You will build an honest baseline of your emotional skills by comparing your view of yourself with how others see you.
Ask most people how they handle conflict and they will say "quite well, actually". Ask the people who work with them and you often hear a different story. Neither side is lying. You see your intentions, and they see your behaviour. You know you meant to be firm but fair in that meeting. They saw you raise your voice and stop replying in the group chat for a day.
This exercise puts both views side by side. It takes about 25 minutes of your own time, plus a few days to collect two ratings from other people. By the end you will have a baseline for this course and one skill to focus on.
You will rate yourself on five areas that map onto the modules ahead.
Noticing feelings: you can tell what you feel and roughly why, while it is happening. Steadying yourself: when you are upset, you can calm down enough to choose what you do next. Reading others: you pick up how other people feel, even when they keep it to themselves. Handling conflict: you raise disagreements and work through them without avoiding or blowing up. Taking criticism: you hear criticism out, ask questions and decide what to use from it.
Use a scale of 1 to 5. A 1 means you rarely manage it. A 3 means you manage it when things are calm but struggle under pressure. A 5 means you manage it consistently, even on a bad day. Rate from what you actually did in the last few months, not from what you know you should do.
Set up a sheet with six columns: the area, your rating, colleague's rating, the second person's rating, the average of the two outside ratings, and the gap. Fill in your own column before you ask anyone else, so their answers cannot nudge yours.
Next to each rating, write one recent example that justifies it. If you give yourself a 4 for taking criticism, you should be able to name a time you took criticism well. If you cannot think of one, lower the number.
Choose one colleague who has seen you under some pressure, and one friend or family member. Pick people who will be honest with you, not the ones most likely to be kind.
Send the request in writing so they can think before answering. Something like: "I'm doing a course on handling emotions and hard conversations. Could you rate me from 1 to 5 on each of these five areas? The scale is below. For the lowest one, could you give me one example? I won't argue with your answers, I just want an honest picture." Then include the five areas and the scale exactly as you wrote them.
When the answers arrive, thank them and do not debate a single number. If you argue with someone's rating of how you take criticism, you have just given them a fresh example.
For each area, average the two outside ratings, then subtract that average from your own rating. A positive gap means you rate yourself higher than others do. A negative gap means they see more in you than you do.
Here is Hui Min's sheet, with the figures as an example. For noticing feelings she gave herself 4, her colleague gave 3 and her sister gave 4. The outside average is 3.5, so her gap is plus 0.5. Steadying yourself came out at 3 from her, 3 and 2 from the others, an average of 2.5 and a gap of plus 0.5. Reading others was 4 from her, 4 and 5 from the others, an average of 4.5 and a gap of minus 0.5. Handling conflict was 3 from her, 2 and 2 from the others, an average of 2.0 and a gap of plus 1.0. Taking criticism was 4 from her, 3 and 2 from the others, an average of 2.5 and a gap of plus 1.5.
The scores on their own say less than you might think. Two people's ratings are a small sample, and a colleague who only sees you in meetings has a narrow view. The gaps say more. A gap of plus 1 or more points to a blind spot, an area where your intentions and your behaviour have drifted apart. Hui Min's biggest gap was taking criticism, which surprised her, because she thought she handled feedback well. Her sister's example, about a disagreement over their parents' renovation, made it hard to argue with.
Choose the area with the lowest outside average. For Hui Min that was handling conflict, at 2.0. If two areas tie, take the one with the larger gap.
Why the outside rating and not your own? Because conflict, steadiness and taking criticism are mostly experienced by other people. If they feel the problem most, their view is the better guide to where practice will make a difference they notice.
Keep the other gaps in sight. Hui Min wrote a second line on her sheet noting that her criticism gap was the largest, and that lesson 7.3, Take criticism without defending on reflex, would be the place to work on it.
A finished baseline has your five ratings with an example beside each, two sets of outside ratings, the averages and gaps worked out, and two or three sentences naming your focus area and why you chose it. You will look at it again at the end of the course and ask the same two people to rate you once more.
Your sheet is the activity below. Start with your own column today, while the example from lesson 1.1 is still fresh, and send the two requests before you close the page.
Complete the five-area baseline sheet for yourself, collect two outside ratings, and write the one skill you will focus on and why.
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