Emotionally and Socially Intelligent Elections

Without the benefit of psychic power or a crystal ball, the editorial staff of Collaborative Times is now ready to make its totally optimistic prediction for the winner of the US election this November: and the winner is… The American People! (And thus the people of North and South America, Europe, Africa and Australasia and the Poles!!)

Isn’t that terribly ethnocentric of us?

No! Because our prediction is based on a groundswell of emotional and social intelligence that is starting to sweep the global business sector, public and private education, and countless governmental agencies at home and abroad!! (We can only assume this giant leap for human civilization must be the result of all our books and consulting work along with that of our thousand plus colleagues in the field!)

Emotionally intelligent elections – now there is a concept! And we say it’s one this planet is finally ready to embrace. What will it look like to have emotionally intelligent candidates, emotionally intelligent voters, and an emotionally intelligent media? We may undertake to address all three components of this equation in detail at some point, but here are some general symptoms we expect to see manifesting any day now.

First, there will be a rapid decrease in the level of fear. Talk about a toxic emotion! All of the attempts to scare us voters out of voting for candidate x or y or z because of a or b or c are just about over. Everyone is figuring out that “scared” is a really poor state of heart and mind from which to decide on anything. All around the country people are starting to step back and take a deep breath and relax as they exhale. They are using their emotional skills of Reality Testing to disengage from all of the, “he said, she said, they didn’t, they did,” hoopla, and think about what the U.S. really needs.

The voters are using their skills of Independence, Self-Regard, and Assertiveness to say to the candidates, “Hey – wait a minute! The real issues are just a little more complex than what you’re spinning out, and we are smart enough to know that, and bold enough to say so, and we expect you to respect us for that! A whole lot of what you are trying to portray as economic and policy issues are actually moral issues, and even if our investment houses may be bankrupt in that currency, we are not! We can’t tell right from wrong.

The voters will say, “Our emotional skills in the area of Social Responsibility have exceeded those of many of our leaders for a long time now, and if you want us to follow you anywhere, you had better use your Empathy skills to really listen, and hear us, and feel us, not just to figure out how to sell us. We’ve been sold this nonsense and that nonsense for so long now that we’re all sold out!”

“Our world doesn’t work without jobs and teachers and communities that are safe because everyone feels valued and wants to belong and contribute to them. That’s basic Emotional Self Awareness and we the people have it! And you the ‘leaders’ deny it when you tell us we are hurting because of a trade deficit. We are hurting from an investment deficit! Increasing the national debt does NOT demonstrate the emotional intelligence competency of Impulse Control – it just consumes that much more of the little energy we have left for maintaining our Stress Tolerance.

Here’s a message from the world of the emotionally intelligent electorate to all the national, state, and local politicians that are running for office this year: Slow Down! Walk! Heck, STOP for just a minute, and look, and listen, and feel what’s going on here. And then feel what you feel about that feeling. And finally, reach down deep, clear into the very, very best part of yourself, and find the highest quality answer you can honestly live with and then start to lead us all from there.

Because, polling your polls and spinning your numbers is worse then the blind leading the blind – it’s the blind blinding the sighted, and quite honestly we’re not going to follow that kind of nonsense anymore.

So if your campaign, or your delegation, or your party could use an upgrade in its emotional intelligence, please give us at Collaborative Times or one of our thousand plus colleagues a call. If you’re sincere, we can help! If you’re insincere, WE CAN TELL!