Eva Eldridge

Beyond Emotional Intelligence

Four dimensions of individual differences that can help leaders better understand their people’s reaction in a crisis.

Introduction

These are unprecedented times. You, as a leader, have never been here before. For the nation, this is somewhere we have never been either. Now we are forced to form new habits, new routines, new approaches to every-day life. What do we need to know that could help us to weather the storm?

Obviously, we all listen to the same news and information. But do we hear the same thing? We are all exposed to the same guidelines and instructions. But do we follow them in the same manner? We are undertaking special actions and developing new behaviours so we can adjust to the new situation. How do we make sure that everyone is ‘on the same page’?

The first tenet of crisis management is to make sure your people are safe and well. However, in crisis situations, despite being exposed to exactly the same stimuli, people behave and react very differently. And they will not feel well and safe if their leaders don’t understand why they are behaving the way they do. And consequently, their needs will not be met. 

Understanding others’ cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to a crisis requires much more than empathy or emotional intelligence. During times of conflict or crisis, a degree of knowledge about the psychology of individual differences (far beyond who is an extrovert or an introvert) may be helpful in:

• making sure that everybody in the team feels safe and well
• aligning mutual needs and clarifying expectations
• predicting possible reactions and behaviours

You have probably observed already that being exposed to the negative and/or threatening message of pandemic disease creates a powerful stimulus. This can trigger a snow-ball effect of extreme reactions, from frantic activity (‘headless chicken’ syndrome) to complete withdrawal or depression (fright, flight or freeze).

Social isolation can make some feel sad, lonely and disconnected. Others become focused, energised and finally feeling in control of their time and life. Working virtually can evoke anxious diligence in some, or bored disengagement in others.

In addressing the complexity of peoples’ behaviour there are clearly many psychological constructs. However, the four well researched and evidenced concepts in personality science of individual differences outlined below may help leaders to make more informed decisions.

Four dimensions that make a difference when people react to a crisis

1. Action vs State orientation

All individuals fall somewhere along on a continuum of action-state orientation.

Those who are more action oriented are:

• Better able to focus their thoughts and actions on a given task for a longer period in more sustainable ways.
• More efficient and resourceful.
• More likely to bounce back easily after minor setbacks.

Those individuals who are more state oriented tend:

• to be absorbed by persistent, recurring thoughts (rumination) about alternative goals and tasks
• to be distracted by various emotional states and moods
• find it hard to focus on goal setting and goal striving
• to become somewhat lost without the familiarity of routine schedules and patterns
• not to initiate tasks and follow them through to completion, which makes them much less efficient.

What does this mean for leaders?

While dealing with Action oriented (AO)people:

• leaders can be more ‘hands-off’ and observe from the distance as AO people get on and do things in their usual pro-active way
• leaders should let them do their job, as they are ‘by nature’ self-organising and self-directed.
• leaders need to watch the results of AO people’s actions very closely, as good outcomes are not automatically guaranteed by action orientation
• leaders need to be able to measure the results clearly and be prepared to give feedback to AO as they often undertake actions without a clear focus and sometimes mistake motion for action
• leaders need to be prepared to provide a careful degree of frame working and structuring
• some periodical, irregular supervision will be required, just to check if AO people are on the right track.

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While dealing with State oriented (SO) people, leaders will require to engage themselves earlier in the process by:

• providing clear aims and goals (especially short-term ones)
• providing frameworks and clear guidance how to achieve the goals
• provide a calming influence to prevent the natural negative rumination process in SO
• staying in touch and keeping a more frequent and diligent communication flow
• providing reassuring steady routines, and clear deadlines
• stating clearly boundaries and consequences for missed deadlines
• delivering regular, straightforward feedback to make them feel ‘grounded’ in a new situation.

2. Locus of Control

Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they either have, or do not have, control over the outcome of events in their lives.

People who believe they have high control over the outcome of life events are said to have strong internal locus of control (ILoC). Such people believe that they have skills to shape their reality and that the actions they undertake determine their life.

Conversely, people who believe they have no control (or very low control) over the outcome of life events are said to have an external locus of control (ELoC). They put faith in things like luck, fate, or destiny as determining their place in the world. Someone with an external locus of control will have low belief in their ability to influence their life experience.

What does this mean for leaders?

While dealing with people with external locus of control (ELoC) leader will:

• play an active role in enhancing their enthusiasm and engagement in achieving workplace goals
• provide them with task structure before and during the performance of tasks
• not expect them to be very entrepreneurial and risk-taking
• not be surprised with their generally low levels of job satisfaction
• bear in mind that ELoC people tend to blame others, culture or system, rather than be accountable themselves

While dealing with people with internal locus of control (ILoC) leaders may:

• expect that they will believe that outcomes are contingent upon their own efforts and skills
• notice they hold themselves accountable more often
• find that they emphasise their personal choices and validate them
• expect the ILoC to be more active than ELoC in seeking ways of creating situations where their actions will be rewarded and if not, they may be expected to pro-actively pursue other forms of action
• notice that they tend to have a higher level of job satisfaction than ILoC and usually perform better in crisis situations
• find their attitude very helpful in overcoming the crisis connected tensions

3. Ambiguity Tolerance (AT) – dealing with uncertainty

Ambiguity Tolerance refers to the way an individual perceives and processes information in situations which are novel, complex, unfamiliar, chaotic and unpredictable.

People low on the Ambiguity Tolerance (LAT) scale may:

• often experience a high level of stress
• rush to action in order to reduce the ambiguity and the consequent level of experienced stress
• tend to make decisions prematurely, with insufficient data and narrow categories of information
• usually decide on one (fast) solution and stick to it, regardless
• tend to perceive the world and others in black or white categories
• rigidly stick to their opinions
• strive to achieve certainty at all cost
• come across as quite aggressive, authoritarian, punitive, close minded and not very creative.

People with high ambiguity tolerance (HAT):

• thrive in situations of uncertainty, unpredictability or chaos
• tend not to rush to action
• seek wider data from a variety of information sources
• are able to examine complex situations from multiple perspectives
• are able to hold and balance countervailing views
• tend to engage in decision-making processes in a more considered way.

What does this mean for leaders?

In crisis situations it is critical for a leader to establish early on where on the AT continuum the team members are.

While dealing with LAT people, leaders may:

• need to find ways of taking the psychological pressure off them
• need to place them into a more simplified, task completion environment
• need to be prepared that LAT people will look up to their leaders to provide them with higher degrees of reassurance
• find themselves involved in a parent/child transactional dynamic with LAT
• consider their language needs to be more reassuring, calming and grounding
• need to provide space where LAT people can offload their insecurities and frustrations.

While dealing with HAT individuals, leaders may want to make sure that:

• HAT’s are not too demanding with respect to their less AT co-workers
• they stay focused on the task and not disperse their energy and creativity
• their sometimes chaotic innovation or creativity processes are harnessed or structured
• the HAT preference for unstructured goal pursuit may be more stressful for LAT team members
• while HAT people bounce back easily from setbacks, they may be insensitive to others’ needs in this regard
• they are not challenging or undermining new rules established for the duration of crisis
• they are not threating the team cohesion during the crisis.

4. Regulatory Focus - Promotion vs Prevention

Individuals can adopt two distinct personal strategies or orientations when they pursue goals. They can pursue their aspirational goals, striving to maximise gains and realise their ‘ideal self’ (promotion focus) or try to fulfil their obligations, striving to avoid losses and realise their ‘ought self’ (prevention focus).

Promotion focus:

• PROMO expect their nurturance needs, hopes and wishes to be met
• in their approach they strongly gravitate toward advancement, growth, and accomplishment
• while solving tasks they emphasize speed and achieving maximal levels of performance (speed and quantity over quality)
• PROMO are driven by a strong desire to progress, stand out, and receive recognition
• they are enthusiastic, optimistic, cheerful and upbeat, especially at the onset of a project or challenge
• they make decisions based on what could go right (the pros) rather that what could go wrong (the cons)
• they tend to be more risk taking
• PROMO correlates positively with extroversion

Prevention focus:

• their first priority is to feel safe and secure
• makes PREVE strive to fulfil their immediate duties and obligations
• they focus on minimising shortfalls and potential losses
• their actions tend to be disciplined, vigilant and responsible
• their behaviours tend to be cautious, careful and reserved
• they are detail oriented
• PREVE people seek to avoid making mistakes at all cost
• they want to be seen as being reliable, steadfast and always accountable
• they make decisions based on what could go wrong (the cons) rather than what could go right (the pros)
• they like to make sure nothing is left to chance or goes wrong by making a realistic plan and sticking to it
• they are much more concerned with self-certainty than innovation, creativity or disruption of old traditional patterns
• PREVE tend to be mildly sceptical,
• in their approach PREVE will prefer defensive pessimism to optimism.
• they tend to be risk averse
• PREVE correlates positively with introversion.

What does this mean for leaders?

The main job of a leader while making sure that these two distinct types cooperate, is using the appropriate language and creating the appropriate environments that resonate with each.

While dealing with PROMO individuals, leaders may help them by:

• framing the message in the categories of gains, achievement and accomplishment
• harnessing their optimism bias
• addressing their need to speed up and advance quickly through projects which may need more thorough work given the situation
• motivating them to focus on more details and hard facts and/or numbers
• helping them to prevail on tasks for longer than just at an enthusiastic start
• providing positive recognition of their energy and enthusiasm while maintaining unobtrusive oversight of their activities to ensure their more exuberant approaches are not damaging to the responses to the crisis 

In case of PREVE individuals, leaders may want to:

• frame their message in categories which most appeal to PREVE i.e. the minimising of potential losses
• address and highlight the PREVE’s desire to fulfil their duties and obligations
• ensure that their safety and security needs are met
• avoid addressing PREVE with the ‘ra-ra’ type of pep talk as it will be counterproductive
• provide positive recognition of their diligence, prudence and risk management while ensuring that these aspects do not prevent timely actions required in the crisis 

End Remarks

As leaders, we need to be aware of two more essentials facts about people, apart from the individual differences stemming from our personal characteristics described above.

First, we interpret things very differently based upon our previous experience and all the past lessons we have learned in our lifetime. Our brains capture different parts of the same message and deal with them differently through the filters of our own specific neural pathways.

Second, to complicate things even further, it is essential to bear in mind that the crisis has caught each of us in a different stage of our life developmental curve (and context). This fact means that the crisis carries completely different meanings for each of us. Consequently, we each create a variety of coping strategies to survive the crisis and come safely through to other side.

From my work with teams it is abundantly clear that, when a leader wants to have a real connection with the team (and times like these will definitely put it to a test), it is critical to try to ‘suss out’ the people out early on, before any crisis strikes.

A crisis is like a magnifying glass through which we can see what was previously unnoticed. A crisis intensifies the stories we tell and the meaning we project. Science-based knowledge of where these stories and insights come from will help you to take more informed actions, maximise the energies and responses of your people and minimise the potential human damage and stress.