The world has an emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence (EI) prob­lem, and T&T is not ex­empt.

In fact, ac­cord­ing to Judy Joseph Mc Sween, a cer­ti­fied emo­tion­al, con­ver­sa­tion­al, and spir­i­tu­al in­tel­li­gence fa­cil­i­ta­tor, the glob­al sta­tis­tics con­cern­ing the de­cline in EI are alarm­ing.

“The most re­cent re­search, which was done by an or­gan­i­sa­tion called Six Sec­onds, has demon­strat­ed that emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence has been de­clin­ing since 2019. The var­i­ous com­pe­ten­cies as­so­ci­at­ed with it, which are things like be­ing able to be pos­i­tive, be­ing able to be re­silient, be­ing able to make de­ci­sions, be­ing able to in­ter­act with peo­ple, be­ing able to man­age your emo­tions,” she said in a Zoom in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian last week.

“If we were to think about it in the con­text of, now this is hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly, in the con­text of T&T, I think when we de­scribe our so­ci­ety cur­rent­ly, we speak a lot about the anger in it, we speak a lot about the er­rat­ic be­hav­iour in this so­ci­ety, we speak a lot about the fact that there seems to be a break­down in re­spect for each oth­er.”

Ac­cord­ing to Psy­chol­o­gy To­day, Emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, of­ten mea­sured as EQ, is an in­di­vid­ual’s abil­i­ty to un­der­stand, man­age, and ex­press emo­tions ef­fec­tive­ly, as well as recog­nise, in­ter­pret and re­spond to the emo­tions of oth­ers. It is the foun­da­tion of strong com­mu­ni­ca­tion, em­pa­thy and per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess.

Mc Sween added, “Emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence is a term that has been bandied about since I would say 1997, when Daniel Gold­man brought it in­to the cor­po­rate world, and much work has been done on it since then that al­lows us to ac­tu­al­ly mea­sure it and be more ex­plic­it as to how it im­pacts var­i­ous as­pects of life.”

She point­ed out that the ev­i­dence of the lack of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence is ram­pant in pub­lic life in T&T.

“There seems to be a lack of thought about the oth­er, a lack of com­pas­sion about the oth­er. So a lot of this plays out in the pub­lic fo­rum when we look at so­cial me­dia post­ings, and where we hear ex­changes on me­dia, whether it’s politi­cians, ed­u­ca­tors, the unions, all sec­tors of so­ci­ety, they seem to have lost the abil­i­ty to have re­la­tion­ship-build­ing con­ver­sa­tions,” said Mc Sween.

“Every­thing ends up be­ing an ac­cu­sa­tion or pulling down of the oth­er per­son, so that’s what we are see­ing,” she said, “My con­cern, as an in­di­vid­ual, and I un­der­stand that there is that col­lec­tive con­cern, that this dishar­mo­ny is not help­ing so­ci­ety, it’s not help­ing us in Trinidad. It’s not help­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

Mc Sween ex­plained that the de­cline world­wide be­gan in 2019 and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic made the sit­u­a­tion in­creas­ing­ly worse.

“It was fur­ther ag­gra­vat­ed by COVID, so peo­ple had two years of be­ing on their own, and then need­ed to know how to re-ac­cli­ma­tise to in­ter­act­ing with each oth­er, and we re­al­ly haven’t done it. Some peo­ple just pre­fer to be on their own, but we be­come much more self-ori­ent­ed than we-ori­ent­ed, so that’s part of the chal­lenge. The fo­cus is on self,” she ex­plained.

“What can be done to help it? Well, first of all, you need to be able to ac­cept the fact that your emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence com­pe­ten­cies are low­er than they ought to be, so there are as­sess­ments that can be ad­min­is­tered, and through those as­sess­ments, you can see ex­act­ly which is the com­pe­ten­cy that is in need of de­vel­op­ment, and then you can work with a coach to de­vel­op those com­pe­ten­cies,” she said.

How­ev­er, she has recog­nised that there is very lit­tle em­pha­sis placed on the EI in T&T cur­rent­ly.

As a re­sult, she ex­plained, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in many of­fices has al­so dipped.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, al­though we speak about emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, when we talk about what is re­quired to be­come emo­tion­al­ly in­tel­li­gent, the first thing peo­ple say is, I don’t have time for that. I need to get things done, so it’s more on the do­ing and get­ting things done rather than the build­ing re­la­tion­ships, and the re­sult is that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, per­for­mance and en­gage­ment are im­pact­ed by ex­ten­sion,” she ex­plained, “Be­cause if I don’t have a good re­la­tion­ship with you, I may do what you want me to do, but I will do it re­luc­tant­ly.”

The sta­tis­tics, she said, back up the fact that of­fices that utilise more mind­ful­ness find greater suc­cess.

“The re­search ac­tu­al­ly demon­strates that in or­gan­i­sa­tions where there is a high lev­el of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, or peo­ple have gone through emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence train­ing, the lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion in teams is high­er, staff en­gage­ment is high­er, and the de­ci­sion mak­ing is of a bet­ter qual­i­ty, a pos­i­tive out­look is bet­ter, and as a re­sult of those things, the re­sults that they de­liv­er have im­proved,” she said.

“The net­work­ing in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal, has im­proved, staff have a more bal­anced life that they’re sat­is­fied with, and they’re sat­is­fied with the qual­i­ty of their lives, so the da­ta, sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta, is there to sup­port that.”

To ad­dress this, Mc Sween is host­ing Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence at the Brix on Mon­day, June 1. She is hope­ful the event will not on­ly raise aware­ness of EI but al­so pave the way for in­creased emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence in the coun­try.

“My event is on June the first. I’m say­ing that let’s have an Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence Aware­ness Month, so I am do­ing a com­bi­na­tion of pro bono and paid ac­tiv­i­ties where I will be go­ing in­to or­gan­i­sa­tions and shar­ing with them what emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence is all about, and not just at an in­tel­lec­tu­al lev­el, but get­ting them to ex­pe­ri­ence the dif­fer­ence in when I’m man­ag­ing my emo­tions and when I’m not,” Mc Sween said, “There are some sim­ple things that ac­tiv­i­ties you can en­gage in, and you recog­nise that when you are man­ag­ing your emo­tions, you your­self ex­pe­ri­ence a high­er lev­el of calm.”

She ex­plained that she is af­fil­i­at­ed with glob­al or­gan­i­sa­tion Six Sec­onds, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that has a goal to im­prove EI around the world.

“They have this no­ble mis­sion by 2039 every­body should be in­ten­tion­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly in­tel­li­gent, and I think it’s a great goal, and I like the idea of be­ing aligned with an or­gan­i­sa­tion of that na­ture, be­cause there is a pos­i­tiv­i­ty about it,” she said, “They have iden­ti­fied June 6 as World Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence Day, and there is a ra­tio­nale be­hind that, be­cause what they talk about is the fact that when you get trig­gered, when some­thing stim­u­lates you emo­tion­al­ly, you have six sec­onds to make a choice as to how you act. “

Mc Sween said she has seen an in­crease in the ac­cep­tance of the need for ther­a­py in so­ci­ety but it has not led to in­creased mind­ful­ness.

“As an emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence coach, I would say that I have clients who work both with my­self as well as a ther­a­pist, and ap­pre­ci­at­ing that what I do with them is dif­fer­ent from what the ther­a­pists do, be­cause you may need ther­a­py for a num­ber of dif­fer­ent rea­sons. You may need ther­a­py be­cause you ex­pe­ri­ence ma­jor trau­ma in your life that a sim­ple emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence doesn’t do, but be­ing able to name your emo­tions is re­al­ly the start­ing point,” said Mc Sween,

“Ther­a­pists use feel­ing wheels as well, and I’ll tell you, with­in that feel­ing wheel, there is no feel­ing that is de­scribed as nor­mal. Al­right, if you are able to iden­ti­fy with the feel­ing that you have, then you can ask your­self why I am feel­ing this, and then you can get to the root cause, and then you know what you do next.

She con­tin­ued fur­ther, “I would take it even fur­ther to say that even be­yond ther­a­py, some peo­ple may need to be more ground­ed spir­i­tu­al­ly in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate them in this emo­tion­al jour­ney.”

Mc Sween said Sun­day’s event is just one of a se­ries of events she has planned in T&T and the Caribbean to push emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.