Emotional Intelligence is a process of forming new habits. There is always room to improve your swing.
The Foundation of Professional Effectiveness
When we use the term Emotional Intelligence (EI), we are referring to a set of skills that can be intentionally learned and strengthened through practice coupled with corrective feedback. Use of these skills has been shown to have clear benefits for supervisory effectiveness, staff wellness, and ultimately retention in high-stress occupational settings such as corrections.
Working in a correctional environment requires a complex set of self-regulation and relationship-management skills. These skills cannot be mastered at the Training Academy—if they are taught there at all. Rather, they are built, constructed, and strengthened over time through ongoing training, supervised practice with evaluation, and mentoring. In many cases, these skills can make the difference between life and death, or between retaining valuable staff and losing them.
Such skills equip frontline staff with the ability to interact effectively with incarcerated persons from diverse backgrounds. Similarly, these skills enable sergeants, lieutenants, captains, and wardens to influence correctional cultures for the better.
The Limitation of Traditional Training
There is a catch, however. Traditionally, Emotional Intelligence skills training—if provided at all—has relied on telling trainees about these skills, offering examples, and perhaps conducting a few role plays. After that, trainees are largely left on their own.
Within days, most are likely to forget the majority of the training content. As a result, the tools they were introduced to are rarely transferred to the workplace or incorporated into daily interactions with justice-involved individuals or fellow staff.
Cognitive vs. Emotional Learning
Emotional Intelligence—skillfully managing one’s own emotions, attitudes, and responses and those of others—requires a very different type of learning than acquiring factual information.
In subjects such as history or arithmetic, information is presented for intellectual understanding or memorization. This type of information is straightforward and emotionally neutral, free of personal values, biases, prejudices, or attitudes. Logical thinking and rote memorization are sufficient to learn it.
Acquiring EI skills, by contrast, follows a very different “brain route.” Here are three ways that this type of learning is unique:
- The Requirement of Repetition
Acquisition of Emotional Intelligence skills requires hands-on doing with repetition. You cannot learn how to drive a vehicle or how to swim by reading a manual or after one try. These skills depend on growing new connections in our brain—laying down new pathways connecting A to B. This happens through the process of neuroplasticity*. Think of adding new strands to a rope each time you use such skills; the rope gets thicker and stronger with every repetition.
- The Engagement of the “Heart”
EI learning engages both the mind and the values we hold dear—our gut-level beliefs about what constitutes a threat and the emotions associated with those beliefs.
As these skills are learned, core beliefs are often stirred up, along with fears, resentments, and deeply held sensitivities. Unless an instructor is highly skilled at “putting out fires”—addressing participants’ anxieties about handling interpersonal situations in new ways—some individuals may shut down or reject the material altogether.
Example: Discovering that we have difficulty identifying our own emotions can be an unpleasant surprise. Similarly, when empathy is discussed, sorrow may surface as we realize how much empathy we longed for as children but did not receive. Such moments can leave participants feeling vulnerable—stripped of their defenses or embarrassed.
- The Challenge of Unlearning
Developing EI skills often runs counter to long-standing ways of managing ourselves. This process requires unlearning counterproductive behaviors and replacing them with more effective approaches.
For example, learning to de-escalate conflict through validation may initially feel uncomfortably “soft,” as though using these tools makes us appear weak. We may feel tempted to fall back on familiar strategies such as gruffness, disengaging in frustration, or using force. Instructors must skillfully address this discomfort and actively work through the audience’s resistance.
Conclusion: A Continuous Practice
At its core, Emotional Intelligence is a prime example of the habit formation. This type of learning transcends simple memorization; it requires consistent practice, critical evaluation, and ongoing fine-tuning. Much like mastering a game of golf, there is always room to improve one’s swing. While the investment of time can be discouraging, the payoff is substantial.
*Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. In order to form these new connections, nerve cells in the brain need to be stimulated through activity. Neuroplasticity allows nerve cells to compensate for injury and disease, and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.
https://www.medicinenet.com/neuroplasticity/definition.htm
Medical Definition of Neuroplasticity – MedicineNet
Desert Waters has developed Emotional Intelligence trainings, such as The Supportive Correctional Supervisor™ and True Grit: Building Resilience in Corrections Professionals™ , that are to be used agency-wide, facility-wide or office-wide. We recommend that these be accompanied by a suggested periodic coaching to practice the skills to become an integral part of the facility’s or office’s culture.
You can find more information on our website under Trainings. Or you can call us at 719-784-4727 or email us.
