Elite New EI Skill
This is a new skill. Do you Sell? Lead? Coach? Hire?
You can now have access to information which you’ve never before known.
You can attain the skill to know what others are really thinking and feeling.
This changes everything about communication.
Emotion intelligence (EI) is defined by 2 foundational competencies. First, awareness of self is your ability to recognize, understand and manage your own feelings. Next, awareness of others is your ability to recognize, understand and manage the feelings of others.
Perhaps the best outcome is a better you to bring to the table. When you power-up your ability to manage your own emotions, you’ll slow down your own responses to situations and words that trigger you. This is the heart of emotional intelligence, creating a healthier you.
Read Emotions enhances EI because you can be trained to see, understand and respond to 7 universal emotions and their triggers, which drive behaviors.
You can then bring your better you to relationships where empathy, respect and rapport are increased.
The 7 emotions are surprise, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, sadness and happiness. They can flicker on the face in less than half a second (known as micro expressions), whether a person attempts to suppress them or not.
These feelings can be seen in anyone on this planet regardless of country, culture or ethnic background. Even people blind from birth reveal these emotions!
This is a powerful, high value skill which can be used within your professional, as well as your personal relationships.
The Science
Dr. Ekman’s work offers significant contributions to the world of Emotional Intelligence. This science is solid, validated by over 200 papers and studies over the last 40+ years. (sample journal articles: https://www.paulekman.com/resources/journal-articles/) And the work was immense. There are 40 muscles in the face which can form 10,000 expressions. Ekman’s body of work narrowed these down to seven emotions, now known as “universal” because they can be spotted in any human face regardless of country, culture or ethnic background. This is the ultimate diversity tool. Here are the highlights:
Micro expressions are very brief facial expressions, lasting only a fraction of a second. They cannot be controlled and show up in the face. The body treats this revelation like radar. It is always on.
They occur when a person either deliberately or unconsciously conceals an emotion.
One area where noting these suppressed feelings is important is when we need to know if a person is being honest. There are several nonverbal behaviors (including vocal cues and body movement) that can indicate a person is being truthful, but the most effective to monitor are micro expressions because the face is easiest to read.
Research has consistently shown that people’s ability to detect lies is 56%, no more accurate than chance or flipping a coin.
People can be trained to read people’s nonverbal behavior and spot lies. Law enforcement and military intelligence were the first to recognize and adopt these skills.
“Emotions help us to deal with matters of importance to our welfare… without thinking.”
Paul Ekman interview with Daniel Goleman.
The seven emotions are Surprise, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Sadness and Happiness. They occur when the following triggers are present:
- Surprise is when we become alerted by something sudden or unexpected
- Fear is when something is threatening harm
- Anger is when somebody blocks our goals
- Disgust is when we're facing something that's offensive
- Contempt is when we feel moral superiority
- Sadness is when lose something of value
- Happiness when something is pleasurable
There are no such things as positive or negative emotions, as they all serve a purpose. The science describes them as constructive or destructive. For example, a person could feel anger over some injustice or bad behaviors. In the civil rights movement anger motivated many people to contribute to significant change in society.
The usefulness of this science exists in its application to communication skills.
The Scientist
Dr. Paul Ekman received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1958. His research in cross-cultural studies of non-verbal behavior is both fascinating and useful. Ekman’s most famous body of work centered on research in facial expressions and emotion.
He studied patients who claimed they were not depressed and later committed suicide. Upon examining films of the patients in slow motion, Dr. Ekman and Dr. Friesen spotted micro facial expressions, a flicker of muscle movement on the face which lasted 1/5th to 1/25th of a second. This “leakage” revealed strong destructive feelings the patient was trying to hide. In his initial experience, a 40-year old woman had lied that she was optimistic and felt good enough to be released from care. She fooled every staff person who interviewed her. Ekman and Friesen spent 100 hours going through a 12-minute film of her with her physician, frame-by-frame. When her doctor asked about her future there were two frames out of 24 where a look of intense anguish flashed across her face. It was just 1/12th of a second, quickly covered by a smile.
Here was Ekman’s moment of truth. People could produce non-verbal expressions of their true feelings. His research deepened on micro expressions.
The following year Ekman traveled to Papua New Guinea to work with the Fore People, a Stone Age tribe that practiced cannibalism and had almost no exposure to western faces or culture. Ekman's research provided the strongest evidence to date that facial expressions are universal. The Fore natives could recognize what emotions were being revealed in pictures of westerners.
A new science had been born. Ekman with his team then developed the Facial Action Coding System or FACS. This tool analyzed 40 muscles in the face to identify when the seven universal expressions were being shown. It was the first and only comprehensive tool for objectively measuring facial movement. In a brilliant application of the FACS science, Remington Scott digitized the coding and began using it in the film industry. Now animated creatures and characters could more accurately express the emotions they were meant to feel. This significantly improves the movie-goers experience. It also led to Scott’s team winning the Academy Award for Visual Effects in Lord of the Rings Twin Towers as the tormented character Gollum exhibited wild swings in emotion the were perfectly portrayed over the face of his actor Andy Serkis.
Dr. Ekman is the author of over 14 books, most notably Emotions Revealed, Telling Lies and Why Kids Lie. He has conducted over 50 years of research and is listed as one of the world's most influential people in Time Magazine.
Dr. Ekman and his research inspired the award-winning Fox TV series Lie to Me as well as the popular Pixar movie Inside Out which focuses on emotions and family dynamics.
Over the last two decades, Dr. Paul Ekman closely with the Dalai Lama to create awareness and skills toward limiting the damage of destructive emotions.
The Applications
“Where in my role, would it be most meaningful to know what someone else is really feeling?”
The ability to read emotions has broad appeal to organizations and individual roles where healthy communication, solid relationships and the ability to assess credibility are valued.
LAW ENFORCEMENT 20 years ago this training was kept to the Secret Squirrels. Military intelligence and law enforcement have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and rightfully so. The ability to know what a person is feeling can give hints to their intent. This is never more critical than in high-risk situations. Ekman’s team has trained the CIA, Interpol, Scotland Yard, FBI and TSA. Air Marshals in Europe are also trained. After 9/11 foreign service officers were coached to better interview international visitors who were seeking visas to enter the U.S.
NOTE: The Read Emotions training experience uses some law enforcement videos and business clips where learners can discover what the speaker is attempting to suppress. More later in The Training.
HOLLYWOOD The movie industry, as previously noted, has also embraced this science with significant success. You’ve seen its use in films like Avatar, Spiderman and Planet of the Apes. It has also been built into the 15-Billion-dollar video game franchise Call of Duty.
SALES ENABLEMENT There are four areas in the sales enablement arena where the application of these skills has its highest value.
- Leading -- Sales Executive
- Selling - Sales Professional
- Coaching – Sales Manager
- Hiring - the Right Reps
HR & TRAINING Because the ability to read emotions can enhance working relationships. the 300,000-member association Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has approved this content for continuing education credits. The Association for Talent Development (ATD) has also accredited this to apply to professional certification in the training field. The application is broad within a corporate environment. It supports classes on diversity, communication skills, emotional intelligence, negotiating, interview skills for hiring, conflict management and more.
EXECUTIVE COACHING Read Emotions has also been approved as a training resource for Vistage, the elite executive coaching organization. This peer advisory group has already achieved notable success. Vistage member companies grew 2.2 times faster than average small and midsize U.S. businesses, according to a 2017 study of Dun & Bradstreet data. Like many world-class organizations, Vistage continues to seek personal and professional improvement for their CEO clients.
UNIVERSITY A major southern university has asked Read Emotions to craft workshops for their adult education department which will be offered in this upcoming school year. Two other schools are asking for partnering relationships because of the need for emotional intelligence skills in the student body, our next generation of leaders and workforce personnel. We are currently building that curriculum. A textbook is being crafted in order to better serve other schools as they begin to adopt this new skill. Read Emotions is focusing first on colleges that provide strong sales and marketing degree programs.
ASSOCIATIONS A dozen trade organizations are bringing in these training programs at national and international conferences because of its value to members. The broad appeal of these skills means industry-specific customization is being applied to workshops.