Diversity (DVO) Office Leader Lisa Gutierrez presents a certificate of appreciation to Rochelle Lari at Tuesday's Women's History Month talk. Lari spoke about emotional intelligence.
Before answering this question, perhaps you should talk to Rochelle Lari, diversity program leader at Sandia National Laboratories, who spoke about emotional intelligence on Tuesday at the Physics Building Auditorium as part of Women's History Month.
"As humans we need to become a little more intelligent about our feelings," said Lari.
According to Lari, emotional intelligence is about being honest, being aware of your feelings and the feelings of others - it's about being smart with emotions and exhibiting empathy and compassion. Sentiments and input from the audience echoed her definition.
In a video, which was shown as part of the presentation, creator of "Working with Emotional Intelligence" Daniel Goleman outlined the five essential competencies of emotional intelligence. The first three competencies are how people relate to themselves while the second two are how they related to others. The steps are presented in chronological order:
Step 1) Self-Awareness - Emotional intelligence starts with self-awareness, being in touch with your values, strengths and weaknesses and simultaneously expressing your feelings to others in a constructive way.
Step 2) Self-Regulation - This building block entails accepting responsibility for your actions - managing your feelings so you can reason well and make logical choices when responding to emotional triggers.
Step 3) Self-Motivation - The third component of emotional intelligence encourages individuals to "strive to be in the moment" and resist self -defeating thoughts. According to Goleman, high performers can see to what degree they are responsible for setbacks and thus have the power to affect situations.
Step 4) Empathy - Switching the focus to someone else's feelings, empathy encourages an individual to see the world through the eyes of others. In short, empathy requires "recognizing and responding to other people's emotions."
Step 5) Effective relationships - This last step combines the first four emotional intelligence skills to help an individual consistently connect with others in a positive way. Effective relationships build consensus and support for team goals.
In addition, Goleman's video contained case studies illustrating how emotional intelligence helped various businesses and organizations such as State Street Bank, Kaiser Permanente, North Beach Volleyball Academy and Nichols Aluminum achieve their objectives.
One manager at Nichols Aluminum stated, "When they first came to me with [the emotional intelligence program] I thought - oh my goodness, must be a California love-in." However, he acknowledged that the program has helped with the difficulties previously experienced at his facility. "There are no more screaming matches," he said with a smile.
Throughout the talk, Lari espoused the personal benefits of emotional intelligence, which she said include greater career success, stronger personal relationships, increased optimism and confidence and better health.
In particular, she emphasized the concept of achieving better health. "When we get stressed, we experience it from here up (pointing at her waist and motioning upward with her hands). I have seen people come in for an interview wearing shoulders pads, who leave with earmuffs," she said as she hunched her shoulders upward toward her ears. "Emotional intelligence reduces stress and creates an environment where you can have better health."
Additionally, Lari insisted that there are professional benefits to emotional intelligence, such as improved communication and less workplace conflict. "With communication comes trust. You have to have the trust first," adding, "actions speak louder than words - 65 percent of communication is body language. It's not necessarily the spoken message, but all the other messages that come across." She said that emotional intelligence helps manage theses messages.
Further, a speaker in the video argues that emotional intelligence gives you an edge - the higher someone goes in an organization, the more emotional intelligence skills matter. "So-called IQ is woefully inadequate in predicting an individual's success in the real world," he said. He suggested that while IQ gets people "in the door," it is emotional intelligence that makes them star performers.
Rochelle Lari at Tuesday's talk about emotional intelligence. Lari is program leader for Sandia National Laboratories' diversity leadership program. Photos by Ed Vigil, Public Affairs
Lari agrees. "You need technical intelligence to get hired, but it doesn't stop there," she explained. She said that people can be technically excellent, but if they "leave bodies in the road" to achieve their tasks, they have essentially failed. "Technical knowledge is important, and by that I mean your accounting skills, receptionist skills, administrative skills as well as your scientific and research skills, but you need people to get your work done. It is important to acknowledge that we all have emotions," she added.
Therefore, she asserts, emotional intelligence has a positive impact on measurable business goals, including increased productivity, decreased downtime and fewer employee sick days. It also propagates the cycle of innovation among those who create ideas, elevate ideas, refine ideas, and finally those who implement the ideas.
Specific to Laboratory culture (Los Alamos, Sandia and Livermore), Lari mentioned that emotional intelligence could be used to address class-ism and a "mind-set of arrogance." She said, "I talked to students who are not coming back [to intern at the Labs] because the people they have to work for have lower emotional intelligence [than the students]."
She also cited the three-legged stool example relayed to her by a Lab employee. According to the analogy, the customer sits on the stool - the first leg is science, the second leg is operations (safety, security, requirements, etc.) and the third leg consists of people. When one leg takes precedence over the others, it grows in length and the customer is at risk of falling off. "It is the job of the Laboratory to maintain a balance," she said.
Finally, Lari noted the importance of inclusion and straight talk. "Inclusion is a behavior, a choice we make - it is also a business choice. Differences should not be seen as wrong. We should strive for a work culture and environment that is very [inclusive]," she said. In reference to straight talk she added, "It is not what you say, but how you say it. Emotional intelligence says that within the context of my workspace, I am going to translate my feelings - my gut - into a language that would be well received by others."
In closing, Goreman summarizes the importance of emotional intelligence in his video when he said, "Nothing great in life has ever been achieved without the power of emotion behind it."
--Hildi Kelsey