Author, Yvette Bethel, launched two emotional intelligence books in 2012 and both books earned recognition from the 2012 USA Best Book Awards. 

The 2012 USA Best Books awards received by Bethel are:

E.Q. Librium:                       Finalist: Business, Careers

                                          Finalist: Self Help, General

Getting to E.Q. Librium:        Winner: Self Help, General

(Activity Book)                      Finalist: Best New Self Help Book

The USA Best Books Awards have been in existence for 10 years and the book entries are received from US and international publishers like Harper Collins, McGraw-Hill, Llewellyn Worldwide and small, independent publishers.

The USA Best Book Awards appoints a distinguished panel of industry judges who possess extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise. According to Bethel, "It is an honor to achieve this level of recognition so soon after the launch of the books. It is especially validating to have industry judges review both books and determine they can compete with the best books released in 2012. Hopefully this achievement will help to get the word out about the very important topic of emotional intelligence."

Bethel’s two books were also recently approved for availability within the international Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence network.  Six Seconds is the most extensive emotional intelligence organization in the world based in 11 countries, supporting network members and emotional intelligence practitioners like Yvette Bethel in over 100 countries. 

E.Q. Librium: Unleash the Power of Your Emotional Intelligence; A Proven Path to Career Success and its companion activity book, Getting to E.Q. Librium are available online at www.theeqeffect.com. The books are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.

In the work environment, communication plays a vital role in the success of your team, so mastering your non-verbal communication or body language helps you to build healthy working relationships.

Your body language has an impact on your team

When communicating, messages sent to your co-workers are both verbal and non-verbal.  Your body language is so powerful, it can completely derail a conversation if it is inadvertently sending a message that is different than your verbal information. For instance, you may always say you adhere to the values of your company as a manager and one of the values is that your company values people.  However, your actions as a manager do not demonstrate this.  To be specific, you do not listen to employees, interactions with your staff are treated like a transaction, you never have the time to deal with people issues, nor do you spend time coaching and developing employees.

When this happens, trust is compromised because employees are witnessing your actions and completely disregarding your words because they are now meaningless.

Aligning Your Words and Your Actions

One of the most effective ways to ensure your body language is congruent with your verbal messaging is to be aware of your body language.

Here is a list of body language signals that can derail your communication:

Rolling your eyes.

• A blank look.
• A look of disbelief.
• Nervous laughter.
• Shifting eye contact.
• Changes in breathing and other physical movements like shifting uncomfortably in your chair.

 How to develop awareness of your body language

Observe yourself in the mirror or record yourself using video: You can understand how you come across to others by observing yourself. Facial expressions may not be easy to observe as replicating them when you are not in the situations that trigger them can be challenging. So use video to record a few sessions so you can watch your body language.

Check your posture: are you standing and sitting straight or leaning forward? If you have a straight posture, it can convey confidence and interest. Leaning forward can indicate interest also but it can also give the impression of aggression or defensiveness.

Accept feedback from a person you trust: Ask a person you trust to provide feedback about your facial expressions and gestures. Ask them to be objective and highlight areas which you can improve. Let them know the verbal and non-verbal messages you intend to communicate and discuss or practice alternative ways you can use expressions or gestures in those situations. Practice the alternatives until you feel you have mastered the intended body language.

Reframe your Thoughts

Once you have identified your body language patterns, you can use reframing to change your non-verbal reactions to positive, non-verbal responses. Reframing is a tool you can use to view a situation that would usually trigger a negative response in a different way so that you can respond objectively to the circumstances both verbally and through your body language. For instance, you may have a coworker who never has anything positive to say about the people you work with, including you.  If you can reframe the situation by understanding hurt people tend to hurt people, you can realize their behaviour is not about you, it is always about them and their pain.  This understanding can help you to let go of your pain.

Build your Emotional Intelligence Skills

Emotional intelligence helps you to become self-aware and therefore equips you with information you can use to choose a self-regulated response.  Skills like optimism, thinking about the consequences before reacting, and navigating your emotions are all useful in helping you to modify your body language permanently.

Practice

Brain science has established that over time, our brains are hard-wired to react emotionally to stimuli without thinking.  In light of this, it is important to keep in mind it will take time to rewire your brain to adopt new, positive responses so practice, practice, practice.

Yvette Bethel is CEO of The EQ Effect, a consulting company dedicated to transforming cultures through building collective emotional intelligence skills. She is also author of the emotional Intelligence books E.Q. Librium and Getting to E.Q. Librium.   If you are interested in exploring how you can improve your emotional intelligence or how to create higher performing teams, you can visit www.theeqeffect.com  to contact us.

Author Yvette Bethel coined the term E.Q. Librium to describe your ability to use your Emotional Quotient (E.Q.) to achieve balance in emotionally charged situations. E.Q. Librium is achieved when you are able to identify both your emotions and the emotions of others, and you can filter that information into a balanced, holistic, and self-regulated response.

When you build your capacity to balance your emotions internally, you can become a positive influence within a group. The more people in a group who can navigate their emotions, the more effective the group will be at communicating purposefully and respectfully, particularly when there are diverse personalities at play.

Achieving E.Q. Librium means you are attaining conscious personal and team emotional attunement. When in a state of E.Q. Librium, intentional strategies designed to circumvent emotional reactions are more easily implemented.

E.Q. Librium involves using emotional intelligence to bring emotional stability to a situation and presupposes that individuals and team members will experience a variety of emotions. The traits needed to achieve E.Q. Librium are integrity, self-management, curiosity, objectivity, and accountability, despite prevailing emotions.

Seeking E.Q. Librium in a team environment does not mean you will always find a solution that will make everyone happy. In fact, your decision may be profoundly unpopular. What it does mean is that leaders are equipped with the skills to listen with empathy, manage morale, make decisions that are uncluttered by emotion, and address the fears of the team. Additionally, leaders can facilitate multi-channel flows of information so that relevant information continuously moves to and from the right people at the right times, and issues are addressed.

E.Q. Librium will help you to seek solutions to serve the greater good. In addition, because this approach may not be palatable to everyone affected by your decisions, it can help you to manage the fallout. In reality, maintaining E.Q. Librium is an art, and you may have to try several different strategies before finding one that brings the balance you seek.

Getting to E.Q. Librium is an activity book that takes you on an introspective path to E.Q. Librium. Once you complete the activity book, you will be more aware of yourself and others. Take advantage of the list of Emotional Intelligence Competencies listed in Part Three of this activity book. The list is designed to help stimulate your ideas so you can set clearer objectives for your E.Q. development; it will be referenced throughout the activity book.

If you enjoyed this blog you will enjoy the books E.Q. Librium and Getting to E.Q. Librium. You can purchase your copies at www.theeqeffect.com.

The words dodging, evasion, prevention and avoidance have both constructive and dysfunctional applications.   For instance, avoidance can be a calculated action taken that will serve the greater good.  You can take actions that can help you to avert a catastrophe and save jobs or you can decide on avoiding an immediate decision because it takes time to weigh the risks.  There are times when it is okay to wait and let a situation cool down.  This can be a productive approach as heightened emotions impede communication. 

Avoidance is an action or lack of action propelled by a decision and oftentimes, the decision is propelled by an emotion.  This article will explore the darker side of avoidance, why it happens, and what can be done about it.
When avoidance is in a dysfunctional mode it can be driven by fear or anger.  When a person is in a negative avoidance mode, the quality of communication diminishes.    It is important to note that communication can shut down whether or not a person is still engaging you in conversations.  There are some who choose to literally stop all forms of verbal and written communication, others leave the channels open but their responses are vague, circular or confusing.  Sometimes the responses are passive aggressive, where a person is giving the façade of co-operation but there is no intention to follow through with constructive action.

When the intention behind avoidance is not driven by fear, but by a need to take a step back and view the big picture, it is functional if procrastination does not set in.  When avoidance is driven by the fear of a low performance rating, job loss or the loss of a good customer, because of incompetence, a lack of integrity, a low tolerance for mistakes or a lack of knowledge it can end up with disastrous outcomes.

Dysfunctional Avoidance Tactics

Here are a few ways both employees and people leaders avoid and negative responses: 

• Avoiding the subject can be achieved by changing the subject or pretending the subject was never mentioned.  It is also done by answering a question with a question.
• Minimization is a commonly used tactic that is used to create a positive spin.  The intention behind minimization is to mislead by creating a false sense of security.  For instance, some persons will a general statement that everything is going well or they misrepresent the facts in other ways.  A way to test this is to ask for specific information.
• Others avoid by screening their calls, not responding to emails or at an extreme, hanging up on others.
• Blame is a common way that employees divert attention from themselves.  Blame is sometimes accompanied by half truths designed to appease fact seekers.
• As previously stated, avoidance can be a passive aggressive strategy that is responded to with passive or overt aggression. 

How Avoidance Impacts Others

Using avoidance as a delay tactic only frustrates the people impacted by the delay.  In response, frustration can result in tension or even shouting and profanity, especially if the avoidance is creating an unfair situation where someone feels disadvantaged or disempowered by the circumventive behaviour.  In extreme cases an avoider’s safety can be put at risk causing them to constantly look over their shoulders in anticipation of some type of retaliation.

Introducing Accountability

The whole point of dodging the fall is survival.  When avoidance occurs because of fear or cowardice, the reasons undergirding the evasive action can be fear of consequences, circumvention of conscience, or no conscience at all.  In fear or anger driven circumstances, dodging the fall is about avoiding responsibility and accountability.  Unless the avoider has a cathartic personal experience and honesty and integrity become priority values that drive courageous action, it is highly unlikely that evasion will cease because the need to survive is overrides or nullifies the need to be honest.

If personal transformation is not an option, another way to transform this type of behaviour into functional behaviour is through effective leadership.  Attuned leaders realize the impact of avoidance behaviours on their efforts to build a cohesive, motivated team so here are some of the ways they develop accountable employees:

•  Take assertive action to correct unwanted behaviour.  This can include handing out warning letters and depending on the risks created by the avoidance tactics, termination.  This sends a clear message that avoidance will not be tolerated.
• Reward appropriate behaviour through performance management or other recognition progammes.
• Coach direct reports and peers.
• Mentor coworkers.
• Model desired behaviours.
• Provide learning opportunities.  It is important to note that behavioural training without effective systems implemented to ensure the application of the learning produce a much lower return on investment than training used in conjunction with other developmental opportunities.

As a people leader, it is important to select the right combination of interventions so that the root causes can be adequately addressed and authentic change can begin.  As a leader, it is imperative to sustain the behaviours necessary to effect change, otherwise, sporadic attempts to create long-term change will be pointless.

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company.  If you are interested in exploring how you can create a higher performing organization, you can contact her at info@orgsoul.com.

 

It is very interesting how people spend time mastering the system.  First they experience the process, exploring its inherent strengths, understanding what the system is designed to do.  Then they scour the process for the inevitable oversights that were invisible when the architects created the system. 

For some, the reason behind mastering the system is a goal of achieving professional effectiveness or personal actualization.  For others, the intent may be less honourable.  Here are three ways employees attempt to manipulate systems, finding short cuts that avoid accountability:

• Extra days:  There are employees who seem to disappear right after a public holiday.  They wait patiently for the holiday to arrive or if they are not interested in waiting, they obtain authorization from a doctor for sick days so they can abdicate their responsibilities temporarily.   For some manipulators, this behaviour is beating the system.  However, they don’t consider the impact of unplanned absences on others who are left to take on additional workload.
• My best friend the manager:  There are employees who try to beat the system by becoming friends with the manager.  Their motive is to carefully position themselves so the manager will be lenient.  The point of befriending the manager is usually self preservation but like any system, the system will restore balance.  This means the work will have to be done and done properly by someone else.     There are managers who bring about forced balance by letting someone else do the work or doing the work themselves.  Others fake the appearance of balance until unavoidable situations arise that expose the gaps.  Sometimes balance is restored as a result of removal, termination or transfer of the person undermining teamwork.
• Christmas vacation:  Some employers have a policy that doesn’t allow employees to extend their vacations past December of each year to avoid the accumulation of vacation in the upcoming year.  Sometimes this policy is coupled with another policy that all vacations have to be taken before November so there can be a full complement at work during the holidays.  People who manipulate this policy find a way to stall all year so the company has no choice but to allow the remaining vacation days to be taken during the Christmas the holidays.

Five Causes for Working the System

There are various reasons why employees seek ways to circumvent a system, seeking shorter or easier route:

• Laziness:  One of the first assumptions persons make about persons who work the system is that they are lazy. Laziness is an inherent lack of drive or motivation that leads to low productivity.  Perhaps this is true in some circumstances, and untrue in others.
• Incompetence: Working the system can also be assigned to a lack of competence.  This happens when employees go into survival mode and find ways to attain a satisfactory rating in spite of their shortcomings.
• I am better than this: We cannot make an assumption that working the system is synonymous with laziness or incompetence.  It can be assigned to a sense of superiority and a refusal to participate in certain tasks because of a lack of interest or challenge.   Some take on this attitude because they took the job for the money, not because they were interested in a career.
• Difficult working relationships: Some people who work the system are highly competent but demonstrate a lack of interest because of a difficult working relationship either with a difficult manager or executive or a belligerent coworker, intent on sabotage.
• Entitlement: Entitlement is a sense that someone has a right to a benefit, whether or not they actually do.  In the context of working the system, entitlement attitudes can cause employees to take liberties they think they have a right to because of a notion of being short changed.

Unfortunately, there are productive employees who make every effort to follow the rules while observing the chosen few flagrantly bending the rules.  In some cases, productive employees may eventually adopt a detached attitude of “If you can’t beat them, join them” or “there is no point”.   However, there is also the risk that if good workers become despondent, they will look for another job because their work ethic dictates productivity.

Everyone we encounter has an agenda driven by a value system.  Whether the agenda is one based on integrity or dishonesty, selfishness or altruism, it is an agenda.  Working the system is usually perceived as a self-centered action because it usually benefits the person initiating the manipulations.  However, there are altruistic persons who manipulate systems so the greater good can be served. 

Thomas Sowell, an economist, political commentator and author once said, “One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”  When there are persons working the system for personal gain, let us be careful not to demonize the producers but instead, focus on finding ways to stimulate and engage persons intent on working the system and stimulate their productivity. 

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company.  If you are interested in exploring how you can enhance your team, you can contact her at info@orgsoul.com.

When starting a new career, you are in the exploratory phase of your career, trying to understand if your chosen path is the right one.  The next stage in your career is the establishment stage where you are learning through training and experience, establishing yourself as a resource.   At this stage you are immersed in your career and if you are engaged, you start to think about ways you can expand in your role and position yourself for a promotion.

At the maintenance stage of your career, you continue to gain breadth and depth of knowledge.  At this stage, you may have received promotions or you may be in the same role for an extended period of time.     

The final stage in your career is disengagement.  Here are a few reasons why disengagement can occur: 

• You are experiencing difficulties with your colleagues or manager. 
• You are not interested in the position you occupy because you mastered role and you are no longer 
• challenged.  
• You goals and interests have changed.
• You have changing family circumstances. 
• You are not performing satisfactorily.  

Whatever the reason, disengagement can be a difficult stage because you know it is time to leave but you may not be clear about what to do next or when to make a move. 

There is no fixed timeline for moving through the four career stages.   For instance, some persons may accept a job and move immediately from exploration to disengagement because the work environment is not a good fit.  In cases like these, employees have an opportunity to learn valuable lessons about their strengths and weaknesses.  Alternatively, a person can take decades to move through the career stages gaining breadth and depth of experience before they disengage.  Whatever your reason for disengagement, it is important not to become stuck.

When you feel stuck, you can experience stressful emotions like anger and frustration that can lead to agitated outbursts or even apathy. A sustained negative emotional state can be harmful to your productivity, your health, and your ability to relate effectively with your colleagues.  Stressful emotions can also affect your ability to focus on your career, derailing your attempts to work on a career plan.  The good news is that regardless your circumstances, reinvention is possible.

Steps to Career Reinvention

Reinvention not only takes vision, it takes planning and discipline.  Here are eight tips you can use to reinvent your career and sustain the changes.

• Connect with your purpose.  If you don’t already know your purpose, start from a place of knowing your strengths and preferences.  There are various ways you can do this.  One way is to hire a career coach.  Another way is to complete a self assessment.  For an abridged, free assessment you can visit www.assessment.com.  If you choose, you can opt to pay for the full version of the inventory.
• Identify your values.  Once you identify the career you prefer, identify and understand your primary values so you can structure your career in a way that meets your personal and professional values. 
• Identify your ideal work environment. You may be purpose driven but you accepted a role in an environment where you cannot thrive.  For instance, you know you love a career in accounting but you are not the type of person who can thrive in a competitive environment.  So you enjoy your work, but you have great difficulty with the culture and this can lead to the development of  a love-hate relationship with your work.  
• Write a career development plan.  It is important to identify your skill gaps, your desired career path and then create your career development plan.  Waiting for your employer to train you may not be an ideal decision because training is contingent on budgets coupled with your employer’s commitment to developing employees.  
• Create a Career Action Plan: Once you create your development plan you can create another action plan designed to move you along a defined path to your goals.  It is important to build timelines into this plan so you are clear on how long you want to remain in a particular role.  This plan can also focus on building your network, updating your résumé or starting a business.
• Network, network, network.  Networking is important whether you are changing careers or seeking a promotion.  When changing careers, you can tap into your network to access industry intelligence which can help you to identify an ideal role or work environment.  It can also provide you with information about existing or upcoming vacancies.  If you want to prepare for a promotion, a network can provide you with a mentor or it can serve as a resource you can tap into when you need to make things happen.  
• Create a system of accountability.  Despite your best intentions, your reality of busyness can derail your career change plans.  To remain focused on your goals, it would behoove you to find a way to remain accountable to your goals.  Some people form mastermind groups which are groups of like-minded people who come together to support each other with attaining their goals.  Others join networks or clubs and some decide to keep their plans to themselves.  If you choose not to share your plans, it is important to create a system of personal accountability you can use to remain on a path of change.
• Build balance into your career plan.  There may be times in your career when you decide to sacrifice balance to achieve your goals.  While sacrifice is sometimes perceived as necessary, you can remain stuck in the mode of sacrifice, neglecting to reinstate balance in your life.

In closing, it is important for you to realize you should be the primary author of your career plan.  As previously stated, this means you should create a realistic vision for your career and life so you can decide how long you will await a promotion or other types of developmental opportunities.  You also need to determine how much you will invest in your own development so you are not at the mercy of a fluctuating training budget.  

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company.  If you are interested in creating and executing a personal career plan, you can connect with her on the contact page at  www.orgsoul.com. Career Coaching Sessions begin in January 2011.