Clarity Of Intention Results In Resilience

Emotional intelligence includes having clarity of intention. Having clarity of intention and results in more energy and resourcefulness. And that means more resilience in the face of problems, change, and turbulence. Resilience means we can handle turbulence and bounce back.

To be resilient and resourceful, we need to ask ourselves in each new situation:
What do I really want? Or,
What matters?
What is important?
What values do I want to preserve in this situation?

Knowing our answers at a deep level gives us great energy to be resilientto deal with lifes setbacks. Usually our first answer is not the final word. We need to dig deeper.

Dig deeper: A story

For example, a woman in a workshop of mine, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient Leaders and Professionals, said, What I want is for my teenage daughter to clean up her room. Its horrible!

I coached her to ponder what she really wanted. I said, OK, then here is how you can get that wish to come true. Give your daughter all sorts of cleaning equipment, lock her in her room, and tell her she cannot come out until the room is clean.

The woman was shocked. Oh, I couldnt do that.

Why not?

Because she would hate me. She would be angry with me for months.

OK, I replied, then you must want something else in addition to a clean room. What is that?

The woman pondered and said, I also want to keep a good relationship with her.

Well, then you could hire someone to clean the room, I replied.

No, no. That wont do either.

Why not?

Because I want her to learn to take responsibility for cleanliness. She needs to learn to do that before she leaves home in two years for college.

Now you have dug deeper into what you really want, I summed up. You want three things:
A clean room,
A good relationship with your daughter,
Your daughter to learn to take responsibility for cleanliness.

The woman grew excited, Yes, yes, thats it!

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence means that you know what you really want, at a deeper level than your first inclination. In this situation, for example, the woman really valued cleanliness and wanted her daughter to learn to share her value. You can see from her excitement that this process of digging deeper energized her. After that, she had more energy to craft strategies to get what she really wanted.

A simple strategy often will not get you what you really want. You must be resourceful. When you dig deeper, new alternatives will come to mind. Knowing what you really want at a deeper level makes you more resourceful and resilient.

Clarity of intention

The principle here is that you have the most energy if you work in alignment with what you really want. Keep asking yourself what you really want and dig deeper in each situation. Then you will be energized and resourceful in finding strategies to get what you really want.

Knowing what you really want is a form of emotional intelligence needed to face changes, complexity, ambiguity, and turbulence in your workplace and in the world. In his book Coach2 the Bottom Line, Mike Jay asserts: One of the most critical roles of a leader is centered in establishing clarity of intention. If you are a leader of your company, you must know what you really want. Then you can set goals accordingly and plan appropriate actions.

When turbulence blows you off course, you can correct your course by remembering what you really want. If you have clarity of intention, you have a sense of direction no matter what happens. Our Executive Coaching can help you keep that sense of direction.

Copyright © 2009, by William R. Murray, President of Eagle Alliance Executive Coaching, LLC. Reprint rights granted to all venues so long as this article and by-line are printed intact with all links made live.