A friendship in text conversations: a model for emotional learning
I’m fascinated by the way that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) has come into prevalence in so many facets of society, from the field of psychology into the business world and also into social-emotional learning and research into parenting and education. It has been freeing for me to be able to put language around so many aspects of my life and understand the successes I have managed in business, relationships, and self-discovery. But, the first thing I have to admit is I have absolutely no formal training in any of the fields described here. I have read a lot about EQ and how it relates to many of the fields discussed and from my experience teaching short courses at my company, I think the way I see it resonates with people.
One of the elements that people highlight as a critical feature of EQ is that it is something that can be learned and improved. That is an important finding in the context of the Daniel Goleman research that EQ is a much better indicator of success than IQ because IQ is generally seen to be something that people can do very little to improve. Having a clear skill that opens the doors to workplace success accessible to anyone is a game-changer.
I’ve taught training courses that describe all the basic elements of EQ and follow a number of the courses on LinkedIn and other places. My goal was always to integrate the information from a number of sources into one digestible and coherent outline that will help people come to understand what EQ is and how it manifests itself in the workplace and beyond. To me, this is always just the first step in the journey, and is akin to me explaining how to throw an accurate 50 yard pass with a football. I can describe the arm motion, the goal of the trajectory of the ball, how it needs to spin, and all the details required to make that throw; but that gets me no closer to actually being able to do it.
The one aspect of the courses I taught that always left me feeling a bit flustered was the obvious question that came after the unveiling of the wonderful fact that EQ could be taught: how can people improve their EQ? I’ll say that I have studied many online resources and tried many of the approaches, and none of them really resonated with me. If you search online, many of the websites prescribe a number of techniques to improve EQ such as mindfulness, meditation, journaling, stress management, and “empathy”. I have no doubt all of those are valuable techniques for anyone to learn, and I also believe that there is likely some benefit to one’s emotional intelligence that would come from each of these, but I find it really hard to see how one could chart their progress using these methods. I know from my own journey that there must be some way to improve EQ without specifically using those techniques because my EQ has improved dramatically over my lifetime and I have never undertaken any of those targeted approaches. These skills are a great foundation, but building the ability to use EQ effectively with others will always require, well, others.
I do believe that everyone can improve their EQ, and I also believe that different people have different starting points and varying levels of potential they can reach. I decided to dig into how I learned EQ and see if that can provide any insight for others who, like me, look at that list and either think, “No way” or “how do I do that?”
My theory for how I learned EQ is most closely related to learning empathy I suspect, but I would say that it is more that I process my emotions and helped others process theirs through conversation. I have seen a number of different therapists for various reasons over the years and have found that to be incredibly valuable to my self-awareness and understanding. On top of that, I also have increasingly surrounded myself with like-minded folks who enjoy discussing emotions (mine and theirs) with me over the years. I think each of these types of conversations have had much more impact on my EQ and I get other perspectives and learn about how others process emotions while reflecting on my own feelings. That turns out to be not terribly helpful for teaching EQ; go get some therapy and find emotionally curious friends is not very accessible advice to most people.
The next step in my journey to distill EQ learning down to something actionable was to think about what elements of these conversations could be done using AI and current chatbot technology so there could be an automated and scalable way to provide this type of learning. There is a lot of research on how to teach chatbots empathy, use them for therapy, and other similar applications like companionship, but none specifically focused on teaching EQ that I could find. I wanted to see if I could train an AI to perform the emotional support and learning that I had received over the years. To do this, I would need some data that could be used as a starting point. Turns out I was sitting on a goldmine of that data already!
My best friend and I have been texting back and forth for over a decade. She and I have generally used only two form of communication in our friendship: in person discussion (at work, out at lunches, or hanging out) and texting. In fact, many of our deepest interactions have been over text — which I ascribe to the fact that there was less vulnerability clearly present in the asynchronous medium of texting and that was a plus at the beginning of the relationship. The friendship we have built is a rich, deep one built on vulnerability and empathy, and it became a place where we felt safe and secure sharing and learning from each other. That decade long text stream has some of the biggest events of our lives embedded in it: marriage, divorce, depression, births, deaths. I figured this might be just the data source I needed to understand emotional learning and conversation.
In digging through the data, I found some clear patterns that emerged. I am a big fan of Dr. Brené Brown, and her work on vulnerability. I saw in our conversations two clear patterns: one was that whenever either of us was vulnerable, the other would respond with vulnerability. This type of interaction is pretty common, and seen in many TV shows like Ted Lasso (spoiler alert) because the trope of vulnerability begetting more vulnerability is a great plot device and way to show characters coming together. In real life, I observed that responding to vulnerability with more vulnerability has the effect of bringing the attention away from the vulnerability, which can come off as a bit selfish or self-centered for the speaker. As an only child, bringing the attention onto me is essentially like breathing, so I had to unlearn that approach to become a better friend.
Instead, the second pattern that emerged when one of us started relating something with vulnerability was a response of empathy and supportiveness. The connection between vulnerability and empathy is covered many places, including the work of Dr. Brené Brown. What was interesting to me is the direct interplay between the vulnerability and empathy, and how coupling the empathy with supportiveness and positivity was such a powerful pattern and recurred over and over again. See below:
To me, it makes sense that the response would be empathy (to affirm the emotions of the person who is demonstrating vulnerability) and supportiveness (to positively affirm that they have been heard and the difficulty in showing the vulnerability.) The exchange here shows that pattern: the initial text demonstrates vulnerability in sharing their current emotional state, then the response starts with empathy, and then follows up with supportive and positive comments.
As I looked through the text chain, in many major discussions when one of us had something important to discuss, the other naturally headed towards these types of responses. As the empathy and supportiveness is provided, the original speaker would dig deeper and deeper with more vulnerability. It is a good way to provide cover for the person who is trying to dig down to the core of an issue; each response encourages them to keep going down and feel safe doing so. Eventually, once the original speaker has gotten to the “end” of their vulnerability, the responses become less emotional again. At that point where there was usually a vulnerability switch: the person who had been responding with empathy and supportiveness would demonstrate some vulnerability in solidarity to the original speaker. That also makes sense, because it is definitely true that vulnerability begets vulnerability, but the cadence in our conversations was to be supportive until the first person was done with their side of vulnerability.
This finding of Vulnerability — Empathy & Supportiveness in our conversations provided me with two different benefits for my understanding of how to help others improve their EQ. Firstly, it is an actionable skill that can be taught and applied in real life conversations and friendships. It is especially important as it gives potential guidance on how to be a good listener; if someone comes to you with vulnerability, and you realize that is what is happening in the moment, you can focus on responding with statements that show support and empathy. Secondly, it is a clear pattern that can be used in teaching a chatbot how to respond to these situations, which I will go into in another article.
A quick side note on what I mean by “responding with empathy”. Dr David Burns describes two specific types of empathy to use in the Five Secrets of Effective Communication (here is a great podcast on the subject): thinking empathy (demonstrating you have heard what is said by repeating and paraphrasing) and feeling empathy (inquiring or guessing at what emotions the person is likely experiencing based on the information they have given). In the text format, usually the type of empathy being expressed is feeling empathy, unless there is a follow up question to make sure the person understood what was said. The feeling empathy comments usually take the form of something like: “that must have been so scary” or “I bet that was really upsetting.” Goleman also has a similar breakdown of empathy into cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathetic concern. I think these types of emotional empathy driven interactions are the key to the EQ learning in the interaction, because the original speaker now has some insight into the emotions they have been expressing, as well as a chance to reflect on whether that was the emotion they were feeling and meant to express.
A big part of EQ is not just inward focused, but understanding how you are presenting yourself and your emotions to others; if you think you are a happy, go lucky person but all your coworkers think you are depressed, that mismatch between the feelings you feel and the emotions you project will be extremely confusing and off-putting for everyone involved. EQ is a valuable business skill because among other things, it can heighten communication by providing more information and understanding efficiently. These Vulnerability — Empathy & Supportiveness interactions are a great way to practice that emotional projection and read-back when matched with the vulnerability piece.
Ultimately, looking back at the development of this friendship through these text messages, it is clear that the psychological safety that we built up over time enhanced the vulnerability and in time lead to the closeness we have. Along the way, the pattern of communication of responding to vulnerability with empathy and supportiveness was honing our emotional self-awareness and empathy skills, which are key indicators of EQ. The best way to learn something new is always to practice; I think that finding opportunities to have these interactions is how I managed to improve my EQ, and is an underappreciated social skill that may be disappearing as more interactions become anonymous and superficial online. I have been lucky to have been surrounded by people who were willing and interested in this learning with me, but I know not everyone will value this type of interaction. I hope to find a way to build something that people can use to practice both the vulnerability and the feeling empathy to better understand their own emotions and how they are presenting themselves to the world.
