Tag: work

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Emotional Intelligence: Breakthrough or Been Through?

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence.

Unless you’ve been ‘hiding under a rock’ for the last 30 years, you’ve heard of this term. And, unless you’ve been in grad school for the same amount of time, you’ve probably used it. (Just kidding — sort of)

EI, as it’s commonly abbreviated, charged into mainstream popularity following Daniel Goleman’s, 1995 NY Times bestseller, “Emotional Intelligence.”

Generally referring to behaviors reflecting the awareness and management of one’s own and others’ emotions, EI was picked up by consulting firms faster than a lonely $100 bill on a casino floor. Today, EI is a multi-million dollar industry served by hundreds of consulting firms and assessed by nearly as many different psychological tools.

How did EI get so popular? Continue reading “Emotional Intelligence: Breakthrough or Been Through?”

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Group vs. Individual Assessment Bias

Group vs. Individual Bias

How can group vs individual decision making be so different? Don’t think this is the case? Maybe you’ve heard something like this:

“We’re all underperforming, … except for me — and my team.”

I hear this almost as many times as I ask the question, “How’s performance?”

You know the story: A leader takes a stand declaring the obvious, “we’re underperforming…”, while protecting him or herself and compatriots, “except for me and my team.”

This is probably the most pervasive and frustrating psychological bias I come across in the work environment; evaluating and/or treating individuals differently from groups. It happens ALL the time.

But you can use this bias to influence an entire organization.

Continue reading “Group vs. Individual Assessment Bias”

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What is Bias?

Woman with hands held to eyes to create hand goggles is an illustration of bias at work

In psychology, ‘bias’ refers to predictable errors in perception. Here’s a simplified explanation of how bias works.

To start, everything we experience ‘beyond our skin’ is initially registered via our senses. After we sense something we begin to process it using our central nervous system, or brain (roughly speaking). This second process, resulting from the reception of the sensing process, is generally referred to as perception.

Once we perceive the input from our senses, a lot of “stuff” happens. Some of it is fully aware to us (i.e., conscious), some of it is not (i.e., unconscious). Whether conscious or unconscious, our brains actively interpret our (tasted, heard, seen, etc.) environment.

The interesting truth is: We don’t always interpret the “objective” world accurately. (We can know this because two people can perceive the same stimulus in different ways. If their is a ‘Truth”, both can’t be right; right?)

Continue reading “What is Bias?”