Our guest:
Tine Bieber
The past five years Tine has experimented with the concept of TEAL, in particular with evolutionary purpose in the context of an organization in the Oil & Gas industry. The organization implemented a radical purpose approach that made purpose the only boss. Tine works with the complexity of human emotions, which has been a returning theme in all contexts and
countries, not only in the traditional business world but also in the New Work
world. Tine is a German native, based in Amsterdam and feeling at home in Brazil and Istanbul. When she is not out there in the world, she travels the roads of Europe with her longtime boyfriend in their DIY renovated camper van.
Elaine Favero
After being a tax lawyer for 9 years, Elaine transitioned her career in order to bring more happiness and lightness to organizations. She has been a consultant and mentor for 5 years, working directly or indirectly to improve the quality of life in companies such as: Votorantim Cimentos, Roche, Hydro, Menos 1 Lixo, Public Leadership Center, Pacto (Lemann Foundation). In her studies and work, she realized that the cause of all misunderstandings, distrust and difficulty in working in collaboration have a common root: emotions. From this perception UNI was born: taking care of emotions is the fundamental first step for any project or transformation that an organization desires.
Living Room Conversations: Emotional Intelligence with Tine Bieber and Elaine Favero
Johannes = Johannes Ecker (Host)
Tine = Tine Bieber (Guest)
Elaine = Elaine Favero (Guest)
JOHANNES: Welcome everybody my name is Johannes. I’m a catalyst at LIVESciences and I’m delighted to host this conversation today on emotional intelligence with our wonderful guests Elaine Favero and Tina Bieber from Uni-Emotion which we will bring up on the screen in a couple of seconds. But first to everybody who’s joining the first time our Living Room Conversations we introduced this format because we believe, strongly believe in the power of
conversations to evolve and develop together new ideas around alternative and Teal ways of working. And especially when it happens in a cozy comfortable warm atmosphere that’s why we called it Living Room Conversations and maybe you’re watching this as a recording but we also are live today now on YouTube and LinkedIn and hopefully we have some guests here attending live so if you’re attending live you’re happily welcome to post your questions please
leave me in the chat where are you tuning in from and what brought you here and I’m very happy to pick up your questions whenever you post them we try to find a good spot and bring them in so you can interact with our guests and this is the time let’s bring them on screen our guests from Uni-Emotion Elaine and Tine, welcome.
TINE: thank you so much, inviting us to your Living Room Johannes
JOHANNES: I’m very excited to have both of you here um let’s check in check in into this conversation we’ll have around 60 minutes but it’s really become fully present and start and because I’m very looking forward to our conversation let’s quickly check in which will be hopefully emotional intelligent so where are you tuning in from and how are you in this very moment?
TINE: So I’m tuning in from Amsterdam and I feel actually I’m very excited also I don’t know like the whole setup and everything is so nice so yeah I feel like I’m present and here and I’m curious and yeah and feeling a lot of emotions at that point I have to say.
JOHANNES: That’s very appropriate to the situation and the topic awesome cool thank you Tina how about you, Elaine where are you tuning in and how are you?
ELAINE: Yeah I am calling from Brazil at Sao Paulo I woke up in a rush I was a little bit because it’s early right here right now and I actually had an argue just waking up and I didn’t like that so I’m gonna be touched with that but everything is fine and I’m really happy to be here with you right now and excited also a little bit nervous.
JOHANNES: Awesome thank you so much for tuning in at that early point of day right we’re already in the afternoon here so let’s take notice of the time difference cool.
TINE: How are you doing Johannes?
JOHANNES: Oh thanks for asking. I’m good I’m good yeah quite here tuning in from Switzerland close to the lake Hullville so it’s in the central and I’m feeling good.
ELAINE: Yeah that’s a typical check-in with you a lot I hope that’s true from your side I really do but this is just sometimes though you say I’m good and then you’re you’re expected to be
treated like someone who is feeling good and maybe sometimes we’re not and we just want to hide that and I’m not saying you’re hiding that but a lot of times that happens so it’s really important that I can say that I got here agitated and messy because then I know that I can
count on your comprehension and understanding of my state of being right now so I’m glad you’re good and to start.
TINE: I was waiting for that so now you know Johannes how our check-ins go in the company, right?
JOHANNES: I hear that a lot so my first learning is like answering the question how are you with good is not really helpful or is not the most emotional intelligent way to answer right? Cool, so I’m as I already learned something I’m happy to discover more and kind of the flow that came up to my mind and let’s see how and where it really takes us is to really like coming from your personal story very interested like how did you come in touch with that topic right? What
are you doing at the moment and then what is the relevance for the topic and nowadays in society but also mostly focus on businesses and especially also around in the context of self-organization and then see what you guys are doing at Uni-Emotion and I’m very curious about that so maybe to start with how and why did your life path lead you to work for Uni-Emotion now like what happened so that you ended up working there now
what led you away?
TINE: should I start? so I mean I’m born and raised in Germany right and it’s like it’s not necessarily a culture where emotions are out there or where you are encouraged to speak about emotions or share and I actually ended up studying business administration same thing you are you know kind of like educated to be the leader of the future to manage people without actually going into the topic that it’s a highly you know delicate topic to help people how to manage their emotions and such and what kind of potential is in there but I didn’t know that so when I started out I just felt like okay there are things kind of like going in a direction I didn’t really yeah kind of like agree with especially in the topic of purpose so for me this topic of purpose which in these studies were purpose equals profit was a very a very returning topic
over the years and 2016 I started working with a company in oil and gas with a pretty big purpose. And when we started out 2016 we implemented holocracy this self-management model I think probably a lot of our audience will know about and then we quickly get to the point of okay this is great this somehow works but where is the space for people and what does that actually mean? So also spending some time at Zappos in Vegas you know one of the first pioneers of holocracy and was really really interesting times and then starting to actually create the space of yeah people interacting people taking care of personal and interpersonal tensions and and that was quite a journey that led us to this topic of purpose in particular so what am I actually doing here? Why am I showing up here? And purpose kind of like became for us this topic like okay we need to make this the center of everything so we did we made purpose radically the center of everything what we did which was hiring firing salary system how we interacted with each other and created a pretty radical narrative as well in terms of okay if it’s good for the purpose then I do it right so purpose kind of like started intervening into own identity and the consequence was the space didn’t feel safe or too much emotionally safe anymore so people didn’t they started to close up and isolate and not expressing their emotions and and not meeting own needs again needs trigger emotions and at the same time I got in touch with Elaine so we met via community in california the radical purpose community and I went I wanted to travel to Brazil.
I had friends in Brazil already for years and then I called her up in January 2020 and I was like hey I’m coming can we you know like do a project or so I need to have like another purpose than just exploring this country and she was like oh sure I’m sitting here in chapala di mangina it’s so beautiful I have an idea I call you back so she just organized like a two-day workshop of a whole community bringing together people and to help them practically yeah to collaborate more like amazing initiatives but a lot of like yeah very much decentralized but bringing them together so we did that together with with people in that area then in Chapada dos Veadeiros close to Brasilia it’s- you gotta go there Johannes. It’s amazing it’s just like one of the most beautiful places on this earth. And that when my my time in Brazil came to an end we were sitting together kind of like reflecting and we were like you know what we’re pretty much on the same page we should do stuff together. And by the way I have this idea of an app so she was she was literally 10 minutes before I had to go to the airport she showed me her ideas and she was like ‘So?’ I’m like ‘yeah wow this is amazing. Okay I’m in.’ and she’s like ‘Okay good you fly back to Amsterdam I call you and we make it set.’
So that happened in March 2020 and now today we are two years further the app is developed and yeah we’re going the next phase and besides that we also we founded end which is pretty much a consultancy platform in New York, yeah.
JOHANNES: Nice. Thank you so much for sharing that interesting story that sounds really nice a lot of potential to ask questions but where I know where to Elaine. Can you please add like in which roles are you like which roles are you energizing at uni motion at the moment or positions you’re holding just for our audience?
ELAINE: You’re asking me now or..?
JOHANNES: Yeah.
ELAINE: Yeah for me it’s like mainly business development and and a little bit communication outside of Brazil let’s say.
JOHANNES: Thank you so much now I’m the curious Elaine who came up the last the last 10 minutes up here encounter this great idea and got obviously Tina on board so here is how your path led you to Uni-Emotion?
ELAINE: Yeah it’s really hard to talk after Tina because she’s so structured mine and I love the way she’s I’ll try to get somewhere but I’m not that that organizer she’s a little bit more chaotic here but well my my my story with emotions I think it started I was a tax lawyer for nine years and I am I’ve always been a very happy person you know I lived in Spain for three years when I was a teenager and my my nickname actually was the happiest person on earth.
And so the being happy and feeling joy for what I’m doing and understanding my energy I’m putting my energy into something that breaks impact has always been really important for me and has always driven all my decisions so at some point I was like a text lawyer for nine years and I started being sad like really sad. And I never experienced this amount of sadness before I would cry come and come in and going back to work and I had a good work paid well I could wear any clothes I wanted and I could come and go back by walking which in Sao Paulo is really rare. I already privileged position so I’m like yeah there’s something here that’s not right that’s not right at this point in my life I had a safety enough to decide to leave my career and try something something else something different so I went to a mentorship to see what I was about to do. And my previous aid my first idea was to sell flowers I’m like yeah I’m gonna sell flowers that’s it and and and she was like yeah you’re not gonna be watering flowers you’re gonna be dealing with logistics and drugs and stuff like this I’m like okay okay. So I really started really liking what she was doing to me like enlightening me about myself and about my possibilities and so I told her I want to study that I want to do what you’re doing to me to people so I started first understanding a oncological philosophy. It’s a type of philosophy that teaches you how to understand people through their language and from that I learned non-violent communication I found out about Ken Wilbur and fell in love with integral theory this was like five years ago and so I started going to this world and always trying to understand how I could help people to be happier at their jobs because not everybody gets to quit and make a big transition like I did.
And in doing that and consulting and starting getting big and bigger and bigger clients I got to realize something really sad is that my job was not being good enough like in a sense that sometimes you get to a to an organization and they ask you for a non-violent communication training for example and you go there and you teach them that but the time you’re giving and and the level of time the people of the organization are given also to understand of that it’s not enough for you to understand it with your heart you just understand that with your reason and after two three weeks it’s gone so I went to internet I was really like why why why is this going on and I found out that just in 2019 there were like 360 billion dollars invested in consultings and only 15 percent of people were happy with the results of it I’m like this is a big waste of money like just give away the money to the collaborators maybe they get better vacations you know they’re happier with that come on. So I started trying to go back to the beginning of the process to understand that in human beings the limbic system that’s responsible for emotions clicks in before the rational one so whether you want it or not you’re always drawn by your emotions so so we need to look at them because they’re the beginning they are the start and if we have an effective way of bringing change it’s going to start over there in the first step of the of the thinking process and the feeling process so this is where when it came from so we developed uni and big reference that I got like many alters but the atlas of emotions from the Dalai Lama that’s online available and it teaches you a lot about how you can name your emotions so you can tame them.
So that’s my path through and then this gorgeous German girl appeared in front of me and I was like ‘Oh my god now I’ve got everything I need!’
JOHANNES: And you bring obviously the structure right? Organizing?
ELAINE: Yeah.
JOHANNES: Thanks for sharing your story. Very interesting before we because I really you just said like emotions drive everything, right? So the relevance speaks for itself but before we dive into that even more I experienced a lot of confusion with other people and around myself like
how do you distinguish emotions from feelings? Like if people say there’s the words like some talk about the feeling some talk about mood some talk about emotions some talk about effects like can you can you define and distinguish and clarify that for us?
ELAINE: Yes. It’s quite simple, actually the definition not when it’s going on with you but the definition is quite simple but emotions is something that happens automatically before you think. For example you’re driving and then a car approaches now emotions are something we develop for to improve even more our survival so it’s an evolutionary part of our systems so you’re driving and then a car comes across you don’t think of it you turn the wheel you you reduce speed and then you’re like oh my god a car right and then you’ve already gone away so this is the emotion fear okay it hits you and makes you do something before you think it makes you react on that.
So emotion it’s something that comes out of your system with a chain of hormones that a patalimus produces when your heart understands there’s something going on that could be dangerous or that you need to be informed about that so this is the emotion. The feelings it’s the interpretation you make out of that emotion so I had a car coming from my direction I was managed to go away or I had a car accident this is the fear if I get a trauma or not later on this is the feelings so the feelings. They depend on the rational interpretation that I make of the emotion that I felt so the emotion lasts three minutes that’s it really short time of course if you if you’re still exposed to something that makes you scared for example other three-minute circle other three minute circle of these hormones is this as much as they last in your blood system. But all the thinking you do after that it’s all the feelings so the emotions they are neutral they don’t have an interpretation anywhere you go around the world you- I’m asking you now what does it look like when a person is scared? For everybody in the world but is everybody in the world afraid of a spider? Is everybody in the world afraid of heights? So this becomes a knot of the what kind of sense we made out of the emotional event we had so feelings can last a whole lifetime you can be like a lifetime feeling really sad because of something that happens to you if you don’t let it go and that’s a refreshing process.
TINE: And what Elaine said so emotions are universal you will experience the same like all around the globe however feelings can also be impacted by culture.
ELAINE: Yeah for example the Germans have a word the Germans that’s only in German they have a word called schadenfreude this is a feeling that only the emotions only exist in German or in Italian they have a word called fiero which is a status of a type of joy that you feel for another for another person which we call is like being proud but it’s not that it’s a word they have for it so depending on the cultural matter you also have other types of emotions on that but
it’s all inside of happiness and fear and that those big groups.
JOHANNES: Thank you so much for the explanation I remember that especially I think the three minutes rule is quite relevant especially for like solving conflicts right if you know that after three minutes emotions cool down I think that it’s quite helpful for conflict resolution one more and how do you define mood? Because like for check-ins for workshops or sprints or whatever I like to use the mood meter from emotional intelligence center of Yale I think it is and it’s mood and it describes actually feeling so how does that get together with emotion feeling mood?
ELAINE: I don’t know this mood system that you’re you’re mentioning so I don’t feel that I could respond to that I don’t know if Tine does but the impression I have of what I read about mood it’s something that’s very instantaneous it’s connected to emotions but doesn’t depend on them but they’re not interpretation they’re more like your state of spirit in that moment but they really don’t feel comfortable talking more than that.
TINE: But that’s I would also go like you know into like this comparison of a stage and state because a state is like this short-term kind of emotion you can be in or the state you can be in and the stage could be for example I know we talked about it before at some point but if we if we talk about happiness right you can be in like a certain stage which is longer but it doesn’t mean that that you’re getting you know like off track in a way or you have like not you you don’t have a great day every day that’s not what happiness is right? So you can go into a state that that rocks your world for some minutes or a day.
JOHANNES: That’s true. That’s nice.
ELAINE: Or if you just you know bump your feet into the door it’s gonna change your maybe your mood at that moment but it’s not gonna change your whole day so.
JOHANNES: Yeah that’s awesome I just realized because I just realized that a question from the audience where was coming up and I’m already soaked into the topic so that’s a good sign like it before we answer Kate’s question which which was like are there any special skills that are needed to become an emotional intelligent coach I would firstly like how would you define emotional intelligence then? Like how would I- what is it and how would I notice that a coach or a person or a leader or facilitator host is emotionally intelligent?
ELAINE: So emotional intelligence, I love this guy. So he says that emotional intelligence that’s really related to your ability to comprehend and understand your emotions so a low level of emotional intelligence is when you feel something and you’re not really aware you’re feeling that it’s like what’s going on? And it just wanted to go away it’s like I feel a sadness I just want it to go away I don’t want to relate to that I cannot understand how that happens in my body so I just deny them this is a low level of emotional intelligence. In the medium level of emotional
intelligence I recognize I’m feeling an emotion I kind of know like I’m feeling like my hands are sweaty I’m probably scared this comes out of fit you know and but I really wish it doesn’t come to me and I just try to behave in a sense I don’t show up my emotions I understand I understand I’m sad but I’m just going to smile and say I’m good. And with that what I’m going to do it’s probably get in a worse parameter because people would just as as I said before people would assume I’m feeling good and just treat me as it and not with attention or or a nutrition that I could probably need so this is a medium level and in a high level what happens is that you you understand the emotion you’re going through you can name it you know how it happens in your
body and you don’t freak out when somebody has an emotion close to you so this happens a lot and this is a a thing that’s nice to understand is the difference between contact and being getting in contact with someone’s emotions so I’m really happy here and then Tina comes with a really sad story and I hear her I can feel compassion I can ask what she needs how can I help
with that but when she leaves I’m still happy because I was happy before and that’s different if I get contagious, this shows a lower level of emotional intelligence because she I’m happy she will come to me she’ll tell me a story and when she leaves I’m crying she ruined my day. So in that point I got I got more of it than I needed so I’m freaking out with her emotions and I’m bringing it to me so this indicates a medium to low level of emotional intelligence.
TINE: So we have that just like maybe to give also a tangible example about the contagious part like we have that also integrated in our app for example so if 30 of the team feel a certain emotion like for example anger or fear the leader gets a notification to say okay you need to do something to balance this emotion so here’s a facilitation plan but to get people out of this state of emotion because otherwise it can’t it can practically impact the entire team and I mean what’s happening then is obviously you have you have impact on on the productivity, efficiency, creativity and innovation of the team and things are kind of like getting stuck or goes the other way around.
And I mean like I’ve I’ve experienced that also what I didn’t say in the in the introduction I was like oh I forgot a really important point I suffered actually burn out so five years in a Teal organization and I still got a kind of burn out because in my opinion or how I see it the emotional safe space was not given. And that was quite a thing because what happened is it was a lot about everything is positive you know I mean like obviously in times of manifestation law of attraction it’s easy to get to that point like okay guys we focus on the positive and that’s that’s good how it is well there’s truth in it at the same time it’s also important if we talk about happiness like what we said before to get to the stage of happiness it’s not just focusing on the positive the entire time it’s about acknowledging own emotions it’s about being able to
balance these and also feel comfortable around others having these emotions and we co-create an emotional safe space right? It’s not like you asked we we talked about that before right at some point like you don’t ask the emotional intelligent question in that sense no you respond in an emotional intelligent way and we co-create this space and I think in particular in our new work movement or in a Teal organization this is so vital to be able to live this kind of decentralized approaches still stay connected because we are running the danger and the risk of getting isolated and separated through these systems and be in balance. Be in balance and living this interdependent system I hope I’m not getting off track now too much from Kate’s question to be honest but I just wanted to say that that this burnout it it came from not meeting my own needs and if you don’t meet your own needs you trigger emotions but what is happening it’s building up and it will come out at some point but you cannot control it then anymore. So for me it was just that from the one to the other day I just broke down my system completely was shutting down and then I needed weeks to get back to myself but to consciously say okay I need to meet my own needs so that is physical that is psychological and you literally go step by step it’s quite a way but we have not learned that in our society right because we have created a narrative of oh it’s all good you know it’s good we don’t talk about it we tell the kids don’t cry you don’t need to cry don’t cry you know it starts very early and it’s going through the entire educational system our business world and so forth and that has quite some impact on numbers we see today 52% of employees that are burning out around the globe I see it all around me we have quite in my boyfriend’s family the topic of depression in the family you know it’s not coming from nowhere but we see it’s accelerating right now especially in generations cny which is shocking. And at the same time okay there’s much research there’s stuff we can do so just let’s do it you know?
JOHANNES: Interesting. It’s because I like there’s a very interesting question coming up from
George which I will refer to in a second is before we go like everybody’s probably curious about like how do we become emotionally intelligent how do I actually do it right? But before once again like people might ask themselves like why is it relevant and why is it relevant now? Why is this because I feel like this topic is showing up more and more right so why is it important for me as a private person why is it important to deal with it from like a professional me like working in a company and why is it important like as a company to really deal with emotional intelligence? So how would you how would you wrap that up again and especially Elaine you were referring to spirit dynamics the different value stages right? Somebody like more thinking with the green with an orange energy like what will it bring to me? Like will it make me more successful whatever on a greenish level it might be different so why is it relevant, especially, nowadays maybe to really deal as an individual but also as a company with emotional intelligence?
ELAINE: Well I think it’s relevant and important because it’s unavoidable there’s no way we can skip that and what happened is through this orange craziness and that we’ve been through we’re like in the highest individualistic point of our lives probably and also with so much information coming on that we don’t have time to process stuff like I think my parents like I am 38 years old now when they were young like 40 years ago they had time you know to do stuff when when the night would come people would go home and process things and have good nights of sleep and and better eating because it’s the whole process of our whole body so I think what’s happening now is that we don’t have time to process things and we are numbing ourselves a lot because we do have a lot of medicines to distract us and things like I feel a little bit down I’m going to take a medicine here or I’m just going to distract myself with a movie with really high like noise in my ears so we have a lot of options of distractions so we bet we think we’re going to just take a look away from that and it’s going to disappear but it doesn’t I like to use the metaphor it’s like when you’re like sweeping the powder down the carpet what’s gonna happen? At some point there’s going to be so much dust in there that you’re gonna fall down and drop with your face to the floor.
Because you cannot. You just can’t avoid it you can try it but you can’t avoid it. At some point it’s coming back so we better pay attention to this system right because it’s not it all we feel is symptoms of something more important our develop our emotional system it came with our evolution to make us more aware and the thing is we’re not knowing how to be how what to do with all this awareness it’s like we are we have a Ferrari in our hands like this emotional system and we’re putting it five years old to drive it that never touch a car you know it’s like it’s going to be messy so we better learn how to deal with this with this big evolutionary machine we have inside that was mainly developed also when we were like in the caves so we we had to you know have a lot of clicking systems like a tiger comes I have to run away fast you know so it was it came to our survival as an informative system but we got lost in it because we’ve
got too much information going on around right now.
JOHANNES: Nice. Maybe we can combine it with the question of George now would be awesome if you bring it up on the screen is really I like the question like is it true that when you pay too much of your attention to your emotions you can become overly involved with yourself like if you’re depressed you won’t become more depressed? So maybe together with the question like how do we or I actually become more emotional intelligent and obviously like is there a risk just like George stated?
ELAINE: Yeah that’s a really good question so first of all as we spoke before emotions take three minutes so how much attention can I pay towards something that lasts three minutes? All the all the visualization I’m doing in my head later on this is the rational system it’s not the emotional system anymore it’s me trying to process and make sense out of it so the thing is that we have to understand what’s going through so we have a checking of reality of where am in this moment where it’s my possibilities if I try to create an innovative project when I’m feeling really sad I’m not gonna get really good answers or ideas so we have to understand our emotions they change our possibilities and capabilities but what I think it’s more important is that when you talk about genuine happiness Allen Wallace he says the genuine happiness comes out of three factors that are emotional balance so you’re not hyperactive eye corrective or or dysfunctional wisdom and ethics and he says it talks about wisdom as a part of a genuine happiness because the wisdom is to understand that things are impermanent so emotions come and go you’re not your emotions you’re just having an emotion it will go through and go away so you don’t have to be attached to it because it will go away so part of being happy is understanding the state of impermanence of stuff so you pay attention I’m sad well I’m sad again I am sad again what’s going on from that point of consideration and not oh I am I’m feeling sad all the time sadness is all I have it’s a different type of relationship you have with it and and the part of ethics it comes to the idea that you’re trying to cause the minimum negative impact and you’re trying to cause the biggest positive impact in our actions.
So when you combine these three elements you can understand where the happiness come from and how much emotions are important to understand ‘okay I am sad now this means I have to throw away to pull back a little bit’ understand this, understand why I’m sad and then take action again we always we always say we’re not talking about depression it’s that if you have someone that’s depressed at home you cannot treat this person as a depressed person you understand its limitations but you try to talk with the person not with the depression as long as you’re still trying to talk with the depression you’re going to make that scenario deeper and deeper you’re not going to be able to help that person and one thing about depression is that all emotions they come to teach us something is that many times when a person is depressed what happens is that it starts starts getting more attention and people start to get being more careful with her and doing more of her wishes many times so this person can be trapped on secondary beneficials she can get like more attention and more care in and and because of that not try to get out of the depression this is not a conscious movement but it happens a lot within depression so it’s really important we don’t relate to the disease we relate to the person
and understand looking at everybody that those emotions they will come and go so let’s try to make sense out of it so you can take it out of your system.
JOHANNES: Nice. I remember emotional balance, wisdom and ethics. And also like don’t talk to the person not to the depression very nice. Maybe to maybe in the next step we can like because I’m asking and probably some views as well like always like how can I really do it practical like if I want to start today, tomorrow with like trying to develop my emotional intelligence right how can I do that and the link to Uni-Emotion like what do you guys offer and that supports it in private or then in business context?
TINE: I think okay what yeah I think like what’s really important is about this this period of reconnection because what Elaine said we’re so overwhelmed with so many impressions every day that it’s important that we find like these moments in a day to reconnect and not wait until we are burning out or until we are suffering like any other breakdown and here it’s really about like developing a level of self-awareness right? So it’s about getting in touch with myself with my own needs to find out what do I need in a certain moment what are also triggers that come that I can acknowledge why this emotion is coming or not and cultivating that and this you can obviously also do in the group because you can support each other so if everybody is doing that and you have open spaces to co-create I think then you can really establish emotional intelligence in a really fast way as well but it goes back to the topic of practically establishing or cultivating authenticity right? Because it’s about this this matter of reconnection and going to get to know your own needs in in specific periods of time. So what Uni is doing in the organizational context so for now we’re focusing on the organizational context but there’s also only personal in the planning and only experience maybe Elaine can also then say say things to that but for the organizational context it’s actually pretty simple. So with Uni you can if you know what your emotion is you can just report your emotion in a confidential way so nobody will know how you feel but yourself right? So but if you don’t know what you feel you’re doing a quiz to find out
what your emotion is which I think to be honest I still I still use that a lot because it’s me I mean we’re talking about five primary emotion that’s what Uni is built on however there’s also different intensity levels and such and we have created you know different narratives around anger around fear and sadness in our society that often it’s like I have stomach cramps or I have the sweaty hands and I don’t know you resonate to a different emotion so it’s really nice to do this quiz to find out what do I really feel and and then we have this the three minute rule in there as well because also out of only experience for example oh you have a new meeting in your in
your agenda I mean it shouldn’t be like that today anymore but we know it’s still happening with your boss and it’s about the salary discussion. That brings maybe you know some crazy wipes and triggers emotions so what you do you take the app you report your emotion then you get a three minute plan practically how you can balance this emotion which can be with a meditation but also body work so there’s different kind of approaches in it in a very holistic way.
Then what uni also does is it for yourself you have practically the history part so you can see you can look back when did I feel a certain emotion which is nice because you can also link it to other things going on so obviously it’s not everything just happening in the organizational context because we are one living system right so the organizational context is just also one
living system we are part of for some hours a day which we also bring home and it’s just like part of ourselves how we are contributing to this world but then there’s another context at home but do we feel really different things like emotions in these different systems no these emotions are can have impact in these different contexts so we can look back and find out when when did we experience a certain emotion and by doing that on a regular basis we get to know what the emotion is how we can balance it and how we can also acknowledge it in other people and support them then practically so that’s what I would say. And Elaine please compliment?
ELAINE: No I think that’s it.
JOHANNES: Let me recap it so what I understood is that there is an app and I get to or I can report my emotions which helps me to first become aware of it either I already know I have that awareness and I know how to name it right? Because first we really have to know what kind of range of emotions are there so what is it and what’s it called and if not clear on that there is a quiz which helps me to find out which emotion is actually happening inside of me and then I report it and I also get instantly feedback or like proposals as how to intervene and how to deal with it did I-?
TINE: How to balance, yes.
ELAINE: Yes.
JOHANNES: Okay.
ELAINE: And while that happens your leader will get a- have a map of emotions formatted in the dashboard we’ll say oh 30% of the team is feeling feeling really sad and then
they’re really angry. And so he’ll get a notification and will have instructions of possibilities of actions of what types of conversations he can have with the team so the team can find a way out together out of from the whatever is it’s bothering them or being or provoking that state of mind. So it teaches the leaders how to take care of the emotions as a group and with anonymously so but also part of…
TINE: You can see how the entire organization feels practically yeah in real life emotions in real time.
ELAINE: Every three seconds yeah. And then we also have a graphic then you can see there in time during the year so it’s really funny like we’re testing with our organization it’s like everybody’s happy, everybody’s happy, everybody’s happy. Wednesday, sad, depression and aversion like sadness and aversion you’re like okay something happened. Nobody’s happy anymore and then in the following days took like three days to have one happy report again it’s like okay this is not being well managed everybody like they first they were sad they were angry and then they started being really sad.
So you can’t understand something happened either in the organization or COVID came and it affected everybody in a level in a world you know that everybody is telling but either if it’s something that comes from the world you still have to take care of it as our organization because we spend a lot of time in our lives there so it has to be good and has to be meaningful otherwise we break or break down.
JOHANNES: That’s amazing. I would even call it a breakthrough like if this system right? like have an emotional map and really know for example as a leader or manager like what’s going on in the company on an emotional level right? And if you’re not the most empathetic or emotionally intelligent person and it will help you to understand oh there is something it’s very great so let’s pick up the question from Massimo which sits perfectly and he said would it be possible to have one or two use case scenarios where emotions and unit may help? So you just you already started to say something can you provide something for Massimo and us?
ELAINE: Well do you have an idea Tine?
TINE: You can just maybe talk about that case.
ELAINE: Yeah but I already did. I don’t know, do you want to add something up to it? This is one of the cases where we actually saw that like people were like really falling apart at some point and in this particular case there was a big there was a big announcement from the referee from the organization and how things were going to change in their pricing and hours and how they would work so this is really good because you can find out if this came out of institutional reason or was it the leader that calls it something it gives you a tract so you can act on that so the feeling doesn’t get bigger and bigger but it’s kind of hard to talk about breaking confidentiality and but I think this is a really good this is a really good case to show it.
And also I think another another thing that happens is that Uni, the app starts making kind of normal this type of conversations about emotions because we’re not used to so in in the last case we’re looking for a transformer a cultural transformation on that I always like to make an example as like for example if you’re nervous and you are in the office and you say I’m gonna I’m going downstairs to smoke a cigarette I’m feeling anxiety everybody understands that. It’s completely normal. So if you have that addiction and you go outside to smoke everybody says okay go there come back when you’re not nervous anymore but if I’m in the middle of where you can say hey I’m gonna go take a massage because I’m feeling really tense here we’re gonna look at your working time no how can I how can we how can we start bringing to a culture healthy habits that can help us manage the emotions so we don’t take them away like all the day so in the morning I had a really bad meeting with my team or something and then in the afternoon we have a creational moment if we don’t do something to take care of those emotions this creativity moment is not gonna be as good as it could. And it’s really interesting to take care of that as a group and to try to bring spaces for that to show and maybe sometimes you change the plan and the strategic plan for that day so you can make a better use of the emotions that are present so.
Emotions they give you power and we have to understand which each power each emotion has we all we easily see the powers of happiness but all the other emotions they’re also bringing us a lot of content that we can use as information and energy.
TINE: I think also like what’s what’s important to mention here so not just looking at the app as as an isolated application but also like these kind of sessions that are being facilitated by the leaders and stuff to bring people together there’s two elementary points in it because when we start taking care of emotions and we make it a topic we also work on the topic of belonging and meaning. So and these are two things that are really important for people to stay in organizations to stay creative and innovative and and to just have the joy and the fun to be there and also the foundation of collaboration and co-creation so I just wanted to add that to that.
JOHANNES: It’s very nice because like you may be definitely curious to use the app so like if I or somebody else like would like to make use of it and I see different use cases it could be for a change process but just like steadily so if I’m interested to use the app like what would it take to what would I have to consider in implementing what they would have to create different meetings for it routines how are people prompted to use it like are they free or do they receive a notification do it three times a day or like how would it practically work?
ELAINE: Well we’re open for testing. This is a really good information so you can get now from the next maybe two months. I use uni as a test experience. Non-cost and you just have to register in this only emotion.com web that webmail that was there that was there so thank you thank you organizations wanna wanna try it so just get in contact with us there you find our email and we can start the testing and and show you how the app works and go into more specificities for that it’s a really nice moment for you to join.
TINE: Yeah and we did talk about also in the previous test cases about like for example these notifications to practically stimulate people to use the app because it is also in a way establishing a new habit of course. Which needs repetition and but so these are things we’re looking at okay what is the best way to do that is it the notification in the agenda or is it notification on the phone is it maybe a little treat? You know there’s different ways we can go about and that also differs a little bit like in cultures and stuff so this is nice to find out now in the test phase so whoever is open and wants to test with us, yes and yeah it’s great because I mean like obviously the potential and benefits are huge. There’s so much research out there and if we are able to create emotional intelligent leaders and leaders for me is everybody in the organization who wants to be right? Especially if we talk about self-organized systems distribute authority systems I think we are we’re looking at quite a challenge at this point how do we still stay connected how do we still collaborate on a really high level and at the same time are working distributed remote and so forth. So I think yeah this is good timing to find out and to understand the potential of it in terms of the unleashing creativity and innovation and making the company future proof and also sustaining in the very moment and thriving.
JOHANNES: Awesome. Very like our register and as it was already the promotion and announcement part so we have a couple more minutes before we close for a couple more questions and yeah today really great question so thank you for that. Already one question from Alejandro what is the best way to get children to learn early to be aware of the emotions and how to deal with them? They are the future leaders right? So if we get them already as kids so I’m very interested what you’re answering here.
TINE: I love this topic and I have to say so I’m delivering a child in August so I have been in touch a lot with that topic and Elaine has had to have to give tips too now we have been talking about that a lot because obviously what I already said before we grew up or I grew up in Germany which was like okay don’t cry, it’s okay, you know, don’t don’t freak out like all these things are creating narratives around stuff which kind of like blocks you to express emotions.
And then I was like thinking ah the same is happening in school so how do we do that with our kids? And then Elaine came across this amazing school in Brazil which luckily by now is also spread all over the world but where they actually practice with kids to get in touch with emotions in pretty early like the same way what actually our app does in a way but in the collective. So they understand I mean in that process like to say okay this is the emotion I feel right now this is what I have to do to balance this emotion I recognize this emotion in you I can help you with that and with that they are establishing really great relationships to themselves and the people around them which makes them extremely emotionally mature which is really interesting because it has impact on all the other parts all the other subjects because obviously they understand connections better. You know it clicks differently and some of them are just like overtaking one or two levels in school because they’re too mature for where they are. But I think in like in the social life it’s important to just provide the safe space for the kids to be and that sounds maybe very abstract but to let them show their emotions because otherwise they come out differently in a more uncontrollable way later and sometimes not like in six months but later later in life because they’re establishing these habits so I think it’s important to give them to space to get in touch with them and to provide them support with it like in being there and also saying you know it’s okay you feel that it’s completely fine like my little niece for example she has a sister two years younger my and so she is three and a half her sister one and a half
and she got really angry at her sister. She was jealous because her sister wanted to go to me and then my niece just turned around and kicked her so she fell down. And my brother’s reaction was obviously he was scared about the little one like he was then kind of like starting to take the bigger one like what are you doing you know you can hurt her and but that obviously is also reaction out of experience and out of fear for the little one but what could have been another reaction right? Like to say okay what just happened with you? What just happened that that you felt like kicking her you know? And to just try to understand with the kids okay what’s going on and you might use a different language but you will create a different kind of narrative that we really need in our society. Elaine, more to that?
ELAINE: One thing. Just like understanding why is that emotion present for use fear as an example. Fear when you feel afraid like you did before you’re like that and why do you go back and you open your eyes it’s because fear tells you you don’t have enough information about something. So if the child is feeling afraid is that okay you’re lacking information let’s like say let’s explore let’s bring this to curiosity and understand what’s missing here. Or when you feel a aversion you’re going to be like this you know, it’s like I don’t want to look at it. So what’s there that’s bothering you? Let’s understand the reason of this bother so through that you actually get
close to understand ‘okay this emotion is here showing me something it’s not here just to overwhelm me’ so.
TINE: And you can use things like if you feel aversion you go to the water. So and then then you check in with the kid how do you feel or you eat nuts or these kind of things so you can experiment with food, with nature with all different kind of tools.
JOHANNES: That’s awesome. Hey I could continue with you. We’ve got one more hour and we have also another questions coming in but we’re about to wrap it up. So thank you so much for letting me hosting that session and that you were my guest today. Very interesting like there are a couple of things that stuck in my head from the carpet to the purpose of the organization, three minutes and whatever. I will recap that so thank you so much for coming. I wish you all the best with your app and your business and your purpose. Thanks everybody on the screens who were attending live very great questions thank you so much as you were interacting with us. Thanks to the team in the background there’s always people in the background who make it possible. So thank you to Ken, Anna, Rhea and the whole creative team. And yeah last word from you? How are you checking out? 30 seconds.
TINE: I’m just saying thank you. I’m really grateful for having been here.
JOHANNES: Thank you.
ELAINE: Yeah and I feel really excited right now because it’s talking about something you love. It brings a lot of fire inside so I’m happy.
JOHANNES: Cool.
ELAINE: Not ‘good’ I’m happy. [Laughter]
JOHANNES: That was the biggest learning for me. So thank you greetings to Amsterdam and Brazil. Have a great day.
ELAINE: Thank you very much.
TINE: Thank you.
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