In part one and part two exploration of Leadership through reading peoples’ emotions – (i.e: Emotional Intelligence) I covered several key areas. here are the main points to consider:
- Emotional Intelligence is a strong factor to effective leadership and an important element of E.I. is the ability to read emotions. (for more on effective leadership see our Leadership Course).
- Quite a few mammals are able to read our emotions so we can conclude words are not the most essential source of information.
- The seat of emotions is our face. There are at least seven universal expressions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. These and more can be learned from experience.
- Combined with facial expressions we also assimilate voice volume, pitch and body posture to create a holistic judgement about the person’s internal states.
- This information needs to be processed by the brain at many levels. To do this the brain is constantly making predictions about the world around it.
- These predictions lead to creating virtual models of other people’s minds in our own brains.
- The ability to create these virtual models, combined with predictions made from accurate information, allow people’s brains to literally synchronise.
- This synchronisation is a strong indication of true understanding and connection between two people. You are ‘clicking’.
So that’s a good look at the theory. What do we do about all this in practice?