Ep.10 Emotional Intelligence: taking responsibility for our emotions

In this episode, Katie talks with CRR Global faculty members Judy Van Zon and Irith Koster about Emotional Intelligence or EQ and how it can help us take responsibility for our emotions. This conversation touches on a range of topics, including: 

• What is emotional intelligence and why is it so fundamental to the ORSC approach
• What happens when our EQ is lacking? Or is not balanced with the other intelligences? 
• How to use emotional intelligence to take responsibility for our own emotions
• The link between EQ and locus of control
• The benefits of building emotional intelligence in coaching, leadership and life

Irith Koster trained as an organizational psychologist (MA) and specializes in coaching partnerships and teams, and individual leaders. By studying, working, and living in Amsterdam, Jerusalem and Los Angeles, Irith learned to look at situations from multiple perspectives, which added to her drive to help people do the same. Alongside being a Certified Organization and Relationship Systems Coach since 2013 and a front-of-the-room leader for CRR Global, she is an ICF-accredited Professional Certified Coach and a Certified Team Performance Coach by Team Coaching International. She is also a facilitator of the War to Peace Methodology, created by Halcyon Global, and a Co-active Coach and is a lifelong student of the Gremlin Taming Method by Rick Carson. Her secret mission is that the people she works with take these tools and insights home into their families. Irith is based in the Netherlands with her husband and three daughters. She loves to run in the forest of Amsterdam and to read everything she can about human beings and their relationships. She is fluent in Dutch, English and Hebrew. 

Judy van Zon has lived and worked in several countries and speaks the language of people who are crossing a border, physically as well as emotionally. In short, she works with people who are going through personal or professional change. One of the things that sets her apart is her inclusion of spirituality to help her clients better connect to their own inner wisdom and power. In her team coaching, Judy believes that working with the ORSC model is a very powerful way to build bridges in relationships. It goes far beyond familiar skills like empathy and active listening. It offers a whole new way of looking at people and how we live and work together. Her focus is on working with corporate leaders and teams. Training others in this allows her to spread this energy throughout the world. For the last 25 years, she has lived and worked in six countries on three continents, the last 3.5 years in India and the region around. She is now back in the Netherlands and, as well as being a senior faculty member, was the former Director of Certification at CRR Global. Judy speaks Dutch, English, German, Spanish, and French. 

 
 For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Transcript

Key 

KC – Katie Churchman

JVZ - Judy Van Zon

IK - Irith Koster

[Intro 00:00 – 00:06] 

KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode I’m talking with CRR Global faculty members Judy Van Zon and Irith Koster about Emotional Intelligence or EQ and how it can help us take responsibility for our emotions. This conversation touches on a range of topics, including: what is emotional intelligence and why is it so fundamental to the ORSC approach; what happens when our EQ is lacking or is not balanced with the other intelligences? How to use emotional intelligence to take responsibility for our own emotions; the link between EQ and locus of control; and the benefits of building emotional intelligence in coaching, leadership and life. Irith Koster trained as an organizational psychologist and specializes in coaching partnerships and teams and leaders. By studying, working, and living in Amsterdam, Jerusalem and Los Angeles, Irith learned to look at situations from multiple perspectives, which added to her drive to help people to do the same. Alongside being a Certified Organization and Relationship Systems Coach since 2013 and a front-of-the-room leader for CRR Global, she is an ICF-accredited Professional Certified Coach and a Certified Team Performance Coach for Team Coaching International. She is also a facilitator of the War to Peace Methodology, created by Halcyon Global, and a Co-active Coach and is a lifelong student of the Gremlin Taming Method by Rick Carson. Her secret mission is that the people she works with take these tools and insights home into their families. Irith is based in the Netherlands with her husband and three daughters. She loves to run in the forest of Amsterdam and to read everything she can about human beings and their relationships. She is fluent in Dutch, English and Hebrew. Judy van Zon has lived and worked in several countries and speaks the language of people who are crossing a border, physically as well as emotionally. In short, she works with people who are going through personal or professional change. One of the things that sets her apart is her inclusion of spirituality to help her clients better connect to their own inner wisdom and power. In her team coaching, Judy believes that working with the ORSC model is a very powerful way to build bridges in relationships. It goes far beyond familiar skills like empathy and active listening. It offers a whole new way of looking at people and how we live and work together. Her focus is on working with corporate leaders and teams. Training others in this allows her to spread this energy throughout the world. For the last 25 years, she has lived and worked in six countries on three continents, the last 3.5 years in India and the region around. She is now back in the Netherlands and, as well as being a senior faculty member, was the former Director of Certification at CRR Global. Judy speaks Dutch, English, German, Spanish, and French. So I bring you Judy Van Zon and Irith Koster talking about emotional intelligence, taking responsibility for our emotions. 

KC – Judy, Irith, welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast, I am very excited today to have you both on the show. 

IK – Same here Katie, lovely to be here. 

JVZ – Always a joy to listen to your voice. As soon as you speak your introduction there is this vibrant energy already, so thank you, happy to be here. 

KC – And I’m very excited about this topic today - emotional intelligence, EQ, and taking responsibility for our own emotions. So, I guess we should start with what is emotional intelligence? Defining what this is. 

IK - I think that’s a great idea, really getting to the basic part of what is emotional intelligence. I think there’s a couple of things that we’d like to highlight, and I always think that the first part of it is really just having awareness of our own emotions and our inner experience, what do we feel like? 

JVZ – And then our own emotions, what do we feel like? It’s really looking inside and being aware of that and why is that awareness so important? Because once we’re aware we are at choice, and in the choice, we are making we can make smart choices, being intelligent, or maybe not so smart choices which often happen when we are not aware of what’s going on. So, it’s really focus on the inside and being aware of what’s going on inside. 

KC – And it sounds like one of those things that’s simple but not easy. 

IK – Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s another key aspect of this - sometimes I think emotions tend to scare us, tend to scare people because they can feel quite overwhelming. I think that being emotionally intelligent also means that we get brave sometimes and know that we can experience our emotions and that we will come out actually quite alright on the other side. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt? 

KC – Oh, yeah. 

IK – So in there they’re saying if we cannot go under, we cannot go over, we have to go through it and I think that holds really true for our emotions. Emotions are just there to experience. 

JVZ – Just there to experience, I love that Irith because there is something about… it has an image around emotions, like you said, as if it’s something scary, but we never went to emotion school, right? We’ve never learnt how to recognize them and how to be with them. Actually, I almost said how to deal with them, it feels like it’s something we have to deal with which gives it a heavy connotation as well, but let’s just experience them and take them as a source of information. 

IK – We hold a sense of lightness and curiosity around emotions, they’re just part of life and the foundation of stepping into relationship. 

KC – I love how you’re holding this because I think so often, we end up categorizing our emotions into good or bad. Happy is good, sad is bad and I think picking that up from a young age we end up then marginalizing certain parts of our emotions and then, Irith to your point, we don’t go through them, we run in the different direction. 

IK – Yes, absolutely and I think that’s a really big gift that I received growing up from my mother who always taught us that feelings are just ok, all feelings are welcome, we can just have them and there’s a big difference between experiencing emotion and acting from emotion. So, we can be angry, we don’t need to lash out, that’s two different things, we have a choice. But just the feeling itself is not bad, no feeling is bad, it just is, and I think that was really helpful growing up as it’s still to this day that I really feel that way. 

JVZ – So, Irith, it sounds like you went to emotion school, and you had some good and foundational learning around it, all feelings they just are and let’s not marginalize them. Well then, we’re all full into the waters of ORSC and deep democracy, who knows what’s good and what’s bad and what’s the side of us that we actually marginalize. So, it sounds like a good foundational piece - feelings just are. 

IK – Yeah, and I love Judy how you connected with deep democracy because that is really what this is about, about having and creating room for all those emotions and not labelling one as better than the other. One of my favorite movies of all times is Inside Out, where I think that point is actually made exactly, just by eventually embracing all these emotions we get healed. 

KC – So would you say this awareness of the variety of emotions that live within us, the variety of different reactions and responses to the world around us, does this give us more choice then in our lives? 

JVZ – Great question, Katie. Awareness always leads to more choice. Even if you aware that I am marginalized, I feel angry but I’m marginalizing it, even that awareness in itself already gives you the choice of do I want to continue marginalizing it or might there be something here for me to learn about? Is there some information here for me? So, I think this is actually what us ORSCers do, we reveal the system to itself so that it becomes more aware and therefore there are more choice points available. Now the invitation and maybe also the challenges of course, what do we choose and what do we choose for? 

IK – Yeah, absolutely. I also think that the awareness of feeling emotional actually can help us reveal our inner system of self to our self and then learning from that what matters to us. So, when we get really angry that can be a signal for something that’s really important to us being trampled or if we experience joy it may mean something about or we learn something about what’s purpose for us or what matters to us. So then knowing that and sort of being able to uncover that within ourselves then gives us a choice to act and to maybe make a change, emotion can be a signal for change in a relationship. If there’s a lot of anger, we can say apparently there’s a need to change something here because there’s a need within the relationship (or maybe multiple needs) that are not being met. What do we want to do about it? 

KC – I’ve never thought about emotional intelligence as a deep democracy process in itself because it reveals some of those parts of self that we may be marginalizing or ignoring and actually it holds all of them, all of those voices, even if they’re uncomfortable, to be voices of that system of me. 

JVZ – Yeah, that’s nicely said. 

IK – It’s voices of the system of me. Of course, we’re talking here about emotional intelligence focusing on the individual level so that is the awareness of the emotions and the deep democracy with regards to that revealing the system of self and these emotions that we individually may get awareness of then become also big sources of information for the relationship. We always say it’s personal and it’s not personal. 

KC - I wonder, there might be some people listening who think ‘yeah but I work primarily with teams, so I don’t know how this applies to the ORSC approach’. Why is this fundamental to the ORSC work? What would you say to them? 

JVZ – Well, in the beginning of our program we teach about the three intelligences of which emotional intelligence is the first one, focus on I, and then social intelligence, focus on you, before we are able to step into relationship systems intelligence. We feel it’s the foundation, it’s vital. It’s almost like it’s undoable to create right relationship, conscious and intentional relationship without being truly aware what’s going on at an I level for self-awareness, but hey, we are voices of the system, so we bring relevant information on a systemic level as well. It’s foundational on all levels and I think, if you think of the third entity exercise, how we really step in these three positions, you can’t run from the I into the we, you need to go through the social intelligence. It’s almost like walking the stairs, strong foundation and you step higher up, and you bring along with me from what you know from previous steps. It’s vital, we would say. 

IK – I love that image of the stairs Judy. That really, for me, feels very true. It’s the building the foundation and then you build quite a solid building on top of that and if you’re looking at the stairs you can also, if you’re at the level of the system, it’s sometimes necessary to take a few steps back go look down the stairs again and check in with yourself as also that sense of information for the relationship. I don’t see it being quite possible to be in right relationship with others if we’re not in right relationship with ourselves first and foremost. 

KC – Yeah. Well, I remember when I did the course what really landed was that each of these levels are not separate, they include and transcend one another and I think that’s so important because it might feel that, oh RSI, relationship systems intelligence is the best, but really it’s nothing without EQ and SI and so it’s important, I think, to hold all of these as a part of that equation. 

JVZ – Yeah. I heard you say it’s not like relationship systems intelligence is the best, one’s better than the other – no, including and transcending. I thought that was lovely, friend. 

IK – Well, what came up for me was that we always say we hold a soft focus on the individuals and a strong focus or a sharp focus on relationship, but we really need both. We compare it to this tennis match where we look at the match and we do, but you cannot have a tennis match without tennis players so it would be weird to exclude one of them. 

JVZ – Deep democracy on an intelligence level. All are needed, all hold information and yes, maybe sometimes as an ORSCer, through your ORSC translator, we are so focused on the relationship that we might lose some of the focus on the I but it’s vital, it’s foundational. 

KC – And this is really interesting because I have a couple of clients right now who would describe themselves as empaths, they care a lot about other people but often at the expense of their own needs, and it’s almost like they’ve dialed up that social intelligence and maybe it’s a dialing that up so much that the emotional intelligence is barely present and that leads to feeling neglected within those relationship systems that they’re in. I’m wondering what’s the challenge when this shows up? When we maybe dial up one of the other intelligences, but we miss EQ?  

JVZ – That’s the million-dollar question and we’re also talking about it beforehand. I must say as a practitioner, in all honesty, I sometimes work with a system, holding the system as my client, but then I have a feeling about one or more of the members of the system - well, you know, a little bit more self-focus you might actually benefit from. And for me it’s quite a challenge to reveal that back to the system without making it personal about that one individual. Still, if you think of the toxic behavior, stonewalling is one of them. So, somebody that’s not fully expressing the I voice is, in a way it’s like stonewalling the I voice and it can get, what’s coming up for me and for us as ORSC practitioners, it’s like the invitation, how to still hold that individual as a voice of the system. It’s not about that one individual, but the fact that you see something happening over there is impacting on a systems level as well, of course. 

KC – I love that framing; stonewalling the I voice. I think sometimes when this shows up it can almost feel like martyrdom in a way. It’s like these people might help everyone but themselves and yet that is in itself a toxic behavior because you are a voice of that system, and so it’s somewhat incomplete then, it’s not fully RSI if EQ is absent. 

IK – Yeah, absolutely. Tying in with toxicity, I think that if we’re in a relationship and we keep marginalizing our own needs and we end up doing everything for the other person because we think that we’re being really social, intelligent and being very empathic which is of course great, but if we then forget about our own needs what very often happens is we start to expect others to do that for us and to give away our own responsibility for feeling good and that is still, first and foremost, our personal responsibility, so if we end up doing that all the time I think we end up going to blame because we feel like why are you not meeting my needs? But this is also just simply my own responsibility. 

KC – Yeah. I didn’t think about that, but it gives away our agency in many ways. 

IK – Absolutely. 

KC – If we ignore that voice, that I voice, whatever emotion’s coming up there, we’re marginalizing ourselves within a system, whether that be a family system or a team or an organization. 

IK – Yes. 

JVZ – Yeah. I just wanted to underline, Irith, what you said, I love how you bring that. If we marginalize our own voice maybe we start expecting others to do that for us and if we don’t take responsibility on the inside, we usually project it on the outside, expecting others to do that for us. As I was listening to you I remembered a situation where I was in, not a professional setting but a personal setting and there was somebody who was all the time there for all the others but I had no clue, who is this person? It felt very incomplete, is a word that you used Katie, it made me feel uncomfortable, like who are you? Who is sitting around the table? Which, I think is a very vital point as an ORSCer, we need to know who is sitting around the table with me in this system. 

IK – And everyone deserves a seat at the table, right? I love that metaphor Judy because being in right relationship means that there’s also room for everyone. 

JVZ – …and you have to take a seat. 

IK – Yes. 

JVZ – Exactly. There’s a chair for you at the table, go take a seat and speak your voice. You wonder why the marginalization happens. What comes up to me now, I don’t know if it’s true but if you think of edgy voices, at the edge where often the seed for change is happening but it feels edgy to speak those voices often, it’s usually easier to just go with the primary and sort of blend in with that, but then really take your seat and speak an edgy voice. Yeah, that is asking for a certain level of boldness as well to do that but needed it is for systems to move forward. I think for myself I always recognize a physical signal when my stomach becomes nervous like just before you go onto stage, that kind of feeling, then I know I have to do or say something, there’s something going on inside of me that I need to express. Do you have similar things like that Irith in the context of ‘hmm, it feels a little bit edgy to speak my I voice? 

IK – Yeah, absolutely, I think what happens is that it’s sometimes very scary, there is an emotion, again, to say what we really think, especially if we have a history of maybe not such positive experiences within groups. Groups can sometimes be very unsafe places for people and if you have that experience, I think, to speak up, to make your voice heard can be very, very scary and I think that is then a signal for something important needs to happen and change needs to happen as well. So, I think if we can kind of lean into that and see ourselves as a voice of the system that will also make it much easier to speak up, it’s not just about us, it’s also information that we have for the system that needs to be heard. 

JVZ – The I voice as a voice of the system. Not just important for self but important for the system as well. If I may just underline what I realized as I was listening to you Irith, that there might be a history. So, that’s another part of being self-aware, not just what am I feeling or needing or noticing right now, but what’s the history that I’ve experienced in these kinds of settings and to be aware of that as well, patterns that you easily fall into, expectations that easily come up for you is also a part of being self-aware and building your emotional intelligence. 

IK – I just think that that what you’ve just mentioned about prior experience being so relevant, I think that it is very relevant to the experience of emotions and I think what might also be helpful when we talk about emotional intelligence is to know that we are actually very active participants in the creation of emotions, of our own emotions, at least that is something that I really learned from a neuroscientist by the name of Lisa Feldman Barrett, she wrote a really interesting book, it’s called How Emotions Are Made, and she describes there how, based on her research, we actually perceive certain things in the world and we perceive our own bodies, we perceive how we feel, and because we have prior experience we make sense of that and we actually give meaning to that by labelling a certain experience combined with our inner experience as an emotion. So, let’s say our heart is thumping and we maybe we’re flushed a little bit and she describes how if that happens in the context of a terrible event around us then we may label it as we’re really sad, whereas if we are going on a vacation, we’re about to go on our way, then we may label it as excitement, so the stories that we tell ourselves about the situation that we experience actually make us create those emotions. So that is where we have a lot of influence. Coming back also to the notion of agency that we discussed before, I think for me at least, that realization that we have such an impact on the emotions that we experience, we actually create them for ourselves. To me that was quite revolutionary. 

KC – Yeah, I love that point and you’re making me think about how I read this article around how our emotions are also somewhat culturally constructed as well, and it was comparing the emotions between how emotions are read in The Netherland’s compared to the USA, and actually certain things read quite differently. I know in the UK, sarcasm over here reads like a form of humor, but you take that out of the UK and it can be quite rude, and it’s just interesting how emotions can also have that coding that comes from our culture and yet we do have a choice, we could choose to maybe code them differently so that that sensation in our belly doesn’t have to mean nerves, it could mean excitement as it does for a lot of athletes when they get trained in this. 

IK – Yes, and the words that we use, the way we describe a situation to ourselves, we give information back to our brain and we scare ourselves, if we label some behavior as oh, they’re being defensive or they’re being resistant, we get ourselves on edge to go for a fight or maybe to get a little bit scared, whereas if we label that same situation as oh, they are trying to voice something that’s really important to them that has not yet been heard, we set ourselves up for a completely different conversation and completely different relationship, so we co-shape that experience and the emotions that go with it. 

KC – Yeah, that’s so true. 

JVZ – And you said there we’re active participants in creating our emotions. Using the words labelling, well that reminds me of what we said in the beginning, emotion sort of has a scary connotation. But they just are and actually, if they’re scary or not scary or whatever way we perceive them, we can take responsibility for this as well and we have impact on how we experience emotions and I think that’s also what I hear you say Iirth. So, in itself they are neutral, they just are, and how we perceive them, we actually have an impact on that. 

KC – I was doing this meditation practice recently where it tries to get you in touch with the sensations, as opposed to the story, and I didn’t realize how much, particularly with my emotions, the story comes straight away, and actually getting just that sense data can be so interesting because suddenly there’s all these different potential stories that come off that, but we’re so hard wired to go into that autopilot, this means that - I must be nervous, I must be scared, and then to your point, that creates our reality to a certain extent, it shapes how we feel. 

JVZ – Yeah. 

IK – Yes, in ORSC work we talk about dreaming up and we create the reality that we perceive, and that of course has an impact on our environment which then of course influences us back. And that, I think, is where we have the choice, we talked about that at the beginning as well. We can go on autopilot and say oh this is a scary situation or get angry because maybe for the tenth time, I don’t know, the garbage was not put out to the street, we go into automatic reactions but I think being emotionally intelligent also helps us to create a point of, we get to these crossroads where we have a choice to either go with that prediction like that means you don’t care or it’s not important to you, or we can get curious, like what is really happening here? And I think that curiosity is such an important piece of giving us that agency in relation to our emotions. And then we can also say are our predictions actually correct? We predict that something bad is going to happen or we predict that something adverse is coming at us and as human beings we tend to do that so quickly that it feels completely automatic. We need to be very efficient in making meaning of the world because if every time something happened, we needed to start from scratch it would take way too long, so we go really fast and then we forget that we have a choice to be curious and to discover what is really happening at this point in time. Is this the same story all over again? Maybe it’s actually not. Maybe something else is at play here. 

KC – And I think that curiosity can really help us over those edges. I’ve got more of a mundane example but I was trying to get into the cold shower in the morning thing and for years I’ve been adamant that no, no, I just can’t, I can’t do the cold, and somebody said get curious about the story and it’s sort of interesting because actually the physical response wasn’t as bad as actually I was making it out to be in my mind. Then when I started to connect to that it was like oh actually no, this is not so terrible and then over time it become oh this is quite nice. It was fascinating to get curious around that because there might be parts of self where we’re like no, I just can’t do that, that’s just not me, and maybe that story is blocking us from leaning in in a different way. 

IK – I love that example because it just shows us that if we consciously look for new experiences and maybe challenge ourselves a little bit there, our concept of what a cold shower means completely gets altered in that case, I don’t think I have yet gone there, I’m still quite afraid of cold showers! I can imagine that they’re great! 

JVZ – I also prefer a lukewarm bath. So, instead of all this emotional intelligence, instead of autopilot, really being curious and in the moment, what’s here now. You referred, Katie, to meditation. I’m a meditator, I think that’s the best strategy to become aware, what’s here now, and to realize that every moment is new. Currently, I’m not feeling what I felt like yesterday or five years ago, there is only the now and meditation is such an amazing tool to help us get in touch with it and then be at choice. 

KC – Would you say then emotional intelligence helps us to dial up our internal locus of control? Because whilst meditation shows us that everything’s constantly changing and that a lot is actually beyond our control, would you say it gives us agency where we actually have it as opposed to agency where we don’t? That famed control that often we’re grasping at. 

JVZ – I feel that. Well, maybe we need to do another podcast on meditation! 

KC – I think so. 

JVZ – There was something triggering in me when you said Katie meditation is teaching us that we are not in control and yes, I’m with you on that. What it does offer us and in that context I think it’s helpful for, as a strategy to build your emotional intelligence, is that every moment is new and, you know what the motion we started out with, that emotions just are, the good or the bad is grounded in history and story telling that comes from history, but what’s here now, just now. So, are we out of control? Well, probably to a lot of extent yes we are. However, I prefer the language being at choice, we are at choice once we are aware. Are we in full control, no, probably not, but the thing we can control is making a conscious choice. It’s like sitting back a little bit, all of a sudden, all kinds of things are happening, what’s happening, what’s the game that’s played here? And then step back in and be at choice of how to move forward with it. 

KC – I love that switch of language from control to choice, and maybe, not to rewrite the whole model but maybe it should be that internal locus of choice? 

JVZ – Yeah. 

KC – That feels more apt here for what emotional intelligence gives us. 

IK – Yeah, absolutely, I like that too. I think that the whole idea of the locus of control is that it really ties back to that sense of agency that we have influence, we have influence over what is happening to us, we’re not sort of just dependent on others for feeling a certain way, nobody can make us feel a certain way. Very often people say that you make me feel angry, or something – it doesn’t work that way, I don’t think at least. So we have more agency. Control, I agree with Judy that I wouldn’t really use that word because emotions are not there to be controlled, they’re there to be experienced but we have influence, I think locus of influence would be great. Because one really important way that we can influence our emotions is to be aware of the fact that how we feel, how our bodies feel, has a big impact on how emotional we get. If we take good care of ourselves and I think meditating might be a great way to do that, but also getting enough sleep and eating well and spending time with our loved ones, I know that if I feel a little bit down then spending time with my daughters and just hanging out and having fun is one of the greatest ways for me to feel better again. So, making sure that we take good care of ourselves makes us much more of influence on our emotions, and if we don’t sleep enough, we get quite emotional, most of us, or eat, if we don’t eat enough. I know you’re probably familiar with, I love the word getting ‘hangry’. I think that is so true. 

KC – It is. 

IK – I used to have that for years, if I didn’t eat in time, I would be like oh my blood sugar is down but I didn’t realize it at the time so I would get so upset with everyone, and then I learned it’s probably wise that I eat a bit and things look completely different. 

KC – I love where you’re pointing us because I think the body is such a resource, and quite often we try and think our way out of emotions. When I’m doing presentation skills training with people I’ll often talk about the body first because if you’re sitting down, for example, as many of us do in our home offices, it’s gonna have a certain impact, we’re gonna release certain chemicals in the brain, whereas if we stand up or have our shoulders back at the very least, that’s gonna send different chemicals to the brain. It’s a little-known fact that there’s more pathways from the body to the brain than the brain to the body and I just don’t think we use this fantastic resource enough to change our state. So, I love the influence piece because I think we do probably have more influence than we actually tap into. 

IK – Yes, I really believe that. 

JVZ – Maybe this is a side street I’m stepping into, I don’t know, but it feels like up until now we’ve been talking a lot about walking the stairs upwards, like emotional intelligence is the foundation to step into the other intelligences and they’re all very important. Let’s walk down the stairs as well. What does systems intelligence have to offer to the other levels? And specifically given the topic, what does it have to offer emotional intelligence? 

IK – Ooh, I love that. 

JVZ – I think that being in relationship and the way we learn about that through ORSC, being in conscious and intentional relationship and developing that we awareness, I’ve learnt so much about myself because of that and by being in relationship and awareness of what’s going on there, if I now walk down the steps I understand more of who I am, what’s important for me, what triggers me - all kind of sides of me. 

KC – That’s fascinating, and it really talks to the fact that relationship is a mirror and we can learn so much about ourselves in relationship but typically we do think about it as that stairs upward but why not the other way round? That’s great. I’m thinking about something Faith wrote in her upcoming book about how when her and Marita started in this work it was big to say ‘oh yeah, we leave emotions outside the office’. And it’s so interesting when we think about that because it’s just not possible and it’s not true, if we think about systems work, they’re always going to be there whether we deny them or not. So I wonder, what are some ways that you help to create awareness around emotional intelligence when you’re working with a system where that frame of mind might be more prevalent. ‘Oh yeah, emotions aren’t for the workplace, they’re for home.’ 

IK – Yeah. I completely recognize and I think there’s a shift going on in that sense, but still there’s a lot of workplaces where emotions are for home, and I’m immediately thinking of a team that I was recently working with together with a colleague of mine, and over there the whole notion of having emotions and showing them was really off-limits, so people were scared to show that they were maybe sometimes feeling overwhelmed or scared to say something. I think what really happened during the sessions is that, also again in the spirit of deep democracy they crossed some edges and started actually voicing that and showing that and I think what really helped was that the manager of the team also lead the way and did that as well. Normalizing that this is part of human experience and I think once that happened people started to really relax a bit more about that. So I think everybody can lead the way there but it’s fairly important that people who are in leadership positions, in the role of the manager, the leader, they promote psychological safety by not just saying we can be ourselves here but actually also showing that and demonstrating that. 

JVZ – Yeah, modelling that. That’s a great circumstance, if the team leader is able to model it or even contextualize it a little bit. If even that is not happening, I think how to bring it gently into the systems awareness, I’m using signals. I think our emotional experience, even before we give words to it, maybe even before we are aware of them, it’s demonstrating in our signals, and of course this is our intelligence dimensions, picking up those signals and holding them. I tend to introduce that in a very gentle and light way, like I’m noticing, well whatever the signal is, there was a light smile on your face, what’s that about? And that’s usually a gentle invitation to speak to what’s going on on an experience level more than on a cognitive level. 

IK – Because you mentioned the word experience, I think that’s a very accessible word for teams, because if we ask what are your emotions? That can trigger a reaction of oh, not here, but if we speak about experience, how do you experience a certain situation, that sometimes is much easier to speak too. 

JVZ – In the same vein as team coach you can also use your own bodily signals or whatever signal in the context of parallel process. It’s almost like reporting out from over the edge - naming the emotional field, it feels like there’s tension here and what are you noticing? Very simple, light, easy, low, well, for us low-edgey ways but maybe for the system very high-edge, I don’t know. But just modeling it for them, demonstrating, gently inviting and then for sure acknowledging when some of the emotional experience gets expressed and somebody really steps into a courageous space to also acknowledge that, reveal that back to the system and maybe checking in, what’s the impact of that, if also that voice gets expressed. I don’t know. I think the most foundational thing is, apologies for my language - emotions, we leave at home, it’s like bullshit. Just really trust in that, of course that is not true, so they’re here as well. But then honoring the primary, it’s not in their primary to bring that into an expression, gently nudging them over the edge. 

KC – And I love what you mention there Judy about how this is so useful for us as systems coaches and I think early on in this work I was very much marginalizing anything that wasn’t positive, I think I really, I really focused on creating a positive experience and I marginalized those parts of me that went I’m bored, or this feels stuck right now. And actually, starting to speak to that and saying ‘I’m feeling a little stuck-ness, is anyone else feeling that or is that just me?’ That’s opened up so much for the system, and so it’s fascinating how as coaches we can marginalize our emotions but actually that’s not bringing that wisdom to the system and it can be so invaluable sometimes just to share those insights that you’re getting. 

IK – I love that Katie, and I think you’re also pointing to a very important part of being a systems coach where when we work with a team or another system, our own inner experience at that point in time, our own emotions are really important information about that system, so being aware of that, using our own emotional intelligence for the sake of the system there, that’s invaluable, we need that as it’s one of our most important tools in our toolkit I would say. So, I love how you’re bringing that, your sense of stuck-ness, that’s what you’re experiencing but it’s information for them to learn and to see what it means. You’re not saying this is the case but let them talk about it. Also, what I really like is what you’re describing, Judy, about making them aware of the emotional field, in a way, I think that’s what you were pointing too which is of course the emotions that are being created within the system and I think a very accessible way is something that we use quite often is the weather reporting, it’s such a nice metaphor for teams to tap into that emotional field without actually naming those emotions that could be quite edgy, so instead of saying actually I feel a lot of tension, I’m really scared, you can say well there’s a storm coming and winds are blowing, it’s an easier way to relate to it sometimes. 

KC – It holds it more neutrally. 

IK – Yes. 

KC – This has been such a fascinating conversation. Where I’d love to close is, perhaps you could both finally share some of how this awareness has impacted you both in your lives, perhaps personally and professionally. 

JVZ – If might begin with the personal, I think a lot of the professional might have been included in what we talked about so far already. I think what you learnt from your mother, Irith, that all feelings are ok and welcome. I think for me it took me maybe 45 or 50 years to get to that point, maybe it’s the same to share but I always thought that there was something wrong with my inner experience, and then it feels like [unhappy noise], you know, life becomes like this. So, to learn more about that and also normalize it and acknowledge it, becoming aware of it, becoming more at choice, it’s really like my hands automatically open up, it’s like an expansion and now I can share my full me instead of my small identity. So, for the sense of self-realization which is a spiritual journey in itself in this lifetime, my God, it’s been invaluable. So, in my next life I can teach my children at the beginning feelings are ok! They just are! Be curious and there’s information for you there. 

KC – That’s beautiful, thank you Judy. 

IK – I love that. And Judy, I think you are teaching your children that, I’m sure. Like you said, I was very lucky to have that piece of knowledge very early on and I do think that it still took me much longer to also accept that really deeply within myself, because emotions can be quite overwhelming and I think that for me my big learnings that I had along the way was that I sometimes need to take myself a little bit less seriously when I’m in an emotional state and that I shouldn’t believe everything that I think when I’m in an emotional state. I think that is where I have really learned I have much more influence within myself, for example, you know there’s this common saying that you shouldn’t go to bed angry or if you are in an argument with your husband but I actually think that the opposite is true and it’s so important to have a good night’s sleep and things look completely different, so I think the ability to shift my own experience, by movement, by sleep, by eating in time, and then of course being open to all those emotions but not taking everything so seriously while I’m in them, I think that has been a major journey that I’m very happy I made some steps. Still learning. 

KC – I think this is a journey, isn’t it. We never arrive. Thank you so much, both of you, for this gorgeous conversation. It’s been full of wisdom, insight, vulnerability, openness, so thank you and you danced together beautifully so I appreciate you bringing your third entity to the podcast today. 

JVZ – Thank you very much Katie for your brilliant questions, allowing us to deepen and go on a journey between the three of us. 

IK – Yeah, it was really great Katie, thank you so much for all of your questions and your insights, it was lovely. 

[Music outro begins 47:46] 

KC – A huge thanks to Judy and Irith for that fascinating discussion. Here are some of my key takeaways. If we can hold out emotions with lightness and curiosity we can move away from labelling them as good or bad and see them for what they really are: sources of information. When we build our emotional intelligence it doesn’t necessarily give us more control over our life but it does provide us with more choice points. We can often influence our emotions more than we think. Becoming aware of the stories we tell ourselves around certain sensations, for example butterflies in your stomach, can help us reshape how we experience them. Are the butterflies in your stomach nervousness or could they also be a signal for excitement? Emotional intelligence creates a foundation for the other levels of intelligence. Before we can fully step into the other intelligences, social intelligence and relationships systems intelligence, we have to be aware of what’s going on in the me system as we too are a voice of the system. What do the other levels of intelligence have to teach us about emotional intelligence? Developing conscious and intentional relationships and building that we awareness of RSI, relationship systems intelligence can help us to learn so much about ourselves develop our emotional intelligence, as we understand more about who we are, what triggers us and what brings us joy. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. CRR Global’s unshakeable belief is that relationship matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole. For more information please visit CRRGlobal.com. 

[Music outro 49:58 – end]