Mike Lehr's Blog

In response to my post, “Relationship Building Technique #4: Acknowledgement,” a reader emailed the following observation:

I often find this is a simple [technique], which has a very sensitive component to it and is frequently very “fake” . . . . I know of several peers whom I converse with who “appear” to be practicing acknowledging and listening to others. . . . I have noticed over time, for example, although they may seem engaged and interested at the very moment, they are either preoccupied (and do a good job of hiding it) or are insincere . . . . This is often evident in subsequent conversations with them as you realize they have very little memory of prior conversations. . . .

First, these techniques won’t have the same effect on everyone. Obviously, they didn’t work on this person. However, why this occurred isn’t simply a case of the speakers being insincere; it could just be that they were very different from the listener. The latter could have been born with  much greater sensitivity than the others were and thus greater sincerity.

As a result, despite the listener’s view, it’s very possible that the speakers felt that they were sincere. Furthermore, they might not even be self-aware enough to know they were coming across as insincere. It’s also quite possible that they didn’t care.

We need to remember that any human attribute will vary widely across individual humans. That’s why not remembering might be a sign of poorer memories than the listener’s and not just lesser abilities to express sincerity. Thus, the problem isn’t so much one of sincerity or listening but rather one of differences in personalities. It’s going to be very difficult for less sensitive people to convince those with higher sensitivities that they are being sincere.

Words have power, not only in their definitions but also, more importantly, in their connotations. The article, “Making Murder Respectable,” from the December 17, 2011 edition of The Economist talks about an example of this power, euphemisms: “a mixture of abstraction, metaphor, slang and understatement that offers protection against the offensive, harsh or blunt.” They’re used across cultures.

In other words, euphemisms sugar coat reality and confirm in many cases the powerful scene from the movie A Few Good Men in which Jack Nicholson, playing Colonel Nathan Jessup, tells Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth.” As the article concludes, “A culture without euphemism would be more honest, but rougher.”

Often, we desire to believe our illusions because they allow us a convenient excuse to avoid action. For example, knowing a condition is undesirable forces us to address the question: Why don’t we take action to correct (cognitive dissonance)? This is a downside of believing our glass is half full.

Additionally, knowing our preference to live with our illusions, we expose ourselves to manipulation as George Orwell conveyed in his book, 1984. In it, the Ministry of Truth was responsible for fabricating history for public consumption; the Ministry of Love tortured criminals. In 1949 the United States renamed its War Department to the Defense Department. In business, we see the extension of euphemisms in the form of vanilla words, names of food, compensation plans and labels.

However, many times euphemisms permit sensitivities. For example, we say “passed” rather than “dead.” So, perhaps our illusions are reality because the reality is we cannot live without them.

Don’t believe it? See what happens when you strip people of their illusions.

For many of us, we feel good when we help others. What we are even learning is that many of us, especially women, will tend to feel what others feel. Thus, we not only feel good about helping others, but we feel their happiness from our help.

In the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review Yochai Benkler’s cites in his article “The Unselfish Gene” the work of neurophysiologist, Giacomo Rizzolatti, who originally “found that our brains mirror not only pain and motor movements but pure emotions as well.”

It’s important to emphasize empathy as an emotion, not merely an understanding as I also indicated in the difference between emotional intelligence and intuition. It’s one thing to see someone smiling and know they are happy and quite another to feel they are happy because if someone can feel good about the happiness of another person, he is more likely to cooperate.

What Rizzolatti’s research, advanced by Tania Singer’s use of brain scans, indicates is that people can actually feel what others feel in the emotional areas of their brains not just the rational ones. Moreover, the intensity of empathy will vary by person with some not feeling much at all.

This has tremendous implications for leadership development because it shows the importance of sensitivity in team intelligence. Whereas Part II of this series dealt with context, this post implies a cooperative business culture is also a function of personalities: some people will just feel better about cooperating than others will. Thus, this implies that highly sensitive people, who also tend to be very empathetic, might be better leaders and employees in a cooperative environment.

Thus, cooperation is not only about creating the right environment but also about having the right personalities, personalities that are empathetic.

Other posts in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer

Sensitive people (SP) can increase team intelligence in very much the same way mortar makes brick and stone walls stronger. Since diverse teams tend to be more creative and intelligent than homogeneous ones, SP will often provide the relational glue keeping diverse groups from fracturing under the stress of diverse views.

In “What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women,” an article in the June 2011 of the Harvard Business Review, Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone found SP:

• Listen well
• Share criticism constructively
• Possess open minds
• Aren’t autocratic

Since “Many studies have shown that women tend to score higher on tests of social sensitivity than men do,” Woolley and Malone found that adding more women to groups would make them more intelligent. They “saw pretty clearly that groups that had smart people dominating the conversation were not very intelligent.”

SP’s concerns for the well being of others will help ensure that diverse views receive a hearing even from more dominant and autocratic members of the team. In effect, we don’t increase the intelligence of the group by necessarily adding more intelligent people. We do so by adding more SP who give deference to others so stronger more effective bonds are formed. Through these bonds flow the life-blood of ideation, more simply called communication. Under the influence of dominant, head-strong members, these arteries become constricted by fear and tension thus preventing the free, open flow of ideas necessary for increasing team intelligence.

As we saw, nurturing positive feelings in others dramatically improves performance. SP are perfect additions to improving the intelligence and performance of teams. Their talent for being more aware of the emotions running through others will help ensure team members will feel good about the team and their contributions.

Other links in this series:

• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt I): Awareness
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt III): Self-Awareness
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt IV): Talent
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. V): Intimidation
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. VI): Defeatism & Courage

We can easily defeat sensitive people by encouraging their negative feelings. Since they are so sensitive, these feelings can easily overwhelm them. Under these conditions, sensitive people will have difficulty functioning.  That’s why they usually have courage too.

Imagine a computer programmed to do ill; it feels the same as when programmed to do good. Since people are born with varying sensitivity levels, some people feel less badly about doing ill and less happy about doing good. The movie, The Bad Sleep Well, illustrates how easily some can do ill when sensitivity does not encumber them.

Since sensitive people are talented in many emotional ways that we are not, we will tend to outnumber them in their views. For instance, they are extremely good at feeling the mood of groups. However, it’s easy for a majority not to feel the same about the mood as a sensitive person might. Consequently, sensitive people are vulnerable to defeatism from feelings of doubt and fear when they are:

• Swayed by a majority that can’t feel what they feel
• Told they are crazy because no one feels what they feel
• Convinced that they are hurting others when they don’t have the sensitivity to be hurt

Conversely, sensitive people are potentially full of courage because it’s needed to overcome strong negative feelings. If we feel nothing, why do we need courage to overcome the feelings of doubt and fear that these stir? The less sensitive we are the less likely we will feel doubt and fear.

Thus, the sensitivity allowing sensitive people to enjoy life on a level we can’t has advantages (more) and disadvantages. It’s just important to remember that they have the courage to counterbalance the doubt and fear . . . if they can only muster it.

Other posts in this series:

• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt I): Awareness
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt III): Self-Awareness
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt IV): Talent
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. V): Intimidation

One aspect of sensitivity that I find challenging to explain to sensitive people is their natural intimidation of other people.

As we saw in Part II about the unconscious, emotions are churning outside of our unawareness. This includes emotions related to our defense mechanisms that are frequently triggered when we meet people very different from us. However, on the surface we will often just rationalize these feelings as, “I don’t like that person because . . .”

Emotions, especially intense emotions, trigger defense mechanisms because they are very unpredictable. These emotions are the source of strong passions that move us to tackle situations when the odds are against us.

Since sensitive people often have many emotions, especially intense ones, flowing through them, it can be intimidating or, at minimum, frustrating to work with them. It’s intimidating because they are likely aware of something that we aren’t. It’s frustrating because simple man-made creations like logic, numbers, rationale and reasons can’t alter the innate nature of emotions.

For sensitive people, this means working covertly with the rest of us. Sharing some of their emotions with us can be awkward, humiliating and even dangerous because often they can’t be quantified, reasoned, proven or even verbalized. Since we aren’t aware of the emotions running through all of us on an unconscious level like they are, sensitive people will find working with us similar to a sighted person working with blind folks. How do they explain what they see to us? Moreover, once we even sense they can see things we can’t, our defense mechanism kicks in.

Thus, sensitive people need to be aware of their intimidating nature and of the fact that they are talking to very blind people from a situational awareness perspective.

Other posts in this series:

• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt I): Awareness
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt III): Self-Awareness
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt IV): Talent
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. VI): Defeatism & Courage

Although sensitive people often don’t see their sensitivity as a gift, it is. They are more in tune with their world and those around them. However, because what they feel is often only operating on a subconscious level with the rest of us, they often hold a minority view. Thus, expressing this gift as a talent is challenging.

Sensitive people are often the best ones to ask about the overall emotional state of their organizations. In fact, I have often asked them this question:

Do you find that when you walk into a strange organization you can feel what the morale is like fairly quickly?

Usually this occurs for them within the first fifteen to sixty minutes. We could be talking about a company of fifty or a corporation of thousands. In fact, many of them could walk into a room filled with people and assess what’s going without ever talking to anyone. Moreover, their assessment would be more accurate than an average person who had talked to everyone.

While this might seem fantastic, it’s very real when you consider there are already trained professionals who can assess the potential success of married couples and sales people through observation only, no audio. Moreover there are researchers exploring the predictive aspect of subtle facial movements that only our unconscious captures. Such research is also being applied to people and technology in the recognition of security threats at airports.

Still, since many of the rest of us usually don’t get these feelings, it’s easy to talk sensitive people out of their minority, often solitary, views. That’s why for many sensitive people with whom I have worked, many of their worst decisions have come as a result of others changing their minds rather than following what they know is correct.

Other posts in this series:

• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt I): Awareness
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt III): Self-Awareness
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. V): Intimidation
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. VI): Defeatism & Courage

A question emailed to me asked for elaboration on this quote of mine:

The difference between wisdom and intelligence is that you cannot be wise unless you have sensitivity for the human condition.

The primary difference between intelligence and wisdom that my quote highlights is an emotional one. For instance, who would you consult on relationships, on love; an intelligent person or a wise one?

Stated more pragmatically, we often hear psychopaths described as intelligent but not wise. If they were, would they go around harming people? Thus, we can more easily picture an insensitive, intelligent person than an insensitive, wise one.

Examine our intelligence tests. They have little to do with relational issues among people. Do any of them ask about love, happiness, sadness, hatred? They deal more with concrete concepts such as shapes, numbers and words. Intelligence and sensitivity are segregated.

Yes, the concept emotional intelligence exists; however, its basis is a mental one not an emotional one; it’s intelligence about emotions. It refers to empathy as an “understanding” not a feeling; it’s a mental task. We can see the mental aspect in advanced computers because we’ve begun to program robots to be emotionally intelligent based upon certain observable clues. Emotional intelligence tries to teach people the same thing. Yet, we refer to these robots as “artificial intelligence” not “artificial wisdom.” Again, the segregation of intelligence and sensitivity.

I define empathy as feeling what others feel. Mothers often feel what their children feel. Analogously, the difference between understanding and feeling is the same as the one between seeing a picture of a place and actually being there. Thus, we see wisdom as emotionally very different from intelligence, and that difference has a huge sensitive, empathic component.

Wisdom and sensitivity are not segregated.

A commenter asked how people could become more sensitive if they don’t feel as sensitive as they would like? The short answer is through better self-awareness focused on four areas:

1. Appreciate your own sensitivity
2. Avoid “Do onto others as you would have others do onto you”
3. Tame anxious and threatening feelings
4. Convey that you’re listening

The sun doesn’t know how bright he is. To him every day is the same. I find the same holds true for sensitive people: they often don’t know how sensitive they are. Even the feeling of wanting to become more sensitive requires sensitivity. In other words, highly sensitive people could feel very insensitive if they performed even one insensitive act because it would weigh heavily on their minds.

Many apply the rule “Do onto others as you would have others do onto you.” I’ve found this extremely problematical because it’s similar to saying, “All people are like me.” Helping people from their perspective rather than our own tends to be better.

Anxious and threatening feelings encourage insensitivity. For example, other cultures often make us think about our own. This could create anxieties. People very different from us often encourage us to feel threatened.

Listening is an excellent sensitivity tool. However, listening is one thing, conveying we are listening is quite another. We can do this by asking questions, encouraging others to speak and summarizing for them what we heard.

Still, feelings of insensitivity can plague sensitive people simply because it only takes a couple events to stir them. Maybe a job or tradition lends itself to putting people in insensitive situations. Raising their self-awareness with regard to the four above areas will help to minimize feelings of insensitivity in sensitive people.

Other links in this series:

• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt I): Awareness
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt IV): Talent
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. V): Intimidation
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. VI): Defeatism & Courage

Periodically, I help sensitive people so I have special life management techniques set aside for them. A recent success has encouraged me to document some. I begin with raising their awareness for their gift.

The first point I make to sensitive people is that they are more in tune with their own emotions and the emotions of others than other people are. While almost all of them believe this is a curse, I share advantages. Primarily, they will tend to do much better at assessing the emotional state of groups and individuals. I even identified for one CEO the one employee she should talk to if she wanted to get a quick pulse on her employees.

When sensitive people try to explain their feelings, problems usually occur. Since most people will likely be less sensitive, they won’t feel the same. They’ll just say the sensitive person is wrong or way off base. This hurts them and creates self-doubt. As a result, they adopt the majority view even if they feel it’s not best.

The second point I make is that even though others don’t feel what they feel it doesn’t mean they aren’t being affected. It’s just whereas it’s happening on a conscious level for them it’s happening on a subconscious level for the others. Everyone has different levels of consciousness.  Eventually, these feelings will “bubble up” from their subconscious to manifest themselves in actions, thoughts and feelings.

When I talk to sensitive people, it’s not unusual for them to feel that they get the emotional temperature of the individual or group rather quickly. However, it’s very normal to find them talked out of doing what they believe will work or going about their work beneath the radar. Thus, raising their awareness is usually a huge relief.

Other posts in this series:

• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt III): Self-Awareness
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt IV): Talent
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. V): Intimidation
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. VI): Defeatism & Courage