You –and those you work with-might not have been alive the last time the working world was in such a personalized emotional economic environment. Chances are high, for example, that you know someone who has lost a job, or a tidy portion of their retirement fund. Finance, Auto, Banking, Retail, Airline, Construction already know that frustration, anger, anxiety and fear are here, and if many leading economist are correct, dejection, despair, and depression are on the way. It looks like Emotions of distress are here for a while. How do you handle it?

In times like these, your technical expertise may keep you and your organization afloat, but if you want to do better than survive, you better start developing and applying your emotional intelligence. In today’s environment, it is the safest investment you can make and one that will pay huge dividends.

Indeed, it is now well known to the working world that emotional intelligence-the ability to use emotions, feelings, moods-and those of others -as a source of information to navigate through the world- is crucial to individual and organizational effectiveness, and at times in the achievement of success, more important than technical expertise.

It’s an easy business case to make that learning to develop and apply EI is an excellent long term investment, as it fosters teamwork, leadership effectiveness, creativity and innovation as well as being crucial in such everyday tasks as performance reviews, giving and taking criticism, managing conflict, and giving a presentation. However, our current emotional environment makes long term benefits seem irrelevant. What matters most, is for individuals and their organizations to learn how to utilize emotional intelligence right now!—not tomorrow or next week; to be able to use emotional intelligence as a “now” skill, not a “developmental skill.”

The Genius of Instinct
You are hardwired to be successful!

Why are we so often unhappy and unfulfilled? Why do we get into the wrong relationships, take the wrong jobs, and make the wrong choices? Why is outstanding leadership, managing change, and success so elusive?

The answers and the solutions to these everyday plights are revealed by today’s “scientists of the mind,” evolutionary psychologists who have discovered stunning new lessons about the power of instincts and their capacity to transform lives from merely surviving to actually thriving in every area of life.

In this provocative, original and ground-breaking presentation, Dr. Weisinger takes these dramatic new scientific findings, identifies the six most indispensable instinctual behaviors, and illuminates the necessity of following their instinctual command for thriving:

1. Shelter Seek So You Can Find Your Right Home
2. Care-Solicit So You Can Protect Your Vulnerabilities
3. Care Give So You Can Develop the Future
4. Beautify So You Can Pull People Toward You
5. C0-0p So You Can Get People Working Together
6. Curiosity? So You Can Stay Ahead of the Pack

Instinctual leadership/Leaders of the Pack

A presentation for executive level audiences who seek cutting edge, academic perspectives and breakthrough skills for more effective leadership (The genius of Instinct is frequently combined with this more advanced content presentation.)

Instinctual leadership, a concept derived from Dr. Weisinger’s new book The Genius of Instinct, presents a dramatic new way of understanding the most important attribute for any organization that desires to thrive, be it a family, company, or country: leadership.

Steeped in the evolutionary sciences, this provocative perspective is based on the growing view that the brain is like a tool box with a collection of instinctual tools that have been designed through the principles of evolution and natural selection to help you solve adaptive problems—problems that every member of every species of every generation-past, present, future- must solve if it is to survive and ultimately thrive.

Using your instinctual tools to solve adaptive problems is the essence of instinctual leadership, and according to natural selection, those individuals who can apply their instinctual tools most broadly are the most effective leaders and thereby increase their organization’s ecological niche-the role it plays in its environment, be it financial services, auto, health care, consumer electronics, retail, or service.

The Power of Positive Criticism

Giving and taking criticism—both tasks are extremely difficult for most people and few do either well. Yet, there is now an abundance of research that indicates giving and taking criticism productively is crucial to individual and organizational effectiveness, that individuals who have the ability to give and take criticism productively are more successful than those who don’t, and that an inability to give and take criticism effectively has dire consequences, be it at work or at home.

Giving and taking criticism impacts all aspects of our lives. On a personal level, giving and taking positive criticism is a key attribute of successful marriages, a chief parenting skill, and a catalyst for self development. Certainly, no organization can run successfully without assessing performance, team reviews, quality control, customer feedback, conflict management, and other situations that call upon you to give and take criticism. That’s what makes these scenarios so delicate, dangerous, and extremely important.

Often complex and difficult to handle emotionally, criticism can be a powerful force for good. Too often we think it’s simply a list of negatives, of things that went wrong, that were not done right, a view that misses the point of criticism entirely. At its best, criticism can do exactly what it’s supposed to do: motivate, educate, inspire. But when it seems mean and destructive—even if it wasn’t meant that way-it can break spirits, damage companies, ruin careers, destroy marriages, and derail children from the track of success.

Emotional Intelligence at Work

Whether you are making a sales call, listening to a customer complaint, giving or taking a performance review, managing a project, confronted with a setback, giving a presentation, playing a round of golf, helping your children with their homework, or driving in traffic, Emotional Intelligence helps you do it better. Defined as—the ability to use your emotions, feelings, moods-and those of others-as a source of information that allows you to navigate through life more effectively.

There is now a compelling amount of research indicating Emotional Intelligence and the skills it encompasses are powerful tools—perhaps more so than technical skills and traditional cognitive skills- for predicting and achieving success. Emotional Intelligence supports task performance and achievement in many areas, including team building, performance evaluations, leadership development, fostering innovation, key personnel retention, conflict management, managing change, and developing skills for coping with setbacks. Most importantly for organizations, emotional intelligence helps individuals and organizations nurture technical expertise and intellectual capital, the lifeblood of any successful enterprise. Most importantly for the individual, emotional intelligence helps in achieving a more successful quality of life.

Yet, there is also a great deal of empirical data that clearly suggests most people have “underdeveloped emotional intelligence,” While most of us had school courses in math, science, history and English, few of us had a curriculum that demanded proficiency in managing emotions, working out conflict, and giving and taking criticism, all tasks that most of us are required to do daily.