A641.4.3.RB - Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence

This blog entry, Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence, I will be sharing instances where I have experienced a tipping point at work and in my personal life. What was the situation? What did I do? What was the result? What would I do differently?

Whether at the individual, team, or organizational level, visions, and shared visions are generally developed to create motivation to move from a current state to a desired end state. These motivations can be used as positive emotional attractor or negative emotional attractor to create or deflate what we think is our idea selves. Ideal self is defined as “how I should be”. (Boyatzis, Rochford, & Taylor, Frontiers in Psychology, 2015)

What exactly are positive and negative emotional attractors? The positive emotional attractor, the PEA, and negative emotional attractor, the NEA, are two states comprised of distinct emotional, psychological, physiological, and neurological characteristics that create a force around your thinking, feeling, and behaviors. (Boyatzis, 2006)

80 – 100% of the stories people remembered had to do with somebody who invoked aspiration/idea self/personal vision (Boyatzis, The Positive PEA and Negative NEA, 2013) Like many, my tipping point came from a parental figure, my grandfather. My father’s parents raised 5 kids in the late 1940s and 1950s. So, when I grandfather started his family jobs where far and in between for people of color and I didn’t understand that. All I knew or saw was that he owned a nice car and all his kids went to college. I didn’t know that he actually worked manual back breaking jobs, like working on the railroad, for 40+ years. So, when he would say to me “work with your head and not your back” I had no understanding of what that meant.

I was blessed to come from an athletic family and received a scholarship to attend college, but in my first 2 years blow out my knee. And that’s when I start contracting aircraft mechanic. I started making more money than I had ever before. I was no longer thinking about school. One year I had worked so much and saved that I decided to take the summer off. But I still wanted to have a little spending money coming. So, I ask a friend that laid cement as a side hustle if I could work and he said sure. I was in the best shape of my life, better than I ever was when I played football. But this was August in lower Alabama with 95-100 degree temperatures and 100% humidity. I throw up several times, was physically hurting, and almost pasted out several times. And while guys 10 to 40 lighter than me laughed at me.

This was my tipping point, both my positive and negative emotional attractors. All I could think about was my grandfather’s quote “work with your head and not your back”. For that following fall, I started my journey to complete my education.

 Needless to say, I never completed that week of work, nor have I ever asked that friend for my pay. That job as a cement paver helped me find my Idea Self.

References

Boyatzis, R. (2006). USING TIPPING POINTS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND COGNITIVE COMPETENCIES TO PREDICT FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF LEADERS. Psicothema, 124-131. Retrieved from Psicothema: http://www.psicothema.com/psicothema.asp?id=3287

Boyatzis, R. (2013, September 11). The Positive PEA and Negative NEA. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=197x4dmuug8&feature=youtu.be

Boyatzis, R., Rochford, K., & Taylor, S. (2015, May 21). Frontiers in Psychology. Retrieved from The role of the positive emotional attractor in vision and shared vision: toward effective leadership, relationships, and engagement: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4439543/