Heart surgery

    The term “emotional intelligence” was coined by clinical
    psychologist Claude Steiner in 1975. But the concept became
    mainstream nine years ago with the publication of a book by Daniel
    Goleman.(1)

    His most eye-catching claim centred on a case of two people
    applying for a job with the same formal qualifications. He found
    that the person who scored high on emotional intelligence
    indicators would be eight times as successful in the job as the
    other person, whose score was low. He went on to develop a set of
    emotional competences which research has shown can be learned at
    all stages of life. These four competences are self-awareness,
    self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

    In the UK, the concept has been enthusiastically adopted by
    those working in education and is usually referred to as “emotional
    literacy”. Antidote, the trust for promotion of emotional literacy,
    initially emphasised children and young people. How could they be
    helped to develop their intra- and interpersonal skills?

    It was soon appreciated that a parallel movement was needed to
    support teachers in developing their own emotional literacy. It was
    argued that where teachers have limited emotional literacy, the
    climate in which young people spend many of their formative years
    may be dysfunctional and unhealthy.

    More recently, the emphasis has widened to the “whole school” –
    its systems, practices and culture – with a view to developing an
    “emotionally literate school”.

    This acknowledgement of – and need to understand – the emotional
    life of an organisation, with its impact on staff-service user
    relationships and organisational and inter-agency “productivity”,
    has encouraged us to explore implications for staff working in
    social care and the health professions.

    The concept has a particular relevance in today’s climate.
    “Change” is a given, but few people feel they can embrace it
    because it is often mismanaged. “People don’t leave organisations;
    they leave managers,” Martyn Sloman, adviser at the Chartered
    Institute of Personnel and Development recently claimed.(2) He
    described the relationship between managers and their workforce as
    “crucial to the productivity, morale, attitude and effectiveness of
    a department”.

    Similarly, Neil Thompson argued that “stress” is the
    responsibility of management, and whether workers feel valued and
    consulted has major implications for staff sickness levels and for
    the retention of staff.(3)

    In today’s performance management culture, helping staff to give
    of their best is vitally important. This process can be helped or
    hindered by the emotional life of an organisation, and therefore
    this aspect is ignored at its peril.

    This is not just about going around being nice to each other,
    and not at all about being able to emote all over the place. Both
    are common misconceptions. As Susie Orbach has written: “Emotional
    literacy is the attempt to take responsibility for understanding
    our personal emotionsÉ Emotional literacy means being able to
    recognise what you are feeling so that it doesn’t interfere with
    your thinking.”(4)

    We have worked for extensive periods in social work and in youth
    and community work. From these combined backgrounds, we have taken
    the concept of emotional literacy and used it to underpin our work
    in several ways:

    • Facilitating workshops for senior managers in the public
      sector, exploring the development of an emotionally literate
      organisation.
    • Facilitating change workshops for health staff undergoing
      significant restructuring.
    • Training early years’ workers to use the competences for
      themselves and their service users.
    • As a regular session on a managerial supervision skills
      course.
    • In stress management sessions.
    • Working with a social work team with outstanding interpersonal
      problems to develop an “emotionally literate team”.
    • Working with a national children’s charity to evaluate its
      management structures with regard to emotional literacy.

    Within this work we have focused on the competences that Goleman
    describes and the need to be aware of the emotional dimension at
    four levels:

    • What is going on for the service user?
    • What is going on for the worker in their relationships with the
      service user, with colleagues and with management?
    • What is going on for managers?
    • What feelings are stimulated, for good and for ill, by the
      organisation’s policies, practice and culture?

    We seek to address these questions head-on as part of the
    planned programme, as well as
    making them an ongoing thread of the day. Outcomes for participants
    include an awareness of, for example, the powerful influence of
    emotions on the dynamics of a dysfunctional decision-making group
    or supervisory relationship, and ways of moving these relationships
    forward to develop more effective performance.

    A recent change workshop used self-awareness as a key component
    to help health staff working in an acute trust to identify the
    emotional responses they were experiencing, and their origins. A
    restructuring had previously been badly managed. The outcomes led
    senior management to provide an opportunity for all staff at all
    levels to spend a day exploring, in small groups, the changes and
    to understand their own emotional reactions. They drew on
    theoretical perspectives such as the Kubler Ross loss curve.(5)

    When the common assessment framework was introduced, Horwath
    argued that, using the Prochaska and DiClimente model of change,6
    too often management move staff directly from unawareness of change
    to telling them it’s happening to action, without giving them time
    to contemplate it.(7) Horwath said this stage is crucial to gain
    the motivation of staff to implement the change, and it includes an
    opportunity for feelings to be aired meaningfully.

    In our experience, the support needs of middle managers tend to
    be unaddressed. Good managers recognise the need to support their
    own front-line staff as well as hold them to account, but little
    attention seems to be given to those managers’ own needs.

    We were engaged to work with middle managers of a social
    services department through action learning sets, so they could
    implement supervision skills they had been trained in. The sets
    also provided them with the chance to share with and to learn from
    each other about the “emotional side” of the management task.

    This process provided a supportive atmosphere, which facilitated
    risk-taking in sharing feelings and freed up staff to develop
    effective responses to some of the dilemmas they faced in their
    supervisory tasks.

    A serious case review had wreaked emotional trauma and the
    “aftermath” needed to be addressed. Recognising this, we
    facilitated a workshop for senior members of an area child
    protection committee. We explored theoretical concepts and the
    emotional needs of staff as individuals and as part of the
    multi-agency network.(8)

    As we explored the development of an emotionally literate
    organisation, we have encountered interest from individuals and
    groups. After one workshop, a senior member of an education
    authority redesigned a restructuring process to try to reflect an
    emotionally literate approach. We feel that, to have an impact, a
    strategy needs ownership at senior level.

    But perhaps enough people at all levels trying to work in an
    emotionally literate way could make a difference.

    Abstract

    This article looks at the growing interest in the concept of
    emotional literacy and at ways in which the authors have used it in
    training and consultancy with social care professionals.

    References

    1. D Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury, 1996
    2. M Sloman, “Skills back-up key for new managers”, Community
      Care, p50, 2 December, 2004
    3. N Thompson, “All stressed out”, Community Care, p34-35, 25
      November, 2004
    4. S Orbach, Towards Emotional Literacy, Virago, 1999
    5. E Kubler Ross, On Death and Dying, Collier, 1969
    6. J Horwath, Managing the Change in The Child’s World Training
      Pack, DoH and NSPCC, 2000
    7. J Prochaska and C DiClemente, Transtheoretical Therapy: Towards
      a More Integrative Model of Change, 1982
    8. S King, “Managing the aftermath of serious case reviews”, Child
      Abuse Review, Vol 12, p261-269, 2003

    Further Information

    • D Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury,
      1998
    • J Park, The Emotional Literacy Handbook, Antidote, 2003
    • K Weare and G Gray, What Works in Developing Children’s
      Emotional and Social Well-Being, DfES Research Report, 456,
      2003
    • K Weare, Developing the Emotionally Literate School, Paul
      Chapman, 2004

    Contact the Author

    Sue King can be contacted on: 0116 2705007, or e-mail: suemking@btinternet.com

    Sue King is co-director of Delos Consultancy with Rob
    Hunter. She trained as a probation officer in the late 1960s and
    has always been interested in how emotions affect behaviour. Since
    leaving the probation service she has worked independently with
    public sector organisations.

    Rob Hunter is an adviser and consultant in youth and
    community work and adult education with local authorities and
    voluntary organisations.

     

    More from Community Care

    Comments are closed.