Emotional Intelligence

Today, at our "team-meeting" we're having a 1-hour presentation given to us on "Emotional Intelligence". "Emotional Intelligence" in the context our working environment, at its very base level, is the use of what are called "pedestal words" like:

Please. Thank You! Fantastic! Wonderful! Great Job!

No seriously. That's the first layer of "emotional intelligence". The second layer involves appropriate sentences that incorporate these words. For instance, instead of saying "Can I get your phone number?" you say "If you would be so great as a provide me with a phone number, please..."

That's the second layer.

The third layer does get a little interesting and a little more complicated. It's acknowledging the communication pattern the person you're speaking with uses... So an example:

If someone says "I SEE something is wrong with my etc..."

You have to note that they are using the sensory expression of "see" as opposed to "feel" or "hear". So you wouldn't want to say "So to be sure I understand you correctly, you FEEL there's something wrong with your etc..." Instead you would probably want to consciously word it like "I SEE what you're saying, and it LOOKS like you're telling me that something is wrong with your etc..."

Now I'm born and raised in the birthplace of the corporate silicon mentality. For fear of dating myself, I've been in these corporate environments for more than 10 years. Countless things happen in these sterile environments, much like the movie "Office Space", but I'm here to tell you... this too, is nothing but shit. It's exactly this deluge of numbingness that landed my mom, all her friends, and all my friend's parents on cocktails of prozac and xanax in the 80's.

I love how some of my fellow employees who've had this same job for 10 years, or so, sit there at these trainings and become enraptured into this great holy gift of shit training they're receiving. My department is full of people who've had gastric bypasses, and I'm starting to think it's less the suburban food they eat and more the manure they've been fed thru the years... Plain and simply, you are not training them anything. They have no VISION, no EAR for what you're saying, and cannot FEEL anything really.

I had my monthly "one-on-one" with my boss a couple days ago. He said that I was among the pre-selected people that they had to warn about the presentation on "Emotional Intelligence". They feared I would give the presenter a hard time. Yes, I am that person. It's not that I'm rebellious, it's more that they have a good idea that I'm not going to be completely comfortable with being told, basically, how to be a kind person. And on top of that, I have a hard time being surrounded by people where there's a possibility that these concepts could be completely new to them.

Anyway. Being disgruntled at work and detesting the politics behind your work environment is nothing new. Being among the small handful of people out of 200-person environment, who the whole department SEES does things a little differently is ok. Me and Chanelle are a very visible tandem at work. Someone in my most recent row of 12 cubicles unknowingly complimented me the other day:

"You know Eric, when you're in a bad mood, the entire row can feel that you're in a bad mood, and everyone is quiet and doesn't talk and just focuses on their work... but when you're happy and you're talking, the whole row lights up and everyone has a great time."

Which just goes to show that "Emotional Intelligence" runs a lot deeper than saying "Please..."

Ok this is my last post about work for the week, I promise.