praxis: Anjali Sastry's blog

Emotional and other virtues

Earlier this year, I talked with students about what skills and attributes mark a successful management professional. We linked these to habits and practices, which my class seeks to build and reinforce.
Here's the question I've been pondering. Does managing your emotions--and others'--fit in there too?
What do you think?
If you want to see what researchers in this area say, start by considering the Emotional Competence Framework, first published in 1998 as a distillation of a variety of sources but  heavily influenced by the work of Daniel Goleman. Their list of the key attributes:
First, in the EMOTIONAL domain, there's Self-Awareness, which includes:

• ­       Recognizing one’s emotions and their effects
• ­       Knowing one’s strengths and limits
• ­       Sureness about one’s self-worth and capabilities

Also important: Self-Regulation

• ­       Managing disruptive emotions and impulses.
• ­       Maintaining standards of honesty and integrity.
• ­       Taking responsibility for personal performance.
• ­       Flexibility in handling change
• ­       Being comfortable with and open to novel ideas and new information

and Self-Motivation:

• ­       Striving to improve or meet a standard of excellence
• ­       Aligning with the goals of the group or organization
• ­       Readiness to act on opportunities
• ­       Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks

A second cluster of competencies lie in the SOCIAL domain. First, there's Social Awareness:

• ­       Sensing others’ feelings and perspective, and taking an active interest in their concerns.
• ­       Anticipating, recognizing, and meeting customers’ needs
• ­       Sensing what others need in order to develop, and bolstering their abilities
• ­        Cultivating opportunities through diverse people
• ­       Reading a group’s emotional currents and power relationships

And key Social Skills include:

• ­       Wielding effective tactics for persuasion
• ­       Sending clear and convincing messages
• ­       Inspiring and guiding groups and people
• ­       Initiating or managing change
• ­       Negotiating and resolving disagreements.
• ­       Nurturing instrumental relationships
• ­       Working with others toward shared goals.
• ­       Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals

Visit the site to learn more--there's a body of research associated with this work, with quite a bit of validation in workplaces.

There's another approach that's also well-grounded in research, and it's similar in character. This work has its roots in positive psychology--remember the work of Martin Seligman on happiness, optimism, and explanatory style? Well, a recent handbook by Chris Peterson and Seligman lays out a framework for character strengths. Interested in their list? Check out their classification of character strengths.

The site is VIA Institute on Character,  a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the science and understanding of character development within the field of positive psychology by acting as a bridge between research and practice The VIA Survey, which helps identify individual character strengths, was developed by Drs. Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman.  It can be accessed online:  http://www.viastrengths.org/