Podcast Review: Helping People Change

Every month the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. under the banner of Rutgers University publishes EI Update, a monthly e-letter than usually contains a paper on EQ, a book review and a podcast.  In February 2022 the podcast was 1 hour 45 minute webinar: Helping people change with Professor Richard Boyatzis    The webinar sponsors were the Institute of Directors Central London and the Harvard Business Review.  The actual webinar starts after 25 minutes of the video and the final 30 minutes is Q&A so you only need 55 minutes to watch the technical part and I played it at 1.5 normal speed.

I first blogged about Richard Boyatzis in 2013: Boyatzis EQ and Leadership.  He is an excellent speaker and his Coursera course Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence is well worth the investment.

I have never forgotten the opening lines of my first lecture at Cambridge which was in Experimental Psychology (part of the Natural Sciences Tripos) in 1964.

“Welcome to Cambridge.  At the other place they produce Prime Ministers, here we produce Nobel Prize winners.  Cambridge is the citadel of Empiricism & Scepticism.  Here Experiment & Observation trump Innate Ideas & Traditions.  Astrology is a quack science, Freud was a quack, Jung was an even bigger one.  If you want to understand true science applied to psychology read Miller’s paper The Magical Number 7 ± 2.”

In the field of Emotional Intelligence Professor Boyatzis is probably the leading scientist which is clearly demonstrated in this webinar.  He always supports his opinions with empirical studies that he has often carried out.  And he does make a number of acute observations in this webinar.

My favourite was when he was discussing Negative Emotional Attractors (NEA) and Positive Emotional Attractors (PEA).  The former is analytical and the latter empathetic.  He say NEA is about surviving and PEA is about thriving.  And his best tip about how to improve your thriving was to get a dog or cat.

He makes the excellent point that if you want to lead people you do not use external rewards but appeal to their intrinsic motivation.  And a good way of working out what motivates someone is to ask them What would you love to be doing in 15 years’ time?

The webinar is loaded with gems like this and is highly recommended.

This blog was first published on LinkedIn on 15 April 2022.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/podcast-review-helping-people-change-christopher-golis/