Marc Brackett, founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, shares his insights into the importance of emotional skills for personal and societal growth. He discusses his RULER framework, emphasizing how recognizing and regulating emotions can enhance learning and relationships. Brackett reflects on his own journey through trauma, advocating for everyone to become 'emotion scientists.' He calls for an 'emotion revolution' to foster a supportive culture for emotional expression, highlighting the transformative benefits of therapy for personal development.
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Quick takeaways
Emotional intelligence is essential for enhancing various life aspects such as decision-making, creativity, and individual relationships, emphasizing the necessity for structured development frameworks like RULER.
Addressing the historical stigma surrounding emotions in educational and corporate settings is crucial for creating a culture that values emotional intelligence and overall well-being.
Deep dives
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in various aspects of life, including learning, decision-making, creativity, and personal relationships. It involves understanding and managing one's emotions, as well as recognizing and influencing the emotions of others. The concept of emotional intelligence has gained significant attention over the years, with frameworks like RULER providing structured approaches to develop these essential skills in educational settings. As more individuals and organizations begin to acknowledge its importance, the call for integrating emotional intelligence into curricula and corporate training is becoming increasingly urgent.
Personal Experiences Shaping Emotional Awareness
Personal experiences, especially those from childhood, can significantly impact one's emotional development and understanding. The speaker shares a harrowing story of past trauma and its long-lasting effects on emotional expression, highlighting how suppression of feelings can lead to numerous negative outcomes. These experiences underline the necessity of granting oneself and others the 'permission to feel' to foster healthy emotional expression and management. This notion is fundamental not just for personal healing, but also for nurturing emotional intelligence in future generations.
Challenges in Teaching Emotional Skills
Introducing emotional intelligence training in educational institutions often encounters resistance from educators and administrators who prioritize traditional academic metrics over emotional learning. The speaker reveals that many teachers feel uncomfortable discussing emotions within the classroom, as they perceive it as unprofessional or irrelevant to state standards. Success in integrating emotional intelligence frameworks like RULER hinges on supporting educators and establishing a culture that values emotional growth. This systemic change requires committed leadership that encourages teachers to view emotional literacy as paramount to academic success.
The Vision for an Emotionally Intelligent Society
There is a growing recognition of the need for an 'emotion revolution' that emphasizes the importance of emotional skills for personal and societal well-being. The speaker envisions a culture where emotional intelligence is deeply embedded in educational practices and workplace environments, ultimately leading to healthier communities. This vision aims to break the stigma surrounding emotions and promote an understanding that acknowledging feelings is a strength rather than a weakness. By fostering a society that prioritizes emotional understanding and communication, the potential for collective growth and harmony expands significantly.
“Emotion skills are the key to unlocking the potential inside each one of us. And in the process of developing those skills, we each, heart by heart, mind by mind, create a culture and society unlike anything we’ve experienced thus far— and very much like the one we might dare to imagine.” -- Marc Brackett
Today it's great to have Marc Brackett on the podcast. Dr. Brackett is founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine at Yale University. His research focuses on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. Marc is the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based, systemic approach to SEL that has been adopted by over 2,000 preschool to high schools across the United States and in other countries. He has published 125 scholarly articles and received numerous awards, including the Joseph E. Zins award for his research on social and emotional learning. He also is on the board of directors for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Marc consults regularly with corporations like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google on integrating emotional intelligence principles into employee training and product design and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a digital emotional intelligence learning system for businesses. His research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, Good Morning America, and NPR. He is the author of Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and our Society Thrive, published by Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan, which has been translated into 15 languages.