Build an honest baseline of your emotional skills by comparing how you rate yourself with how others rate you.
Hui Min (an invented example) rated herself on five emotional skills, then asked a colleague and her sister to rate her as well. Her biggest gap turned out to be in taking criticism, which surprised her because she believed she handled feedback well.
Most people say they handle conflict well, and the people who work with them often see it differently. Neither side is lying. You see your own intentions, while other people see your behaviour. You may have meant to be firm but fair in a meeting, while the others saw you raise your voice and then go silent in the group chat for a day. The exercise below puts your view and other people's views side by side. You end up with a baseline for the course and one skill to focus on. Plan on about 25 minutes of your own time, plus a few days to collect the two outside ratings.
The five areas map onto the modules ahead. Noticing feelings is being able to tell what you feel, and roughly why, while it is happening. Steadying yourself is calming down enough, when upset, to choose what you do next. Reading others is picking up how other people feel, even when they keep it to themselves. Handling conflict is raising disagreements and working through them without avoiding them or blowing up. Taking criticism is hearing criticism out, asking questions, and deciding what to use from it.
Rate each area from 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. Base each rating on what you actually did in the last few months, and leave aside what you know you should do.
Set up a sheet with six columns: area, your rating, colleague's rating, second person's rating, average of the two outside ratings, and gap.
Fill in your own column before you ask anyone else, so their answers cannot influence yours. Beside each rating, write one recent example that justifies it. If you cannot think of an example for an area, lower the rating.
Ask two people: one colleague who has seen you under some pressure, and one friend or family member. Pick the people who will be honest over the ones most likely to be kind.
Send the request in writing so they have time to think before they answer. Explain the course, ask for a 1 to 5 rating on each area, and include the five areas and the scale exactly as you wrote them. Ask each person for one example for the area they rate lowest, and promise that you will not argue with what they say.
When the answers arrive, thank each person and do not argue with any number. Arguing about a rating for taking criticism hands them a fresh example of the problem. Hui Min's sister gave an example about a disagreement over their parents' renovation, which made her rating hard to argue with anyway.
For each area, take the mean of the two outside ratings. That figure is the outside average. Subtract it from your own rating to get the gap. A positive gap means you rate yourself higher than others do. A negative gap means others rate you higher than you rate yourself.
Hui Min's sheet came out like this:
Noticing feelings: self 4, colleague 3, sister 4. Average 3.5, gap plus 0.5. Steadying yourself: self 3, others 3 and 2. Average 2.5, gap plus 0.5. Reading others: self 4, others 4 and 5. Average 4.5, gap minus 0.5. Handling conflict: self 3, others 2 and 2. Average 2.0, gap plus 1.0. Taking criticism: self 4, others 3 and 2. Average 2.5, gap plus 1.5.
The raw scores mean less than you might expect. Two ratings are a small sample, and a colleague who only sees you in meetings has a narrow view. The gaps are more informative. 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 had two: handling conflict at plus 1.0, and taking criticism at plus 1.5, her largest.
Choose as your focus the area with the lowest outside average, rather than your own lowest score. If two areas tie, take the one with the larger gap. 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.
Hui Min's lowest outside average was handling conflict at 2.0, so she chose it as her focus. She added a second line to her sheet saying her criticism gap was the largest and that lesson 7.3, "Take criticism without defending on reflex", is where she would work on it. Do the same with your own sheet: keep track of the other gaps and note where in the course each one is covered. If taking criticism is one of yours, lesson 7.3 is the place to go.
Finish by writing 2 or 3 sentences naming your focus area and why you chose it. Your baseline is then complete: your five ratings with an example beside each, the two sets of outside ratings, the averages and gaps, and those sentences. At the end of the course you review it and ask the same two people to rate you again.
Your sheet is the activity. 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.
Fill in the five-area baseline sheet for yourself, get ratings from two other people, and write down the one skill you will work on and why.
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