Chapter 4: Learning Emotional Intelligence

How do we know if someone is holding back? Emotional Intelligence. We have to listen to both their words and their emotions. It’s not that people are intentionally lying. There are many good reasons why people might hold back information, especially when we’re the new kid on the block. So as a coach, and especially when joining a new team, it's important to learn Emotional Intelligence.

To help with this, chapter 4 also introduces our second major piece of instruction, the Emotional Reaction Scale. To help Zach learn Emotional Intelligence, Angela introduces him to the research of Jonathan Haidt and shares practical techniques for understanding the emotional context behind what someone is saying. It’s another people-centered technique from the world of Usability Testing.

After this excerpt, we wrap up the chapter with something you can only do in a novel. We describe a meeting from an emotional point of view. Through narration we get to hear the thoughts of Angela as she reads people’s body language to better understand what they are NOT saying.

---

Angela teaching Emotional Intelligence to Zach

An excerpt about learning Emotional Intelligence from "Shift: from Product to People", Chapter 4, "Let Emotion Be Your Guide":

Zach kicked them off, “Okay, what would you like to tackle first?”

Angela looked at Zach, “My initial approach is always about people and building healthy relationships with the teams. That way, I can help enable you all to solve your own problems through any new tools and techniques. I find an environment of psychological safety vital to producing high-performing teams.”

Angela continued, “For me, that process starts with alignment: alignment of me with your teams, and alignment of the teams with Agile principles. The best way I’ve found to foster alignment is through conversations. Do you think you could help me set up interviews? I’d like to meet each team and see how they interact with each other.”

“We can do that,” Zach confirmed. “They’re going to be resistant to adding more meetings, especially while we’re under pressure. Everyone is already concerned that this will eat up a whole sprint. But if Tim tells them to, they’ll show up.”

Angela interceded, “I’d like to minimize my disruptive effect and be as non-invasive as possible. I know from my days as a developer that you need big blocks of time to solve big challenges. Maybe I can just take over a retrospective, or add some extra time before or after an existing meeting?”

“Sure. Great idea,” Zach agreed. “I like how you think,” he smiled.

“When all is said and done,” Angela explained, “I only need two hours from each person. One hour together with their team and one hour with others in their same role.”

“Ok, that’s not too bad,” Zach remarked. “It seemed like a lot more.”

“It will be a lot of time for you and me, maybe,” Angela responded, “but not that much for the teams.” 

…

“Well,” Angela began, “did Tim say that you’ve seen my blog?”

“Only recently,” Zach answered. “Clyde turned me on to it. He’s been following you for months, and used your blog about Usability Testing as his template for our sessions.”

“Oh, good!” exclaimed Angela with a smile. It was always fun to meet real people that actually found her content useful. She continued, “If you saw the one about Usability Testing, ideally I’d like to follow full Usability Testing protocols here. By that I mean that for each interview, one of us takes the lead and the other takes on the role of observer and scribe.”

“Ooh,” said Zach, “yeah, I remember that part. Clyde and I tried it during our tests and traded off roles to see what each side was like. One person asked the questions and interacted with the test subject. The other person didn’t speak, just wrote down the responses and any other observations. It was hard sometimes to keep quiet, but also quite fun!”

“I find the observer role the most important,” Angela replied. “When you’re required to follow along without having any control over the situation, you have a much more powerful learning experience. So I’d like to go through the schedule and see where it makes sense for you to be the lead, and where I should be the lead.”

“Ok,” said Zach, reticently. “If you think I’ll be able to do it well enough.”

“I get the feeling you’ll do just fine,” Angela assured him. “Do you also remember the emotional scale from that article?”

“I do,” said Zach cautiously, “but I’m not sure I totally understood it, so we didn’t actually use it. I might need you to go over it again.”

“Sure,” Angela agreed. “When I’m an observer I like to focus on emotions. One recent discovery of neurobiology is that the decision center of the brain is closely tied to the emotional memory areas of the brain. Jonathan Haidt calls it ‘the Rider and the Elephant’. You first have an emotional reaction to a situation – that’s the elephant part – and then the rational part of our brain – the rider – reacts to the movement of the elephant. So, if you want to truly understand what someone is saying, you have to understand the emotional context driving it.”

“Huh,” responded Zach. “Well, we follow the Spock approach around here. No emotions. Rational thought only.” He paused.

“Here’s the thing,” Angela inserted. “From recent research, it looks like that may be biologically impossible. I know we’re talking about Star Trek and fiction here, but there is actually a biological component to what Gene Roddenberry was writing about in Spock’s dilemma of being half-human. As Spock realized over time, the idea of avoiding all emotions in pursuit of pure logic is a fool’s errand. Everything we do has an emotional component, and if we choose to not consider that part of the conversation, we’re ignoring incredible amounts of valuable information. Emotional Intelligence is just as important as Cognitive Intelligence.”

Zach’s eyes narrowed, betraying a look of skepticism. “You don’t look convinced,” Angela said. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you what I mean as we go along. It can be hard to explain sometimes until you see it, and then you can’t unsee it.” Zach shrugged his shoulders, nodded his head in agreement, and started typing some thoughts into his laptop.

Angela grabbed a marker and started writing on the whiteboard in the room. “You don’t need to understand the whole theory to apply it, though. I use a scale that allows anyone to capture the core elements of emotional reactions, and then go back and make sense of it later when you have more time.” She wrote the numbers zero through three on the whiteboard, “Level 0 is whether or not people are just paying attention. If they’re on their phones or checked out, that tells me that the topic doesn’t affect them, and I make a note. If most of the room is at this level, I move on to a different topic.”

0 – Not paying attention / not emotionally or intellectually invested 1 2 3

She continued, “Level 1 starts when people seem to be actually listening. The key here is to see if you can get them to talk about the topic, instead of you talking. That opens the door to the emotions.”

“Ok,” Zach replied. “Level 0 is no engagement. Level 1 is talking.”

Angela clarified further, “Once they start talking, then the real information starts appearing. If the person is adding to the conversation but without emotion, we label that Level 1.” She wrote a few more details next to the number 1.

0 – Not paying attention / not emotionally or intellectually invested 1 – Paying attention / intellectually-engaged / not emotionally invested 2 3

She continued, “You have to be careful sometimes with Level 1 reactions. They’re engaged, but it’s more of an intellectual exercise, and they’re not fully invested. People can talk for a long time about a topic they’re not really invested in, simply because it’s easier than talking about emotional topics.”

“I’ve seen that happen,” Zach blurted out. “We have meetings that go on for hours but go nowhere.”

“Right?” Angela agreed. “So emotion becomes the key to keeping the conversation on track. Level 2 is when people start to get emotional in response to something they hear. Usually, you see emotion first in the face or the hands.” She added some more details to the whiteboard.

0 – Not paying attention / not emotionally or intellectually invested 1 – Paying attention / intellectually-engaged / not emotionally invested 2 – Emotionally invested / face and hands ONLY 3

“Lastly,” Angela added, “Level 3 is what we call the ‘full-bodied emotional response’. Their whole body gets engaged, leaning in or turning away, sitting up straight in their chair or even standing up. This marks a super-important topic!”

0 – Not paying attention / not emotionally or intellectually invested 1 – Paying attention / intellectually-engaged / not emotionally invested 2 – Emotionally invested / face and hands ONLY 3 – Emotionally invested / full-body response

Angela concluded, “Here’s how it all works during the interviews. While the lead person is asking the questions, the observer is looking around the room and watching for emotional reactions. We especially want to watch for Level 2 or 3 emotional reactions from somebody who doesn’t speak. Does that make sense?”

“Gotcha,” confirmed Zach. “Level 0 is no emotion or attention.” He paused. Angela nodded.

Zach continued, “Level 1 is engagement and attention, but no emotion?”

“Yep,” confirmed Angela.

“Level 2 is emotion in the face or hands?” asked Zach.

“Yep,” replied Angela, “whether they’re talking or not.”

Zach continued, “Level 3 is full-bodied emotion, whether they’re talking or not.”

“Check,” confirmed Angela with a nod.

…

“Good,” Angela mirrored. “This next part is really more about logistics and not as intense. I’d like to visit as many team sessions as I can and just watch. Product sessions, design sessions, DevOps discussions, you name it, I’d like to be a fly on the wall. We need to see what’s happening with our own eyes. Interviews only tell part of the story. One of my favorite quotes from the Usability testing world is, ‘People are notoriously bad at predicting their own behavior.’ It’s never an intentional deception. It’s just human nature that everybody has unconscious biases. Through observation, I can see your behaviors and you can see mine. My other favorite quote is, ‘If we knew the answers to our own problems, they wouldn’t be problems.’ Observations help us to see the patterns in reality, and then the interviews tell us why those patterns are happening.”