Continuing the Mentoring Conversations Model

As I've mentioned previously, Randy Emelo, CEO/President of Triple Creek Associates, and I have been writing a series about Mentoring Conversations.

This new model suggests the conversations that are necessary to guide anyone from orientation to decision making on an issue. Randy and I wanted to provide a tool that could be both diagnostic and prescriptive.

The fifth issue of our six part series introduces the partial confidence.

Take a look at the series. When you finish our series, I recommend that you read Randy's back catalog of newsletters.

Mentoring Conversations Model

I've been fortunate to work with Randy Emelo, CEO/President of Triple Creek Associates, for the past few months on a writing project.

We're writing a series about Mentoring Conversations. This new model suggests the conversations that are necessary to guide anyone from orientation to decision making on an issue. Randy and I wanted to provide a tool that could be both diagnostic and prescriptive.

The first issue of our six part series introduces the model. Each of the following articles will explore the conversation zones in detail.

Randy is a smart, smart guy with a lot of expertise in mentoring. I highly recommend that you read his back catalog of newsletters!

Emotional Intelligence: A Self-Awareness Exercise

According to experts, one key to Emotional Intelligence is Self-Awareness.

If you wonder how good your self-awareness is, here's a quick exercise you can try:

1. Grab a pen or pencil
2. Grab a sheet of paper
3. Set a timer for 60 seconds
4. Are you ready?
5. Write down all the emotions that you've felt in the past 10 days.
6. DING! Pencil down...
7. Count how many words you wrote down.

I do this exercise with a lot of groups around the world and the results are quite consistent.

• 0-5 words = You might have some work to do in the area of self-awareness
• 6-10 words = Average. You're pretty self-aware.
• 11 or more = You're very self-aware. And probably female. No kidding, 80% of the time, in my high-tech environment, it's a woman that scores 11 or more.

The first time I did this exercise, I came up with four words - happy, happier, bored, excited.

Hopefully, you did better.

There are three reasons why you (and I) might score poorly.

1. The Spock Principle - You're a robot - an unfeeling shell of a human being. Let's pretend that's not it.
2. The Caveman Principle - You have emotions, but you don't have an emotional vocabulary with which to capture those emotions. You say happy instead of gleeful, delighted, jazzed, or jaunty.
   Like Eskimos have many words for snow, some people have 25 words for disappointed.
   Here's a list of a 130+ word emotional vocabulary. Now you don't have an excuse.
   
3. The Shark Principle - If a shark stops swimming, it dies. As a result, I suppose sharks don't spend a lot of time in reflection. The same is true for many people.
   I don't 'check-in' (I think that's the phrase emotionally intelligent people would use) with myself very often and ask, "What am I feeling?"
   I just keep moving...

Does it matter?

Well, it's hard to manage people or sell to people if you cannot identify the emotion they are experiencing.

Fortunately, in the the high-tech environment I work in, my customers and employees are as emotionally illiterate as I am (I'm joking!!).

Still, there have been a few times in my career where employees didn't bring their problems to me.
When I asked why, they responded, "You wouldn't understand. You never have problems."

Building that bridge of empathy is reason enough for me to continue working on this.

How about you?