Susan Dunn

I got an email from a client who’s in coach training who wrote: “I’m becoming concerned about the controversy over coaching credentials. I read in a magazine an interview with a psychologist who has a coaching school who says coaching should become empirically-based have rigorous credentials, and require post-doctoral training. This would eliminate people like myself from the field.”

One of the most important Emotional Intelligence competencies is Resilience, or change-proficiency and it’s a good one to develop. The good news emotional intelligence can be learned!

Dear Susan: My boss spends so much time on trying to find things I am doing wrong that I frankly do not know how he has time for anything else. He also goes around to other supervisors and fellow employees and tells them things about me so now others are keeping their distance for fear that they will be next. I think this is a very severe case of what they call “bullying.”

Coaching’s been around for about 10 years but there are still lots of people who haven’t tried it yet, and don’t know what it’s about.

There are many good reasons to establish an Emotional Intelligence culture in your workplace. It helps with stress (Wall Street Journal, March 2003); helps you attract and retain the best employees; is a buffer against mobbing and hostile workplace; facilitates individual performance and team work (Goleman, Ph.D.); enables leaders; is highly correlated with better sales (Seligman, Ph.D.); relates to honesty, authenticity and ethics; increases creativity and flexibility for better coping with the velocity of change; helps employees communicate better; and can keep you from getting sued (Surgery, 2002).

Dear Susan: I always considered myself to be someone who is supportive and sensitive to others’ needs. I feel that I have a gift of ‘being able to get on someone’s wavelength’ to understand where they are coming from. This was valuable when I worked in contract negotiations as well as in adapting my approach to different people as a Project Manager. People I have worked with have commented on and told me they appreciate this. Several have suggested that I would make a great manager.

In studying resilience and the sweet uses of adversity, and listening to my coaching clients, I discover the same things over and over again. After a given point in time, the person acknowledges that a lot of good things have come from their adversities.

I’m the “Ask the Expert” for some websites, and lately I’ve been getting questions about employment after 50. Since many of my clients are in midlife career transitions, I can tell you firsthand – yes, there is life after 50.

Need some tips on how to handle some curve balls you may get when you’re presenting from someone who’s been in the trenches?

1. Be businesslike, don’t rant.

Ranting and raving accomplishes nothing, but makes you sound like a lunatic. Put your rants on www. zinos.com and write something brief and to-the-point to the company.

1. Be businesslike, don’t rant.

Ranting and raving accomplishes nothing, but makes you sound like a lunatic. Put your rants on www. zinos.com and write something brief and to-the-point to the company.

Need some tips on how to handle some curve balls you may get when you’re presenting?

1. Make your email signature work for you. Your email is like a tiny billboard, if you use it right. Keep it short but make sure you get on there at the top, an invite to subscribe to your ezine, at the bottom, what you do, your URL and your tagline.

1. My grocery store now has a checkout stand immediately inside the front door and beside it is a cooler with milk, orange juice, butter, coffee, bread and the things you’d run into a convenience store for.

1. My grocery store now has a checkout stand immediately inside the front door and beside it is a cooler with milk, orange juice, butter, coffee, bread and the things you’d run into a convenience store for.

I belong to a yahoogroup of coaches and right now the topic is how to get organized. One coach writes that he’s using Outlook Express for his email and email address list, Time & Order for his address book, calendar, datebook and to-do list (synchronizing, he says, between PS and daytimer), and MindMappit for brainstorming/lists.” Someone replies that they’re an infj and to remember to focus on people and relationships. A third one replies they wouldn’t want to be a ‘type’ and there’s probably a name for that type, and she uses .etc.”

Emotional intelligence means knowing how to get along and it can move your career ahead. How do you handle office politics? For some it’s the reason to be there, while others consider it an interference with their work. If you’re going to be savvy about politics, here’s the scoop. Studies show that playing too hard at work is just as bad as refusing to play at all. Office politics is here to stay and how you play can influence your success, satisfaction, and performance at work. So read on.

In a symposium called “Integrating Mind, Body and Spirit in Medical Practice, researchers at Duke Medical Center investigated the role of anger, hostility, isolation and touch in our wellness. Here are some things you might like to know from Dennis Meredith’s article, “It’s All in Your Head: Healing Humanely,” which reported on the conference.

Le mobbing est un poison lent – Mobbing ist ein leises Gift Zuletzt gendert The Germans and the French call it “the slow poison.”

According to jury behavior studies, yes. Jurors (who are usually also employees) expect emotionally intelligent behavior from companies.

“The Agony and the Ecstasy” is the title of a novel about Michelangelo, by Irving Stone. When I encountered the title in middle school, I decided to read the book to find out what “agony” and “ecstasy” might be like, states of existence apparently available to uber-humans like Michelangelo. I was sure I had not experienced them.

“Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.” — William James

According to jury behavior studies, yes. Jurors (who are usually also employees) expect emotionally intelligent behavior from companies.

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue…. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and writer, in 1844, which may have made him the first person to propose that emotionality is hard wired.