I'll get to that in a minute

the third thing was I was hired by a

pharmaceutical firm to come in and work

with their senior R&D managers on the

topic of emotional intelligence and it's

there that My Story begins now I'm sure

a lot of you watch television and you're

familiar with the The Big Bang Theory

and therefore the character of

Sheldon imagine a whole room full of

sheldons guys and they were all guys who

had been hired because of their

intelligence each of whom thought he was

the brightest in the room and then we're

promoted for those same skills and now

we're being moved into senior

leadership but the only problem is at

that level you can't lead by being the

brightest kid in the room it actually

comes across as abrasive and

arrogant but at the same time I I just

couldn't walk in and start talking to

them about emotions because it wasn't

part of the equation that any one of

them had ever

learned I was I was just a little bit uh

upset and and and curious about where to

start because most of these guys were

what I would classify as emotionally

binary that is to say they if you ask

them how they felt they'd either say

good or bad so I I was struggling with

how to come up with a way to talk to

them about emotions and the fact that

perhaps frustration wasn't the same as

anger and that managing people in

different emotional states was actually

something that required different skills

and then one day I was having lunch with

a friend of mine and he noticed that she

had a poster up on the wall of

vegetables only it was arranged in a

periodic table like that thing that we

had to remember in high school chemistry

and I thought what if there was a

periodic table of human emotions

well a quick search of the web found

nothing so I created one and it looked

like this now relax is not a quiz at the

end but if I borrowed something as

technical as melo's periodic table it

had better be as robust or it and I

would be thrown out so you'll find

things on it like the lighter emotions

are towards the top and the heavier and

more complex emotions towards the bottom

with the radioactive sequence is being

replaced by passions and depressions

which are not only heavy and complex but

highly

unstable and it also progresses from the

more visceral or gut emotions on the

left towards the more lighter and heady

and spiritual emotions on the right and

then to make it look more scientific

each emotion was given a chemical symbol

and and an atomic

weight and then I started playing with

it to make it fun because after all

these are guys

and we have to play so you'll find

things in it that you know that kind of

reflect that like for example relief is

expressed as a

prescription pleasure was

M love was given the weight of pie

because love makes the world go

round and how about gratitude

24/7 the heaviest of all the emotions

was dread it was given the estimated

weight of the world 6 * 10 24th metric

times geek

alert of course denial doesn't believe

it has any weight so none was

listed and it was fun it was fun getting

them to see those things and and having

them work through that and it

accomplished my task of getting them

involved in a conversation about

emotions but it's not emotional

intelligence at the end of the day it

was just an academic discussion but I

had to start there because after all

these are guys and forgive me for being

Politically

Incorrect but 35 years on a men's team

and doing a lot of men's work and having

written the married man's Survival Guide

I had a lot of information that we're

not all that good at Mo

emotions in fact many of us have been

taught not to

feel so you have to kind of start with

the vocabulary first but as they said at

the end of the day it was just an

academic discussion and it would remain

an academic discussion until the stuff

hits the

fan like When leaders find out that they

can't lead just because they're the

smartest kid in the room or like for you

and me when the rug gets pulled out from

underneath us and we do a total face

plant in the

mud those

humbling and often humiliating experien

es trigger The Dark Night of the

Soul it can look like

this last year in the span of just a

couple of months I experienced the death

of my best friend a a man who even after

he' moved the Florida 15 years ago he

and I had a phone call every Thursday

morning at 5:00

a.m. and he was suddenly gone and right

on the heels of that a man on my men's

team passed away he was given six to 12

months by his

doctors time to get his Affairs in order

and 5 days later he

died but those weren't The Killers the

real Crusher came when I had to decide

to Cho to to close a business that I was

running but it wasn't just a

business it was an early childhood

education center for which we couldn't

find enough teachers and that lack of

stability isn't healthy for kids so we

had to close

it I wanted to make sure that all the

children had a place to go the Monday

after we closed so we decided to outplay

them into all the other schools in the

area and and that Tuesday night of the

last week I was alone in my office

photocopying records to help with the

transition it was about 7:30 at

night I was surrounded by stacks of

yellow

shoulders when it hit

me this isn't

paper these are children that I

loved that I promised their parents that

I would defend with my

life and I started to

cry that just sniffles in watery eyes I

mean full out boohoo

tears and I couldn't

stop I cried the whole way home and I

ran into the bedroom and I buried my

head in the pillow and I just screamed

it hurt that

much and after four hours of convulsing

sobbing I fell

asleep and I woke up the next

morning like

this I look kind of much the same but

inside it was totally different I

changed I was

open there was a hole in my chest you

could have driven a m truck

through it was The Dark Night of the

soul I had read about it I had studied

it for the last five years and I just

completed my thesis on it in May but I

had no idea what it was like to be

ripped open and turned inside

out and out of that hole flowed all

kinds of emotions some that weren't even

on the

chart and driven Ren by grief that truck

full of

emotions put me in touch with

compassion you know Bren a brown says

that regret is the birthplace of empathy

and I'd parallel that and say that grief

is the birthplace of

compassion compassion literally Define

it's the ability to suffer with and to

bear with another person's

feelings because you know

compassion is the stuff of

relationships it's the glue that holds

us together when everything around us is

falling apart and it's the function of

the Dark Knight of the soul to tear down

the ego and teach us

compassion being inside out H having

compassion first for yourself allows you

to see it in other

people The Dark Knight literally rewires

and reconnects us to each other through

emotions now your Dark Knight doesn't

have to look like mine in fact I'm

pretty much guarantee that it

doesn't it can be a big bang or it can

be a hundred little things that all roll

up

but at the end of the day it's something

that opens you up and put you in touch

with your emotions and being wide open

like that allowing yourself to feel and

see the feelings in other

people when you're intimate with your

feelings you know you're completely

different the relationship

changes

being maybe we've been misguided a

little bit though by calling it

emotional intelligence when in fact it's

emotional intimacy

when you're intimate with your emotions

it doesn't matter if you're black or

white or Jewish or Muslim or old or

young or male or female the one

thing the one thing that all seven

billion of us have in common is the

capacity to feel all those

emotions and a feeling the Dark Knight

feeling might be different for you it

might be as one CEO said to me waking up

in the middle of the

night knowing that he had the lives of a

couple hundred people in his hands and

feeling not the least bit worthy of

that what could be as simple as seeing a

picture of a Syrian man in total Agony

as he holds the limp body of his

lifeless

child but here's the bottom line

line emotional intelligence isn't about

memorizing a whole bunch of words or

ascribing some arbitrary weight to them

to get their

gravity it's just the ability to connect

with another person on an intimate level

it's the ability to know what's going on

here and see it in

another and when we do

that we change the relationship totally

with all my

studies I was just another

Sheldon with knowledge about emotions

but pretty much not attached to them it

seems some of us need a perfect storm or

a dark night to get in touch with our

emotions and that kind of brings me back

to the beginning only let me paraphrase

my scientific client who wanted to speak

in equations

you

know if we could all just learn a little

bit of this this emotional intimacy

stuff the world would indeed be a whole

lot better and we would become a

blessing to each one that we

meet

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

namaste

[Music]