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Company News and Recent Publications
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NEWS!
Interview on health care conflicts published in Medscape in June: "Partner Conflicts: Fatal or Solvable?"
New downloads: Our new TIP cards, published for friends and clients in recognition of our 15th anniversary, can be found at our website. Scroll down to the end.
Guest blog post published in March: When Business Owners Get Divorced for Quincy CFO.
Guest blog post published in October: "What Every CEO Needs to Know About Dispute Resolution" for Wendt Partners.
Ellen Kandell became a certified mediator by the International Mediation Institute in April 2014!
Interview of Ellen Kandell in national ADR newsletter
How the Failure to Settle Affects the Workplace for Employees and Companies.
Negotiation Primer, Disclosures Magazine Virginia Society of Accountants. Email us for a copy.
Newly Revised Fact sheet
The High Cost of Conflict Email us for a copy.
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Dear Reader,
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 Dear Reader,
Being "smart" is one of the most commonly used memes in relation to success. We want to look smart, make smart decisions, and be smart about our careers. However, being a mediator has taught me that being 'smart' means more than we often realize.
This newsletter builds on broadly acclaimed author Daniel Goleman's work to remind us that intelligence cannot be separated from the blessings and curses of human emotionality - and that this is a vital insight in the workplace.
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Why Emotional Intelligence matters in your job, and in mine
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In the mid 1990's psychologist Daniel Goleman caused a stir with his book Emotional Intelligence. Intelligence Quotient (IQ), argued Goleman, is an impoverished way to understand intelligence - no matter how much we value rational faculties, anyone performing them is still human, and being human means having to deal with the messiness of emotions. Accomplishing tangible outcomes with our rational skills - publishing a book, closing a business deal, making a good decision - will automatically put us in contact with emotional boosts or complications, whether our own or those of the people around us. As Sandy Hollis and Debra Clapshaw put it, "Emotional intelligence is the partner of rationality."
Part of Goleman's intervention was simply arguing the importance of the "soft skill" of emotional intelligence (EI) into popular discourse. But the other part of his genius was to point out that rational and emotional intelligence are actually wrapped up in a complex "dance" which enables (or disables) "thought itself."[1] In other words, our emotions can facilitate our rational capabilities, but conversely we can also apply our rational capabilities to affect emotional outcomes. Understanding this relationship and being able to demystify the role of our emotions, thereby developing our sense of personal agency, characterizes emotional intelligence.Put handily by Fred McGrath, EI means having "an adept relationship between feeling, thinking, and acting."
Emotions: in or out of place?
Goleman's argument unseated common sense notions about the skill-sets necessary for occupying high-powered roles in, for example, law or business - and anywhere confrontation and antagonism are likely to arise. Earlier truisms assumed that emotions were purely inconvenient intruders in these spheres: the best emotional face is a 'poker face,' the symbol of suppressing emotionality in lieu of rationality. These assumptions are still being unraveled.
The relevant insight here from conflict resolution is that emotions can never be removed from any process in which divergent interests are involved. Emotions are internal to the process of reasoning itself, and they are likely to become more influential and relevant as more is at stake. Convincing yourself that your field doesn't require EI because you use a lot of 'hard skills' could be a huge mistake.
Emotional Intelligence in the workplace
McGrath states that EI is "the key to improving client building, existing relationships, negotiation techniques and leadership skills" - which makes it extremely relevant to nearly any private or public sphere occupation today. The statistics back this claim up:
Similar statistics reflect that hot-shots who burn out quickly in their career are likely to lack emotional and not technical skills. And even beyond the workplace, emotional intelligence has a whole slew of positive side effects, including avoiding depression, better interpersonal relationships and - you guessed it - less destructive conflicts.
The Emotionally Intelligent Mediator
Even in the field of conflict resolution, a lot of practitioners feel that emotions can hinder the process of conflict transformation or resolution. Daniel Bierknes and Kristine Paranica, however, ask us to reevaluate whether that assumption actually matches up with reality. Is it really better to emphasize the thinking and not the feeling, and does that really reflect your experience of conflict resolution?
In the first place, Bierknes and Paranica emphasize that, using Goleman's argument, EI about our own responses is paramount to developing our capacity for empathy. If we cannot be reflective about how we feel when someone gets angry or sad, it is unlikely we will be able to manage our own emotional responses well enough to help facilitate the conversation in the room. Second, these authors remind us that any resolution itself is an emotional process. Overemphasizing rationality in conflict can leave important emotions unacknowledged, inhibiting full resolution.
The Good News
The best part of all this is that, while we often think of IQ as an expression of innate capabilities we are born with, EI is undeniably an attribute which we develop as a lifelong journey. See my TIPS below for practical suggestions on how to work on EI.
[1] Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ (London: Bloomsbury, 1996).
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TIPS: Avoid the Thumb Wars
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- Practice Observing Your Emotions: as you go through your day, practice an awareness of your own emotional status. When you have an emotional response to something that occurs or is said, ask yourself what that emotion is. Did it make you angry? Sad? Happy? Carry on a conversation with yourself about your emotions and how they affect you and your responses.
- Look for the emotional causalities: When something goes awry between peers, colleagues, friends, or family, ask yourself what emotions might be part of the situation. You might be speculating, so beware of developing untried assumptions, but challenging yourself to acknowledge the emotional dimension and its relevance might alter how you see the situation and open up new possibilities.
- Beware of pure rationality: If you hear yourself or others trying to forcefully argue a rational point when it just isn't taking, remember that a rational competency is only part of the reasoning process. Remember that overly emphasizing "being rational" can be a way of resisting a reflective acknowledgement of emotions.
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Conflict Resolution in the Community
|  Basic Mediation Training, Ellicott City, MD Sept. 28-Oct. 2, 2015 For registration information go to Maryland State Bar Association
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Put your organization in a conflict healthy environment.
Sincerely,
Ellen |
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Ellen F. Kandell, Esq.
Alternative Resolutions, LLC
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