“If you understand others, you are smart.
If you understand yourself, you are illuminated.
If you overcome others, you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself, you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied, you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don’t lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.”
—Lao Tzu
When one of the participants in my recent leadership development training program praised me, saying I have huge emotional intelligence, I started to think about this concept and discover its application with my newly coined teaching and training tool, Meka’s Method, which aims to help teachers and trainers achieve effective teaching and training takeaways.
Ever since Daniel Goleman coined the term, “emotional intelligence” (EI), in 1995, it invited the attention of many people internationally, with Google hits of approximately 9.47 million results with diverse contexts, including education, health, relationships, and work. Emotional intelligence is about discovering your emotions; managing your emotions; identifying the emotions of the people around you; managing their emotions; and motivating their emotions to lead from the front. Highlighting its importance, Goleman said, “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
There is a growing interest toward EI in all sectors as it is closely associated with leadership. In fact, leadership success and effectiveness mostly depends on EI. There has been a heated debate among various leadership scholars and practitioners about whether leaders are born or made. Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” concluded that leaders are made rather than born as EI helps an ordinary person acquire leadership abilities and skills to excel as a leader.
Emotional Intelligence for Educators
John Mayer and Peter Salovey noted, “People high in emotional intelligence are expected to progress more quickly through the abilities designated and to master more of them.” EI is essential to advance in all industries, as we need leaders in all sectors. It also is required in the education sector where educators and trainers have to handle the emotions, feelings, and egos of diversified students and participants in the classroom. Educators must be aware of their own emotions and match their emotions with those of their students as per the situation to create compatibility and chemistry with students to ensure effective teaching takeaways. Educators must apply different methods for different students as all students are not alike in their intelligence levels and learning styles. Students in the classroom usually belong to three categories in their intelligence levels: above average, average, and below average. They appreciate various learning styles: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Hence, educators must change their teaching style as per the learning styles and intelligence levels of the students. While delivering their teaching sessions, they must read observe students’ body language in the classroom and change their teaching methods and strategies accordingly. If they find students don’t demonstrate attentive listening skills and positive body language, they must grab students’ attention and repeat the key ideas and insights to reach out to students and continue their session. Apart from diversified learners in the classroom, educators also find introvert and extrovert students. Educators must be sure to take interest in introvert students. They must pose close-ended questions first to connect with introvert students, followed by open-ended questions that encourage student response.
In short, in the classroom, educators have to focus on themselves, on the content, and on the students simultaneously. Synchronizing these three is a Herculean task. However, with awareness and practice, educators will be able to achieve the desired objectives.
What Is Meka’s Method?
I coined Meka’s Method in 2007 when I was doing research to enhance employability skills among students to earn my Ph.D.
As shown in Figure 1, educators must adopt a four-step process of researching, innovating, updating, and accepting feedback constantly to excel as effective teachers. They must use their body animation, voice animation, and facial animation, together with interaction, questioning, and involving students’ participation; taking feedback from their body language; and molding the teaching strategy as per the situation to ensure effective teaching outcomes.
During teaching and training, a white board or PowerPoint presentation provides effective visual impact as the human brain remembers more when presented with visual pictures rather than with auditory effects. While using the whiteboard, teachers should not spend too much time looking at the white board as they lose connectivity with students. There must be a proper coordination between the white board writing and spoken word to accomplish teaching goals and objectives successfully.
Teachers should be flexible in their body movements and move around freely with a cheerful approach to encourage students’ participation. As we know, it is helpful to include humor in the teaching process as it breaks the ice with students, relieves them from the listening stress, refreshes their minds, and helps them connect quickly with the content. Teachers must interconnect and apply diversified tools and techniques as per the situation to make the teaching process a pleasant and memorable one. This entire process of teaching in which the facilitator uses audio, visual, storytelling, humor, interaction, and questioning by engaging students, repetition of key ideas, and summarization of the entire content in the classroom to achieve effective teaching goals and objectives is known as Meka’s Method of teaching.
Explore EI with Meka’s Method
Gone are the days when educators only had to possess academic intelligence. It is time for them to acquire both academic intelligence and emotional intelligence to achieve academic excellence.
As an individual, you have to be emotionally intelligent to get along with others. Similarly, as an educator, you must be emotionally intelligent to get along with students and participants to share your knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve desired teaching and training outcomes. Paul Ramsden rightly said, “The emotional aspect of the teacher-student relationship is much more important than the traditional advice on methods and techniques of lecturing would suggest.”
Likewise, audiences appreciate innovative teaching and training tools with the changing times and technologies.
References
Emotional Intelligence, “Why It Can Matter More Than IQ,” Daniel Goleman (1995)
Emotional intelligence “wow” factor: Benefits of taking feelings into account, Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 27 Number 1, 2013
http://www.sddu.leeds.ac.uk/uploaded/learning-teaching-docs/teachtalk/26-2-2010/alan_mortiboys.pdf http://heblab.sites.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pub101_BrackettKatulak2006TheEIclassroom.pdf
Professor M.S.Rao is an international leadership guru and leadership educator, executive coach, speaker, and consultant. He has 33 years of experience and is the author of 30 books including 21 Success Sutras for Leaders (http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Leaders-ebook/dp/B00AK98ELI) that was ranked as one of the Top 10 Leadership Books of the Year – 2013 by San Diego University. His vision is to build 1 million students as global leaders by 2030. He has been honored as an upcoming International Leadership Guru by Leadership Gurus International URL: http://www.leadershipgurus.net/upcoming.php and listed as one of the leading achievers around the world in Marquis Who’s Who in the World in 2013. He serves as an advisor and judge for several international organizations, including Global Leadership Awards, Malaysia. He received the International Coach of the Year 2013 Award from Comprehensive Coaching U, Inc. http://www.terrilevine.com/coachoftheyear/winners.html Professor Rao coined an innovative teaching tool called Meka’s Method; a leadership teaching tool, 11E Leadership Grid; and a new leadership tool called Soft Leadership Grid, based on his new leadership style, “Soft Leadership” copyrighted with Jossey Bass. He led a Webinar on Soft leadership organized by International Leadership Association (http://www.ila-net.org/Webinars/Archive/Rao082012.html). A No.1 ranked speaker in India, reviews can be found at: http://speakerpedia.com/speakers/professor-msrao. Books can be found at: www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A16SKI0396UBRP. Most of his work is available free of charge in his three blogs http://profmsr.blogspot.com http://professormsrao.blogspot.com and http://professormsraoguru.blogspot.com Contact him via e-mail at msrlctrg@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @professormsrao.
