Human Behavior for Technical People

What This Course is All About
Introduction

Hello and welcome to this Pluralsight course about Human Behavior for Technical People. My name is Edin Kapic and in this course I will teach you how to interpret and understand human behavior in yourself or in other people and how to use this understanding to improve your interpersonal relations especially at the workplace. This course is meant to be taught to technical people such as developers and administrators. Why is that? It's because I'll use the skills that technical people just as yourself a really get at to, to address the explanation of the human behavior. Be warned, I'll use a lot of analogies comparing people to computers and I won't be politically correct all the times. It will mostly serve to highlight a point in the way that's better suited to a technical audience. In no way, do I expect you to take that statement for the face value, but to grasp the meaning behind them. Don't worry, I'll make these warnings repeatedly just to make sure you don't forget them.
This Course, You and Me

I'm a developer, by that I mean that I program, debug, and deliver software for a living. I mostly deal with computers and the relational cause and effect world that mostly makes sense all the time except a _____ catching bugs. However, we are not technical hermits. We do not live in isolation of other human beings. Every day we interact with many other people, our families, our coworkers, our managers, or friends and so on. In my experience, I've been learning about human behavior the hard way by trial and error. It was natural for me to assume that other people behave similar to me and I have painfully learned that mostly they do not. I began to read about and to experiment in order to get to understand why we behave so differently in similar circumstance. The more I learned, the more I felt the need somehow to share those lessons with other techies, just like me, in order to spare the some of the trial and errors I've done in my learning. This course is the fruit of this idea, but I'm now going to turn toward human behavior, I'm not a psychologist and I wouldn't take my word as absolutely true on anything in this course, so take every statement with a grain of salt. This being said, I've found that the ideas I will share in this course are useful abstractions that can help other technical people get a deeper understanding of the human behavior, either their own or that of other people. There are many books that explain those concepts in much more detail and I will point you to them as we go along. As I have said before, I have tailored this course to build on your existing skills and strengths. There are many introductory books and courses that teach interpersonal psychology from either academic or self-help perspective. My idea is to teach basic concepts from a perspective of a technical person. My point being is that our skills _____ can also be used to improve our understandings about human behavior. Usually, technical people exhibit a similar set of traits. These are the traits that I take for granted about you who take this course. I assume that you're a highly intelligent person in the classic since of the word. While this isn't an introductory course, I won't stop to explain non-core concepts in depth and I remind you to delve deeper where you see fit. I will provide you with some pointers during the course. Next, I assume that you have good abstraction capabilities. I will use abstraction many times over the length of this course. Finally, I assume that your problem solving skills are sharp such as observation, reasoning and deduction. I will use metaphors and analogies to use general rules, so I expect you to follow along without any problems.
Dealing With Other People

I have envisioned this course as an answer to why it is often difficult dealing with other people. In our careers, we are not taught how to deal with people, but with the computers. This interpersonal interaction is something that is taken as granted and we usually face many stereotypes that highlight technical as socially awkward individuals that prefer the core logical and predictability of the computers to the irrational and sometimes puzzling behavior of the real people around us. The third is that this stereotype is true in many occasions, but it's not a black and white statement. Let's dig deeper in to see what parts are true and what parts are not. We're used to dealing with machines. When you explain how a computer works, chances are that you will use a blackbox model to illustrate a concept of input, processing, and output. In essence, a computer takes an input, which is usually a set of data and comments, a price in algorithm or a set of steps on decisions based on the input and then produces an output. It's easy to extrapolate the same blackbox model to people. With people, we also have the concept of input, which is the communication either spoken, written, or non-verbal. The concept of processing, which happens in our heads, and the output, which is typically a response or absurd behavior. However, computers and people are not the same. While the machines usually respond to an input in a predictable fashion, people do not always respond that way. If you run a program twice in a machine, usually we will see the same behavior, but if we give the same input to a person, they might respond differently. Why is that? We can roughly compare different people to different instances of the same class in programming. All the instances share the same human class exhibiting roughly the same interfaces and sharing common emotions and unconscious behavior. However, each separate person, or instance of human class, has a large amount of unique algorithms that arise from their personality traits, beliefs, and memories. Furthermore, our inputs are not only the inputs received the other person, but also include environmental and internal inputs such as our health, our energy levels, or the time of the day. All this makes human behavior difficult to predict if we are looking through the blackbox lens. While in a computer program, the interstate of the instances is usually small in size. Our internal state comprises a complex web of mental schemas, inter-beliefs, cultural norms, emotions, and hormonal responses. Even the input we receive is mostly filtered through the lens of our mind giving through to the idea that we don't see the world as it is, but as we are. Objectivity and human behavior are many time at odds.
How Our Mind Works

As I said before, we can draw comparison between a computer and a person. I admit that it is sometimes forced by a _____ of useful parallels can be observed. At a base level of a computer, we have the Hardware. These are the chips, cables, and electronic components that are a physical layer of a computer. In human beings, we have similar physical counterpart where we have a nervous system compromised of the brain, the spinal cord, the nerves, and sensory receptors. We can imagine your brain as your CPU unit, the spinal cord as the chipset, the nerves as the passes and connectors, and the sensory receptors and the input sensors of ourselves. In a computer, a faulty wiring or a defective chip can introduce errors in a program being run. In the same fashion, a faulty nervous system due to aging, in faction, or genetic condition can cause abnormal behavior in humans. We can also influence to a certain degree the physical layer of ourselves as we do when we take medication or do exercises. In a computer, a basic software component that interacts with the hardware is called bias or Firmware. Its purpose is to read and write to however as asked by the upper layers of software. It also contains basic input, output routines that have to be quick and efficient. In humans, we also have a lower part of our brain, which is called the brainstem. It provides the autonomous nervous system. It's role is control the basic body functions that do not require any conscience processing such as breathing, digestion, heart rate, and sexual arousal. Yes, it shouldn't come as a surprise that sex is so deeply embedded in our very firmware. While largely autonomous, this part of the brain can be influenced by the upper layers. For instance, we can control our breathing at will, but most of the time it functions without any influence from ourselves. You will see that some of the basic routines in this layer of our mind are cause of many irrational responses. In a computer, up top the firmware sits the operating system. The operating system controls the resources such as memory, devices, or CPU time and allocates them as services to programs that need them to run. Our own operating system in the brain is called the Limbic system. It's sits between the brainstem and the cerebral cortex and provides basic mental services such as motivation, learning, memory, attention, and emotions. Some basic social algorithms such as face reading and evaluation are also provided by the Limbic system. This is why the first impression is sometimes very strong. It's our operating system throwing exceptions. Finally, in a computer, we have a wide choice of application that can be run for a purpose. They all require the hardware, the firmware , and the operating system to be functional in order to run them. In our brains, the cerebral cortex takes the most parts of the brain and it contains all our rationality creativity, ideas, representations, and other high level mental constructs. The cortex contains three specialized parts called areas. Sensory areas that process the information that's coming to our senses, motor areas that control our voluntary movements, and association areas is where our perceptions of the world are formed and stored. When a computer application wants to create an output, all the components interact together. If the application plays a sound, the operating system passes the date of the sound to the sound card firmware. The sound card firmware sends the signals to the sound card hardware, and the hardware emits the sound in the form of sound waves. Similarly, when you answer a question our cortex draws on the complex vocabulary of words and meanings to convey the desired response. Our limbic system and the autonomous nervous system further modulate the signals to the muscles around the lungs and in our mouth, and finally, the nerves activate the muscles and we articulate words.
Warnings and Caveats

However, there are some differences. Unlike the computer, our cortex usually doesn't perform the processing if it's not absolute necessary. It relies on the lower layers to perform most of the mundane tasks. This is what we observe as living on autopilot, in human behavior. In simple words, our cortex is like a low power mobile processer. It tries to save energy whenever possible. This delegation of behavior to automated responses is where lies behind stereotypes because it's easier to refer the pre-computed opinion then to form one each time you need them or reflects response. Reflects response are preplanned responses wired to specific triggers. While you can change the behavior of the computer by changing its internal state, as we do in debugging, we can't really change the behavior of other people. Really, we can't, not even in their own benefit. We can only change our own behavior and we can also change the input we give to our people. The purpose of this course is understand the concepts around our own behavior and apply them to ourselves, not to change the behavior of other people. However, the changes we do to our own behavior will more often than not ripple across to others in form of changed input and we may observe different behavior in response. All our management and leadership techniques derive from this, as we will see when we cover the group dynamics and leadership. Unlike debugging programs, where we observe the program behavior by probing and lugging, we can luckily rely on other people to provide answers about themselves, but we have to know that their responses will not only contain the useful information we are looking for, the answers will almost always contain bias. Bias is caused by their own mental schemas, perceptions, ideas, and opinions. It's useful for me to imagine a conversation as mastermind board game where the answers we receive are the packs that indicated how close we are to the hidden code or in this case, the real opinion. This bias is always present when we interact with other people and usually we call it a personality. In this course, we will learn how this bias is influenced by many things and what we can do to minimize it when necessary.
Roadmap for the Course

This course will begin with a short crash course in psychology. I will explain the basic concepts such as the brain parts, I have already introduced in this module, the difference between our conscience and unconscious mind, or the idea and role of an ego. The explanation will be given with analogies that we are familiar to as we have already seen. Once this basic stuff is covered, I will introduce the idea of the personality. We will see how this personality informed and what individual traits we combine under the abstraction of personality. We will then explore two common personality classification namely the Myers-Briggs Personality types and the Ennegram and its enneatypes. Then we will cover the communication, as it's the core of human interaction. We will see what types of communications we maintain and how our mental schemas influence the communication. From the communication, we'll progress the group dynamics. Groups are everywhere we look. Families are groups, teams our groups, even our friends are groups. We will see what happens differently when we interact within groups as opposed to individuals and how we can lead and influence in side groups. We will also cover the aspects of emotional intelligence relevant to our understanding of the human behavior, as opposed to computers, we need emotions to function properly and we will see how we can manage them. As we will already be familiar with the emotions, we will see how our body and mind reacts to stress and what we can do to influence it. Stress managing and stress reduction is becoming more important at the workplace every day. Finally, I have thought to include some basic concepts of Neuro-linguistic Programming or NLP as its core tenants have much to do with our programming of computer applications. We can see how our brain represents the world and how we can program our inner software to change the behavior that is triggered by those representations. So, get ready to embark on a psychology crash course in the next module.
Crash Course in Psychology
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will walk you through some basic concepts about human psychology. It will serve as a basis to inter-use the definitions that will be used in other modules of the course and at the same time, cover some major branches of psychology. Psychology is the science of the mind and the behavior. It's a relatively young science because it has separated from the main branch of philosophy in the late 19th Century, but mankind has always asked itself about how our mind works and about why we behave as we do. From the ancient Greeks up to the mid-evil philosophers, _____ due to the things that today are taught by the psychology. The main difference between the two is that philosophy is centered on a high-level abstract constructs such as rational thinking, the free will, the meaning of the existence, and the reality around us, while psychology is centered on the low level and mid-level processes in our mind such as the behavior or the emotions.
History of Psychology

The way to psychology has been paved by the work of Rene Descates who described that the body and mind are two separate parts in each person and that the knowledge is always acquired by rational process of thinking. He's also the first one to locate the origin of our mental processes in the brain. The way to psychology took two different paths in the mid 19th century, with one dead and one fateful branch. Then that branch was called phrenology and it taught that our brain is divided into sections. Each section responsible for a single trait or behavior, and that our skull is the reflects of our underlying brain. It soon degenerated into a complex collection of skull measurements, but for some time it was respected in driving science. It quickly loss credibility in the 20th Century. The fateful branch was called Psychophysics and it taught that our body influences our mind and vice versa and that certain parts of the body are connected to different parts of the mind. It evolved into an experimental way of investigating human mind, the one that is still used in almost all the branches of psychology. The first novel psychology school of thought, was invented by the Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud, it was called psychoanalysis and it was centered on how our inner thoughts influence us. Freud was the first physiologist to coin the concept of the conscience and unconscious parts of the mind. Psychoanalysis used introspection of inner self exploration of all thoughts as the main method for deciphering our minds. More or less at the turn of the century, American physiologists such as John Watson and B.F. Skinner began to work an explanation of our behavior. They saw the concept of consciousness as subjective and thus enable to proven scientifically and they defended that only valid field of physiological investigation is the observable and vast scientifically provable behavior. This school of thought is called behaviorism. As our course is about human behavior, we will see some concepts that came from this branch of physiology. In France, third major physiology school of thought called Cognitivism was born in the mid 20th Century. It tries to unit both of psychoanalysis with inner self and the behaviorism with its outer behavior. Cognitivism took language as a proof that not all things can be learned by behavior only and that some internal mental constructs must exist. Personality psychology, our main subject in this course, is a direct offspring of Cognitivism. Also several key definitions we will see such as memory, perception, and language are arched to these branch of psychology. Don't worry, you don't need to know all the different branches of psychology, but please feel free to explore them further if you wish. After all, our mind is so complex that no single theory can explain it all.
The Conscious Mind

The main quality of our mind is called the consciousness. It is the ability to be aware of our inner state and of our surroundings. While very intuitive for most of us, it's formal definition is yet to be seen because it can't be measured by a single servable phenomenon. Where we experience consciousness, we can retrieve memories at will and we can construct new ideas also at will. This level of our mind, where we have almost total control about what we think is called the conscious mind. The conscious mind can be loosely compared to RAM memory of a working computer. We can bring ideas and memories to the conscious mind, operate on them, and then store them or discard them. According to psychoanalysis, there is also pre-conscious mind, which lies just beyond the RAM memory of our conscious mind, but we can still access it almost at will. This is where tip of the tongue answers are stored for instance.
The Unconscious Mind

The unconscious mind is the part of our psyche that we are not aware of. It may sound strange referring to something that sits in our mind and that we have no notion of, but it may be useful to mention an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is our conscious mind, the one that we can recall and use upon request. The submerged part, the part below the water line, is our unconscious mind. We can't directly access it, but it can sometimes send messages to our conscious mind. For instance, when we dream it is generally thought that our unconscious mind is creating the dream. Far from being a sequence of random images, the sequence of dream scenes is often very thoughtful, if you can remember it. Even unscientific problems can be solved by our unconscious mind. As the well known incident regarding, the discovery of the Benzene ring, by German chemist Friedrich Kekule. He was puzzled by the elusive exact shape of Benzene molecules and he dozed off in his lap. In his dream, he saw atoms dancing and twisting in a snake like fashion until suddenly one of them twisted and grabbed its own tail. When he woke, he knew that a molecule had to be connected as a ring, the fact that was previously unheard of in chemistry. Another useful analogy is the one used by Stephen King, the famous writer. In his book on writing, he explains that his muse is his unconscious mind and he compares it to roommate who can speak and who lives in a basement, but who does magic from time to time. It may sound strange to think of your unconscious mind as a stranger inside your head, but if you do, you can imagine him or her trying to communicate now and then by shooting crazy and creative ideas to your conscious mind. The consequence of having an unconscious mind is acknowledging that a big part of our thoughts are not ours. Well, they are, but they are not of our own willing. Our conscious mind tries to block the messages from below the water line in order to being spammed by them, but sometimes they can surface just as bubbles in the water.
The Ego

Another big contribution of Mr. Freud to the mainstream psychology is a notion of ego. Ego being the Latin word for I or self, is the part of the mind that sits between or social conventions and our unconscious drives and impulses. It is the mediator between our animal or instinctive part called ID, and our rational, social, and morale part called superego. In modern psychology, the notion of ego is not as clear cut as in psychoanalysis, but is still is a useful abstraction. Ego is trying to reconcile our inner instincts with social conventions if possible. For example, we would like to sleep more in the mornings but our ego is telling us that it's not acceptable from the social and probably contractual point of view, so with get up. In a way, ego is a reason in common sense. When the ego can satisfy an impulse or a requirement from our conscious mind, it uses a wide array of defense mechanisms to sweeten the blow in order to reduce the anxiety that comes from unmet requirements. For instance, let's imagine that I want to lose weight, to do so, I decide to avoid sweets, but this afternoon in the office, we have a birthday celebration and there is a cake to be had. My conscious mind knows that I shouldn't eat it and my unconscious mind wants the cake. The ego is listening to both of them and decides to have a smaller piece of cake. My conscious mind is upset, but the ego is reducing my anxiety by justifying the decision in rational terms. This is a defense called rationalization or more commonly known as making excuses.
Defense Mechanisms

There are many defense mechanisms the first defense mechanisms appear in our childhood and are very direct and simple. As we mature, they become more complex, but less likely to be perceived because of their complexity. So, let's see some of them. Denial is refusing to accept unpleasant reality or a fact. When we lie to cover up something, we are using denial. Regression is reversing into earlier stage of development over an acceptable situations or thoughts. For example, behaving like a child when we are stressed is regression. Projection is attributing to other people our own unwanted thoughts or behavior. For example, police project their own vulnerability into their balling _____. Acting out is acting in an exaggerated manner to express oneself, like letting a stem off of a pressure valve. We act out when we throw things at someone we are angry with. Reaction formation is when we express something by doing just the opposite and in exaggeration. For example, if you're angry with someone you treat that person extremely well, that is reaction formation. Repression is the blocking of unwanted thoughts and their relegation from the conscious to the unconscious mind. For example, a person who has been abused may repress that memory to the unconscious, but they can still influence our behavior as a person with repressed memories of abuse suffered as a child, may later have difficulties forming relationships. Displacement is expressing something to another person instead of the intended receiver. For example, someone is angry with his boss and then he yells to his children. This is his displacement. As we have seen earlier, rationalization is the defense mechanism that offers alternative explanation for unacceptable realities. For example, when we blame the professor for our low exam grades instead of our own performance. The defense mechanism, are unconscious and they fire at will, but we can gradually learn to ignore their automatic responses. The main difficultly is recognizing them in the first place. So, let's try once more. Here, we have two colleagues discussing about a project. "This project is not going well can't you see?" "Don't worry, it will be OK." The second person is using denial as a defense mechanism instead of accepting the unpleasant reality about the project's status.
States of Mind

After getting to know the conscious and unconscious mind pair, don't be surprised that there is another classification of mind according to its state. Yes, the rabbit hole of our mind is that deep. A normal state of mind is when we are awake and conscious. This is our baseline state. When we sleep and dream, our mind is in different state. Our reality checks and memory storage are temporally suspended. While the most of our logic and emotions are still functioning normally. In this state, our unconscious mind is active and communicates to use by picture into dream images. When we are studying, we can concentrate on one narrow topic for a short period of time. The characteristics of this state of mind varies from person to person. When we are programming something that represents a challenge and we are so immersed into it, our mind can enter another alter state of high concentration and we are more focused and our conscious mind is now suppressing any superfluous thoughts. Our emotions are energized about a task that we are doing, even the time seems to stop. This state is usually called being in a flow and it was coined by an America psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. If you have done any meditation or prayer, you're also familiar with the state of intense calmness and heighten alertness to our inner self. This is also one of the states of the mind. We can also alter our mind states in a physical way. For instance, if we get drunk our mind is in a different state than when we are sober or if we consume drugs our mind state can also change. What's important here is to remember that we can change our mind states to get different results. We can sleep and dream to get our unconscious to talk to us. We can get into the flow to get some high performance work done. We can also meditate to relax and cleanse our mind from destructing thoughts. There are many sates of the mind, but these three are a good start.
Hierarchy of Needs

When I was explaining the major schools of thought in psychology earlier, I left out a humanous branch of psychology. The main contributor to this branch was America Psychologist Abraham Maslow. He postulated that our basic needs as human beings is self actualization. This meaning that we tend to go towards to the realization of our full potential. We are all meant to become something in life and according to Dr. Maslow, this is the driving force behind our lives, but this ultimate needs requires all other needs to be satisfied before. So we have a hierarchy of needs from more basic to more elaborate. First of all, physiological needs have to be satisfied such as hunger, thirst, breathing, shelter from elements and so on. Without them, we can't satisfy other higher needs. After these physiological needs safety needs are next in the line. They include security about our body, our jobs, our health, family, and property. When our safety needs are satisfied, when have needs of love and belonging. We have to feel ourselves as part of a family and have friends and be intimate with other people. After belonging needs, the esteem needs come into place. They regulate our need to feel self-esteem and to be held in esteem by others. We also look for recognition of our achievements and for respect from our peers. Only after all these prior needs are satisfied to certain degree, we can dedicate ourselves to the ultimate goal of life, the self-actualization. The needs higher in the hierarchy arise gradually as we go fulfilling the lower ranking needs, in other words, we'll also have small set of needs that should be taken into account in any given moment. The outer characteristic is that some unmet needs from earlier stages of life can be fixated and influence our needs in the present. For example, somebody who has endured war and shortage of food in their childhood will usually develop obsession about stocking food and money, even if that need is no longer actual. The importance of a hierarchy of needs is knowing that when we have a temporary deficiency in one of the lower needs, we can't commit ourselves to the higher ones. For instance, after losing a job, which is the need of safety, we might have difficulties in our family life as our basic need is not fulfilled. Conversely, when we face some adverse behavior in people around us, we might look for causes in our unsatisfied need lower in the hierarchy.
Summary

In this module, we have seen inside our minds. Doing a quick review of basic psychology notions relevant to human behavior. You have learned about our conscious and unconscious minds and their differences. The role of an ego is to provide consistent behavior when possible by trying to piece both conscious and unconscious mind. If that is not possible, one of many defense mechanisms may trigger to protect us from the unpleasant feelings. The highlight here is that a defense mechanisms are there to protect us while we grow, but unfortunately, they can be hindrance in our adult life, so we have to learn to detect them and avoid the responses. We have also seen that our mind can be put in different states to achieve different things and that as human beings we have a hierarchal order of needs that have to be fulfilled. The ultimate one being full realization of the potential we have inside us. You are now well equipped to embark on the other mathematical of the course.
Personality
Introduction

Hello this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will introduce you to the idea of personality. We will see what personality is made of and we'll also see different classification of personality types. The word personality originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. In the theatre of ancient Rome, the mask was not used to disguise the identity of a character, but instead it was a convention and employed to represent or typify that character. In the same fashion today, we use personality as a description of unique characteristics of a single human individual.
What Constitutes Personality?

As with almost any issue in psychology, the exact definition of personality is far from being exact. The question of what uniquely defines an individual person has been answered by philosophers and psychologists alike since the dawn of science, but even as we are far from the definite answer about what personality is, we do have several theories that can shed some light. One definition of personality is that of a particular combination of behavioral, emotional, and mental response patterns. Another one says that personality is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, ambitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. From these two definitions, we can see several common points. First of all, personality is not a single thing. It's a combination of different characteristics by a single person. Second, personality is not static, but dynamic. It can and will evolve over time and finally, personality is what mostly affects our behavior. As we are exploring human behavior in this course, personality is a core subject for us. To illustrate what we are talking about when we talk about personality let's take a trip back in time and see how personality was first defined. The first personality theoretician of a kind was an inventor of medicine, Hippocrates of ancient Greece. History of humors was considered for many centuries the official personality explanation classification. Given the expression I'm in no humor to argue, comes from this ancient theory of personality. According to Hippocrates, we are influenced by one or four body liquids or humors blood, bile, black bile, and phlegm or mucus. If we have an excess of one of the humors, we exhibit a personality that is defined by the predominant humor. There are four departments or personalities, Sanguine with excessive blood is impulsive and charismatic. Choleric with excessive bile is ambitious and energetic. Melancholic with excessive of black bile is cautious and introverted and finally, phlegmatic with excessive phlegm is rational and calm. Hippocrates human theory was the mainstream personality explanation for 2000 years. Let's see what the modern personality theories have to say. There are two ways to approach modern theories of personality. The first one called a type theory postulates there are limited number of personality types and their influenced by psychological causes. The second one is called the trait theory. It explains that our personalities are defined by combination of traits or stable discreet behavior patterns. In my opinion, they're explaining the same thing. The type theory is a top bottom approach where our traits are defined from our personality types. The trait theory is a bottom up approach where the traits combine into different personality types. The differences merely matter of how do we abstract what we observe into a theoretical model. Sounds familiar? It should. In a computer science, we do exactly the same thing. In any case, we can think of traits as a single characteristic of our personality that can have a value between two extreme and opposite ends. Most psychologists agree there are five main defining traits and many more secondary traits. The main five traits are also known as the big 5. We'll take some time to explain them in more detail. The first trait in the Big 5 has been used in psychology since ancient times and it's called introversion or extroversion.
Introversion/Extraversion

This trait defines how deep we interact with other people. It's a core concept around which our personalities defined. The extravert person is one who tries and energizes herself around people. If left alone, the extravert feels bored and seeks others to spend time with. The extravert is the salesman, the politician, the teacher, the entertainer. The main characteristic of the extravert is that his gratification is placed outside himself. The introvert person is the one who thrives and energizes himself when alone or in very small and intimate groups. When spending times with larger groups of people, introverts are easily overwhelmed and seek more quiet environments. They introvert is the scientist, the composer, the writer. The main characteristic of the introvert is that her gratification is place inside of herself. Although our place in the extrovert/introvert axis is more or less fixed, we contemporarily behave differently to a limit. In an excellent book about introverts by Susan Cain called Quiet, she explains that this trait is like a rubber band that we can stretch, but it always takes back to the original shape. This temporary change is done on the expense of energy. As we tire more easily when impersonating behavior different from our inherit one. According to me experience, most technical people are introverts. As our profession requires a lot of mental work and abstractions, which are best done in a quiet environment. The sales people are usually extroverts. Even whole cultures can be extroverts and introverts. For example, in the United States of America the mainstream trait is extroversion. It's expected to mingle and socialize by default. In Asia on the other hand, the default social mode is introversion, as the inner self and morale value are much more appreciated than the external behavior. Knowing this, is extroversion is predominant to vast and culture, we should pay attention how do we interpret introverts lacks of social involvement. It should not be interpreted as shyness or depression. Instead, we have to understand that they are more independent of the social world than the extroverts. Introverts needs less stimulation than extraverts and more time alone. This does not mean that they are unfriendly or antisocial, but rather they are reserved in social situations.
The Rest of Traits

The second trait of the Big 5 is called openness to experience. It measures how curious or cautious we are. It reflects our intellectual curiosity, creativity, and novelty. The curious people are usually open to emotion, interested in art, and willing to try new things. They can easily form concepts and abstractions. The cautious people usually stick to the familiar and to the routine. They are most straightforward, concrete, and obvious. A third trait is called conscientiousness. It measures how self-disciplined and dutiful we are to control and direct our impulses. Highly organized people pay attention to the detials, plan their actions in advance, and prefer order. The easygoing people on the other hand enjoy spontaneous behavior and share in duties or routine. The fourth rate is called agreeableness. It is the measure of how do we get along with other people. The agreeable individuals and friendly generous helping and looking for compromise. The disagreeable individuals are generally unconcerned with others well being, suspicious, and competitive. Unfortunately, the agreeability today is negatively correlated to the manager or leadership roles, even to the salary. However, other studies show that when we take into account the collateral damage that less agreeable people influence on the rest of the work force, the results are reversed. The final trait of the Big 5 is called Emotional stability or Neuroticism. It measures how stable our emotions are over time. Highly neurotic people have low tolerance for stress or unpleasant situations. They are usually reactive and have large periods of pessimistic and anxious thoughts and emotions. On the other end of the spectrum, people with high emotional stability are less easily upset and less prone to reactions. They tend to be calm and free from persistent negative feelings.
Classifications of Personality

Having seen the main personality traits, let's see the personality classifications that have appeared in modern psychology. As I said before, for me types are just classification of traits into higher more abstract units. We have already seen the four humors of Hippocrates sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. They had been obsolete by the 19th Century. The first psychologist to address the personality types has been a disciple of Freud called Karl Jung. He was the first to coin the terms extrovert and introvert. He postulated that we have four main functions two perceiving ones, sensing and intuition and two judging ones thinking and feeling. Together with the introversion/extroversion, they allow for a combination of different types such as introvert sensing thinker or extrovert into a div thinker for example. In the 60's, two psychologist a mother and a daughter built upon Jung's work to come with a so called Myers-Briggs Types Indicator or MBTI. This was the first practical personality type classification applied to the work place. We'll cover MBTI in more detail in the next module. You may also have heard of Type A and Type B personalities. This is somewhat controversial classification that has been coined by cardiologist, Meyer Freedmen in the 1950's. He observed a rate of cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy individuals and associated Type A to workaholic, high strong individuals, and Type B to the unstressed, calm, and relaxed counterparts. In this course, I will also explain the theory of an Enneagram. It comes from mystical teachings of Gurdjieff and popularized by believing philosopher Oscar Ichazo. In the Enneagram there are nine personality types each one centered on a central fixation of a fear. Ennegarm is not usually thought in academic circles, but is widely used in workplaces and a screen place. We will cover Enneagram in more details on one of the following modules.
Personality in the Workplace

When we are at a workplace, we bring our personality and traits with us. It influences on how do we take our tasks, how we organize, and how we interact with other people. This is precisely why knowing the details of our personality can help us adjust to the situation at hand. We spend roughly the third of our time at work and our overall feat in the workplace is very dependent on the match between our personality and the workplace mood, situation, and dynamics. For example, introverts prefer secluded workspaces that ensure privacy and that are quiet. The extroverts prefer open space with no cubicles. If you have both types of people at a workplace, it can be challenging satisfying both of them, but it's even worse if you fail to understand the difference in the first place. Knowing yourself and by extension knowing other people better, is a key to understand how our diversity of personalities and which in complement the workplace. As I said before, we can act out of our normal personality by spending some extra energy. This being said, usually we can act out of sync for a long time and we should be wise in choosing which situation warrants our efforts and which situation are not worth it. Not all battles are worth being fought. We can also use our knowledge of traits to find common language with colleagues and clients who have different traits. For example, depending on how we stand on a conciseness trait we will be more or less ordered and organized work. Less organized people, where I have to confess that I belong to, will have difficulties working with well organized people, unless there is a common understanding and trust and the work being done. The parable here is confusing one trait, which is low self-organization, with another which is unreliability. As I said in the introduction, each one of us has a unique blend of traits and characteristics and usually nobody is going to do tasks in the same manner as we do them, but how things are done is less important than relying or doing them. Repeatedly during this course you will hear the message that we see the world as we are. In this case, people with high consciousness trait will look for the same trait in other people and vice versa and extra care about taken not to let our characteristics being expected from others. Trust me, this particular lesson was very difficult to accept for me when I first learned about it, but it's true.
Summary

In this module, we have seen how our personality is the sum of multiple persistent behavior and middle patterns that are uniquely mixed together in each one of us. We have seen the different abstraction levels of personality types and traits and we have met the Big 5 personality traits in some detail. We have also seen several classification of personality types and in the next modules, we will see them even in more detail. A word of caution before we punch forward, it's easy to use the classification of personality types and a knowledge of traits classify people around you. It's loaded with a danger of taking the personality for the whole person. We should exercise at most caution not to label people according to their personality. We are all a unique mix of traits and we can all transcend our personality with more or less effort. Our personality doesn't define us, but influences us. Keep that in mind and see you in the next module.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will explain Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI, one of the most widely used classification personality. Myers-Brigs Type Indicator or MBTI has been developed in Florida by Isabel Briggs-Myers and her mother Katharine Briggs between 1942 and 1964. The origin of the indicator was when Katharine met her son-in-law and realized how different their personalities were. So she and her daughter went to develop a system of personality types. First, they were testing indicator within friends and relatives and then the sample was being expanded further with academic and corporate members. The basis of MBTI is a psychological type theory introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist a disciple of Freud Carl Jung, who published his book Psychological Types in 1921. He observed that people usually engage in one of two mental functions taking in information, which he called perceiving and organizing that information to come to conclusions, which he called judging. Even if people do both of those activities, they prefer to do more of perceiving or judging. In the same fashion, he modeled extroversion and introversion preference. MBTI has been conceived as a hand on approach to these theories of Jung. Jung's work was too academic and Isobel Briggs established a refine model of personality by organizing psychological type preference on a matrix, and by crafting a refining questionnaire that helps sort these preferences quickly and easily. By the time of Isobel's death in the 1980's, MBTI has already been entered worldwide use by companies, educators, and others to help make career decisions and to enhance understanding and communication.
MBTI Psychological Preferences

The basis of MBTI are the four main psychological preferences similar to what we called traits in the last module. Each preference has two options, leaning on one of two ends of the spectrum for that preference. The combination of 16 different pairs of four variables with two possible values, makes for the 16 personality types according to MBTI. The first of our preferences is extroversion and introversion. We have covered them in detail in the last chapters, so I will just remind you that they model where do we put our attention and where do we get our energy from? If we like to spend most time with people and things it's called extroversion. If we like spend time with ideas and images of our mind, it's called introversion. According to MBTI questionnaire, extroverts should feel identifiable with the following statements. I am seen as outgoing to a people person. I feel comfortable in groups and like working in them. I have a wide range of friends I know lots of people. Sometimes I jump too quickly into an activity and I don't allow enough time to think it over. Or before I start a project I sometimes forget to stop and get a clear on what I want do and why. While the introverts should be identified by these statements. I'm seen as a reflective or reserved. I feel comfortable being alone and I like things that I can do on my own. I prefer to know just few people well. Sometimes I spend too much time reflecting and don't move to action quickly enough, and sometimes I forget to check with the outside world to see if the ideas fit the experience. In my experience, technical people can be both extraverts and introverts, but the introverts are majority. The second pair of preferences is called sensing and intuition. This preference reflects where we pay more attention to the raw information coming to our senses, this is called sensing or to the meaning and patterns of that information which is called intuition. In other words, sensing people remember and notice details of the physical reality and they are more prone to experience things, while the intuition people prefer to learn my thinking and abstraction. According to MBTI questionnaire, sensitive people should feel identifiable with the following statements. I remember events as snapshots of what happened. I solve problems my working through facts until I understand the problem. I'm pragmatic and look to the bottom line. I start with facts then form a big picture and I trust experience first and trust words and symbols less. While the intuitive people should be identified by these statements. I remember events by what I read between the lines about their meaning. I solve problems my leaping between different ideas and possibilities. I am interested in doing things that are new and different. I like to see the big picture and then to find out the facts, and I trust impression, symbols, and metaphors more than what I actually experienced. According to my observations, technical people usually fall into the intuitive preference. The third part of preferences is thinking and feeling. This preference reflects how we make decisions. If we are more on the objective and personal side of decision making, we prefer thinking. If we put more weight on the personal detials and the people involved, we prefer feeling. In other words, thinking people like to find a general principle that can be applied and to rationally analyze pros and cons while the feeling people prefer to stick to the point of views of people involved in situation and a faster common ground in harmony. According to MBTI questionnaire, thinking people should feel identified with the following statements. I enjoy technical and scientific fields where logic is important. I notice inconsistencies. I look for logical explanations or solutions to most everything. I make decisions with my head and want to be fair. I believe that telling the truth is more important than being tactful. Sometimes I miss or don't value the people part of the situation, while the feeling people should be identified by these statements. I have a people or communication orientation. I'm concerned with harmony and nervous when it's missing. I look for what's important in others and I express concern for others. I make decisions with my heart and I want to be compassionate. I believe being tactful is more important than telling the cold truth and sometimes I miss seeing or communicating the hard truth of situation. Technical people mostly fall under thinking side of this preference. The final fourth by preferences is called judging and perceiving. This preference describes how we prefer to live our external life or what our external observable behavior is. If our life is structure and decided, we are on the judging preference and if our life is flexible and adaptable, we are more perceiving. In other words, these preference try to measure how do we interact with the external world? Do we prefer to interact with others when making decisions or do we prefer to interact with others when taking information? It may not reflect our inner preference but under the external component. We might be spontaneous and flexible in our mind, but structure and orderly on the outside. According to the MBTI questionnaire, judging people should be identified with the following statements. I like to have things decided. I appear to be task oriented. I like to make lists of things to do. I like to get my work done before playing. I plan work to avoid rushing just before a deadline. Sometimes I focus so much on the goal that I muss new information, while the perceiving people should be identified by these statements; I like to stay open to respond to whatever happens. I appear to me loose and casual. I keep plans to a minimum. I like to approach work as play or mix work and play. I work in bursts of energy. I'm stimulated by an approaching deadline and sometimes I stay open to new information so long that I miss making decisions when they are needed. Technical people may be found in both ends of this preference. As for me, I'm the perceiving side. I prefer to taking information and adapt to the situation and I also work in bursts of energy.
MBTI Personality Types

As we have seen, there are four preferences in MBTI. Each one has a letter identifying one or two possible values for this preference. Our world attitude extroversion or introversion. Our information gather process sensing or intuition. Our decision making process, thinking or feeling, and our external behavior judging or perceiving. The first and the last preference are external in nature. The second and third are internal. The internal preference sometimes are called functions as their related and how do we prefer to do our internal thought processes. The different personality types are called by the combination of letters from the four preferences. They are usually displayed in the so called type metrics arranged in 4x4 table. This table can be divided according to four preferences in halves. We have the introvert half and the extrovert half, a sensing half, the intuition half, the thinking half, the feeling half, the judging half, and the perceiving half. We will now briefly meet the 16 personality types with the examples of historical persons thought to be of this type according to their observed behavior and statements. To keep it shorter, I will present them in the extrovert introvert paths. The INFP focus the energy into inner world filled with intense feelings and deeply held ethics and values. Their external life is focuses on keeping with these values. Their idealistic, they quickly spot opportunities to implement their deals. Usually they are flexible unless their values are threatened. The inventor of MBTI Test, Isobel Briggs, self reported herself as INFP. Another famous INFP was John Lennon. Their extrovert cousin ENFP are also idealistic, but they have entered enthusiasm that is contagious to others. They are initiators of changes and tireless in the pursuit of new interests. They are creative and charismatic, but they can be disappointed and easily frustrated when the reality fails to keep up with their expectations. They are not afraid to speak up and defend the values they hold dear. Film director Oliver Stone is an example of ENFP. The INFJ are looking for meaning in relationships and to better understand other people. They tend to be sensitive and quiet leaders. They develop a clear vision about how to serve the common good and they are committed to their firm values. Their organized in the action and to implement their vision. Gandhi is an example of INFG the ENFG are warm and receptive and tend to have much empathy toward others. They feel the needs and emotions of other people and can act as catalysts for individual and group growth. Their leadership is inspired and they seek harmony in shared values. Martin Luther King Jr is an example of ENFG. INTPs are quiet, skeptical, and analytical people. They have the ability to focus in-depth and tend to spend long period of time waling on theories to find how things work. They value autonomy in themselves and in others. They tend to distrust authority and seek to work with others as equals. They're not very social, but enjoy the company of people who share their interests. Albert Einstein is a perfect enbodyment of INFTP. Their extrovert cousins ENTPs are quick to seek complex relationship when people think that ideas and further analyze them in detail. They want to understand and approve the world around them. ENTPs usually come with flexible and introverted solutions to the challenges, but are less interested in following them through planning as their easily bored by routine. Leonardo Da Vinci is an example of ENTP. As for me, I'm an INTP for sure. INTJs are analytical as INTPs, but they are prepared to lead when leadership is lacking. They have independent thought and they are efficient in their actions. Their highly capable of organizing and carrying through and they're natural leaders. Sometimes the desire for efficiency may make them seem in a hurry and their also hard to read as they don't express emotional reactions easily. Isaac Asimov was an INTJ. ENTJs are also oriented to efficiency. Their usually leaders both visionary and realistic. They are frank and decisive and quick to see logical and inefficient procedures and to solve them. They present the ideas in assertive and outspoken manner with little regard to feelings. Steve Jobs was an ENDJ. ISFPs are quiet and peaceful people. They live and let live. They do things at their own pace and they live in the moment. Their values are very important to them, but they do not try to force them on others. They dislike conflicts and disagreements. Many artists are ISFPs as for example Michael Jackson. ESPFs also live in the moment, but they also prefer other people and material comforts. They're friendly and accepting common sense people. They make work fun their quick to adapt to new environments. They disregard theory to hands on experience. Bill Clinton is an example of ESFP. ISFJs are protective and nurturing. They are mostly loyal to their jobs, very meticulous, very responsible. They are keen observers and remember many details about others and their feelings. They are reluctant to open up to strangers but among family and friends their comfortable speaking freely. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is an example of ISFJ. ESFJs share a lot of traits with ISFJs but their also more social, vocal, and seek others for their approval. They focus on the outside world and value social responsibility and easily share the values of a group they are part of. They practice what they preach. George Washington is an example of ESFJ. ISTP people are highly practical observers. They act quickly to find work for solutions and analyze what makes things work. They value cause and effect explanations and organize facts using logical principles. They abhor waste and inefficiency and their also very staunch offenders of what they think are rightfully theirs. Alan Turing the inventor to the theory of computation was ISTP. ESTPs are hands on learners and persuaders who improvise to bring immediate results. They are bored with theories and concepts and they focus on the here and the now. They enjoy material comforts. Winston Churchill was ESTP. And finally, ISTJ people are organized, logical, and reserved traditionalists. They take a practical approach in their actions. They prefer to deal with facts and decision making, but tend to be conventional in their decisions. They take pleasure in the order and organization. Richard Nixon was ISTJ. ESTJ are also practical people. They like to organize and run activities and they make for good administrators. They have a clear set of logical standards and they tend to make others follow them, even if it has to be forced. General Rockefeller was ESTJ.
Summary

In this module we have seen Myer-Briggs steps indicator and its main four preference the shape personalities, introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. We have also seen a brief overview of each one of the 16 MBTI types and a famous or historic person that is mostly identified with that type. Remember that every single preference has value, as there are not good and bad types. For example, knowing our inner thought process preferences are the inner two letters of the MBTI type, we can take them into account, complementary ideas from other people. We will now introduce the complementary type classification called Enneagram.
Enneagram
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will explain the Enneagram. Classification and personality that has been used in business management and spiritual context. The Enneagram means nine drawings in Greek. It is also the name of the figure that is used to explain the nine different personality types and the relationships between them. The origins of the Enneagram are not clear, but a first modern user of the Enneagram is created to the Russian spiritual teacher George Ivanovitch Gurdijeff in the earlier 20th Century. He used the Enneagram figure to explain his teachings on the laws that operate in the universe. The Enneagram was popularized by Bolivian Teacher Oscar Ichazo, who developed a theory of ego fixations on the top of the Enneagram figure. He began teaching Enneagram personality analysis called Protoanalysis in the 50s. A Chilean psychiatrist called Claudio Naranjo finally popularized the Enneagram in the early 70's in the United States. From there, other authors began publishing books on the Enneagram. Today, Enneagram is used in business, politics, acting, advertising, spirituality, and various kind of therapies.
Enneagram and Enneatypes

The key concept of an Enneagram is the Enneagram figure itself. It consists of 9 points in the circumference. Each point is connected to two other points. The points themselves are numbered from 1 to 9 and represent 9 different personality types of enneatypes. According to the Enneagram theory you're personality type is defined partly by birth and partly by the process of growing. In any case, there is 1 of 9 personality types that everyone has identified more strongly than with the other types. This personality type is your base type or your base enneatype. As we grow, our inner self-transitions from the essence or understood pure here and now core, to the ego, or the protective layer that shields our essence. Each type has a specific defense mechanism of the ego. Why is that? Well, according to the Enneagram, each type is connected to a specific fixation or recurrent mental obsession. The spectrum of the levels of consciousness from pure essence or full consciousness to pure ego or pure unconscious reaction, is what's called our level of development. It means that on the low level of development we act mostly from the ego using predefined defense mechanisms and even without being aware of it. As we progress in our level of development, our behavior is becoming more and more defined by our essence and less my automated ego response. The ego is necessary for us to become adults as it shields us from unpleasant emotions and thoughts in our childhood, but when we're fully grown, it's a hindrance. It hides our inner self. So, the purpose of knowing your personality is to shed the ego layer that is useless and replace it with the core essence. The 9 types of the Enneagram are also split in three centers. Each center has three types that share a common reaction to the fact of being out of contact with the inner self. These three centers are Gut or instinctive center, heart or feeling center, and head or thinking center. The common feeling that each types in centers share are anger, shame, or fear connecting respectively to the gut, feeling, or thinking center. Each of the three types in the center react slightly differently and each one of the types has a basic ego fixation. This fixation is established in the earlier childhood and each type idealizes a particular facet of an ideal world. This fixation comes as a frustration from retention between the wish for an ideal and the reality of the world which denies that ideal. For instance, there are three gut or instinctive center personalities 8, 9, and 1. All three experiment a surge of rage as their basic ego defense mechanism, but the 8s will express the rage in a physical way waving their fist and threatening as their base fixation is a survival. The 9s will deny the anger and will suppress the adverse energy in themselves because they create harmony. The 1s will attempt to stay in control of themselves and direct these energies to the object of their criticism usually in verbal way as they wish for a perfect world around them. All three types have same inner emotion and each one copes with it according to the basic fixation of his or her type. There are two more concepts to explain, the wings and the stress growth connections. The wings are the two types adjacent to our base type. They act as a compliment or second site to our personality or base type. It means that for example, if our base personality is full, we may have wing 3 or wing 5 meaning that in addition to the type 4 characteristics we might also exhibit a behavior of type 3 or type 5. Usually one wing is more predominant in any one point of time, but we may change the dominant wing during our lifetime. As I said, each type is connected to two other types. These connections are known as stress growth or integration to integration directions. Our personality follows one line when we are under high pressure or stress and it means that we are temporarily exhibit of a behavior of the type that we are connected to in the stress direction. The other direction is the behavior we begin to adapt when we are moving to more health and growth. In my case, I as a type 5 I exhibit to frenetic activity of a 7 when under stress, so this is my stress direction, but I adapt more proactive in an impulsive stance of an 8 when I'm fully conscience as self-aware. So this is my growth direction. Don't worry, we will see each enneatype in just a second.
The Nine Personality Types

I will introduce the nine personality types of the Enneagram or enneatypes. For each of them, I will highlight the basic fear or ego fixation. They are the ideal self or the basic desire. They are basic driver or main motivation in life, and also the stress and growth directions to other types. I've also mentioned famous people that I thought to share a given enneatype. I will also mention each types vices and virtues. They are connected to the stress growth directions in the following way. A vice is a habit that each type develops in order to provide himself with an illusion of a basic desire or ego fixation. Following your vice is natural for the type and it leads to stress direction as it becomes more frequent. A virtue is usually characteristic that is opposed to the same vice and might look very anti-natural, but it leads to overcome the limitations of the ego and to the realization of the basic desire for that type. Just remember the vices and virtues in this module have no morale significance. The personality type 1 or reformer has a strong sense of right and wrong. They always try improvement, but they can slip into a perfect perfectionism very easily. They're well organized and have high standards, which sometimes can also be expected of others. 1s easily form black and white opinions about almost everything having difficulties to accept middle grounds. Frequently 1s are also champions and activates of justice and rights for others. The main fear of Type 1 is being corrupt or being bad. The corresponding basic desire is to be good and to have integrity. The corresponding main desire is to be good and have integrity. Their vice is anger, it means that they react to the imperfections of the world around them with outrage and take it in faster resentment towards others. The corresponding virtue is the right action meaning that the actions are aligned with the needs of others to amend and perfections of the world. The basic drive 1 is strive higher and to be consistent with the ideals and to go beyond any criticism. When moving the stress direction, 1s become moody and irrational as unhealthy 4s. When moving in a growth direction, critical ones can become more spontaneous and joyful like healthy 7s. Noam Chomsky, America philosopher, writer, and linguist, is an example of enneatype 1. The personality type 2 or helper emphatic and friendly. They are generous and help others, but sometimes they slip into doing things for others in order to be felt as needed. Their usual problems are acknowledging their own needs, fighting the possessiveness, and the need for flattery. As they share a basic fear of rejection of all three emotional types, they can become over involved and manipulate others to get their own emotional needs fulfilled. The main fear of type 2 is being unworthy of being loved. The corresponding basic desire is to feel loved. Their vice is vainglory or having an illusion of freeing much more than it's the case. Their virtue is altruism, doing what they can to help others without anything in return. The basic driver for 2 is to help others in order to feel loved as others respond to them. When moving in the stress direction 2s become aggressive as unhealthily aids. When moving in a growth direction, self unaware 2s will become more aware of their inner self like healthy 4s. Dr. McCoy from Star Trek series is an example of enneatype 2. The personality type 3 are self-assured, charming, and ambitious people. They're driven by the advancement, energetic and component, but they can easily slip into workaholics, competitive, and highly concerned for their image and what others think of them. The main fear of a type 3 is being worthless. The corresponding basic desire is to valuable and worthwhile. Their vice is deceit providing them with an illusion of success they crave for and sometimes they can get untangled in their own deceptions. Their virtue is truthfulness as they can be realistic and down to earth achievers warm and close to others. The basic drive of 3 is to be affirmed and admired by others because of their actions. When moving in the stress direction, 3s become disengaged as unhealthy 9s. When moving in a growth direction, vain 3s can become more cooperative like healthy 6s. Mohammed Ali, the boxer, is an example of enneatype 3. The personality type 4 of the individualists is self-aware creative and sensitive. They're very connected to their inner self, but sometimes they can feel special, moody, and melancholic. They also feel special, unique, and different from other human beings leading themselves to know the inner strengths and weaknesses well and be very subjective in their interaction with the world around them. The main fear of a type 4 is having no identity. The corresponding basic desire is to have an identity of their own. Their vice is envy meant as a feeling that others have some unique qualities that they are missing. Their virtue is equanimity, which is calmness and composure. The key driver for force is their need to express themselves and their inner beauty in a way of attracting the attention of others. When moving the stress direction, reserved force become over involved as unhealthy 2s. When moving in a growth direction, emotional 4s can become more objective and principle like healthy 1s. Edgar Allen Poe is an example of enneatype 4. The personality type 5 is one of a curious observer. They are able to master the mental skills to achieve high concentration and to develop complex ideas and skills. Their independent, inventive, but their world of ideas sometimes takes over the real world leading them to detachment and isolation. Their look underworld is very objective taking almost no feelings into account. 5s are always questioning and discovering how the world around them works. The main fear of type 5 is being useless or helpless. The corresponding basic desire is to be capable and competent. Their vice is avarice meant as hording on information and knowledge. Their virtue is their detachment allowing them to observe objectively without being involved. The key driver for 5s is their eagerness to know more as a way of coping with the threats from the environment around them. When moving the stress direction, detached 5s become hyperactive as unhealthy 7s. When moving in the growth direction, silent 5s can become more decisive and self confident like healthy 8s. Albert Einstein is an example of enneatype 5. 5 is also my own enneatype. The personality type 6 is looking for security and commitment. They are reliable and trustworthy and they force their problems and promote cooperation, but they can become defensive and anxious. Usually 6's are cautious and indecisive, but they can be reactive and rebellious also. Their minds are always on the look for all possible outcomes and hidden intentions, which sometimes can hinder their relations with others. The main fear of type 6 is being unsupported. he corresponding basic desire is to be safe and secure. Their vice is fear meaning as a continue state of _____ that gives an illusion of safety. Their virtue is courage, as the learn that their fear is conquerable. The key driver for 6s is how to survive _____ hence their quest for security and reassurance from others and from the world. When moving in the stress direction, doubtful 6s become competitive and arrogant as an unhealthy 3s. When moving in the growth direction, pessimistic 6s can become more relaxed and optimistic like healthy 9s the protagonist of Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins, is an example of 6. The personality type 7 are extroverted and optimistic. They're versatile and spontaneous, always looking for new and exciting things to do. However, they can easily become bored or distracted, over extended, and exhausted. They usually cope with impatience and impulsiveness, but when they focus their talents they can be very engaging and full of energy. They can indulged in excessive anticipatory planning of their future experiences. The main fear of type 7 is to be deprived and in pain. Their basic desire is to have all their needs fulfilled. Their vice is gluttony meaning that they urge to all possible new experiences leading them to scattering their actions. Their virtue is sobriety which clears the scattering and focus their efforts on worthwhile goals. The key drive for 7s is to keep themselves occupied and happy while avoiding pain at all costs. When moving in the stress direction, over indulged 7s begin to chastise themselves over their imperfection like unhealthy 1s. When moving in the growth direction, scattered 7s take a slower deliberative stance like healthy 5s. John F. Kennedy is an example of a type 7. The personality type 8 are strong assertive people with need to control their environment by being intimidating and confrontational. They are protective and straightforward, but can easily slip into domination and egocentric behavior. They cope with their tempers and hide their vulnerabilities under the armor of aggressiveness. They are instinctive and tend to act first and think after. Also, 8s are also very charismatic and persuasive. The main fear of type 8 is to be harmed or controlled. Their basic desire is to be in control of their own. Their vice is lost meaning their desire for anything in excess such as food, money, or sex which is then treated as an illusionary proof of success in their survival. They're virtue is magnanimity and they become noble and face dangerous to protect others. They key driver for 8s is to prove their strength and to dominate the environment by resisting weakness. When moving in the stress direction, confident 8 becomes secretive and isolated like unhealthy 5s. When moving in the growth direction, the controlling 8s began to be more caring about others and open themselves as healthy 2s. Ernest Hemingway, the writer, can be seen as an example of type 8. And finally, the personality type 9 are stable and accepting people. They want everything to be smooth and avoid conflict up to the point of minimizing the problems and becoming complacent. 9s can be stubborn, but can also become too accommodating. They are urged to add balance and harmony in the world around them is also present in the inner world, but they might feel doubt about themselves in the inside. Their defense is to look outside themselves ignoring their own needs if they threat the harmony. The main fear of type 9 is be lost of separated from the world. Their basic desire is to have peace of mind. Their vice is indifference meaning that they ignore their own needs to provide false feeling of harmony. Their virtue is serenity, the peace of mind that also allows for clear decisions and actions. The key driver for 9s is to create harmony and preserve things as they are and to avoid upsetting and disturbing the world. When moving in the stress direction, complacent 9s become anxious and worried like unhealthy 6s. When moving in the growth direction, the self-neglecting 9s began to assert themselves as healthy 3s. Abraham Lincoln is an example of type 9.
Summary

In this module, we have seen the Enneagram and its nine types of personality. We have covered the basic fixations of each type. We have also seen the levels of conciseness that can be an Ego, which is the unconscious behavior in the essence, which is fully conscious behavior. We have also seen the growth and stress directions for each type and the meaning of wings. We have also see a short description of each type. The Enneagram and MBTI are two different classifications and they can be combined in order to get a clearer picture of your own personality. The Enneagram explains the core motivations and ego fixations while MBTI is more oriented to explain the thinking process and the behavior toward others. In a way, Enneagram types is in the center of one personality and the MBTI modulates that type information processing. Each one of 9 Enneagram types can be any of 16 MBTI types, which gives us many possible combination of personality types.
Communication
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will explain the process of interpersonal communication, the main mechanism for exchanging ideas, thoughts, and opinions for humans. The definition of communication is fairly easy. According to the dictionary, it is the act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express of exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, or feelings to someone else. There are many theories of communication in psychology. I'm going to use a blend of them to explain the concepts that are involved in human communication. Let me start with a simple computer inspired example. When we want to send a message from one application to another application on another computer we have to do several things. First, we write the message to be sent. Then, we encode a message and relate to the network layer in the operating system. The network life further encodes the message according to the physical network and sends it through a channel. On the other half the channel, the receiver computer decodes the message and sends it to the higher layer of the operating system. Finally, the message is fully decoded and read by the target application. Only after the receiver application can send a response using the same mechanism. When we communicate with other people, same things happens. We intend to express something to another person. That's the message. The message is first encoded in words. Then, the message is encoded in sound waves by our mouth. The sound waves are captured by the receiver ears and decoded into words. The words are decoded into the meaning of the words, which is the message, and then the other person can send a response. Of course, this is a gross simplification of the human communication, but it's useful because parallels can be drawn here. In the next section, we will see nuances of human forms and communicate that are not present in computer communication.
How Communication Works

One simple theory of human communication is the one formulated in the 1960s by David Berlo. It is called SMCR model of communication and the name stands for the four main parts of the communication, the Source, the Message, the Channel, and the Receiver. Each part of the communication has different influencing characteristics that impact the communication process. The sender is where the communication originates. It's influenced by a number of factors, the communication skills of the sender, the attitude of the sender towards the receiver, the knowledge about a subject of a conversation, and the culture and social system under which the conversation is being done. So, in difference with computer communication, human communication is influenced by a number of subjective characteristics of the sender. This is why the same message by different person, doesn't have the same impact. The second part of the model is the message. The message is encoded by the sender and it's effected by the following factors; the message content or what is meant to be sent by the sender, the message elements such as the language used or the gestures and so on, the message treatment such as adjusting the language, the tone of the voice and so on. Think of it as the if facts applied in the message. As in computer graphics, too much treatments spoils the message. The message structure or the ordering of the content and the elements. Different structures have different effects on the receiver and finally, the message code. The message is expressed by our language, the body language, the culture and so on. A simple code mismatch such as not speaking the same language, can make the communication impossible. The same thing happens if we mix different encodings or protocols in the computer communication, right? The message travels to the receiver through medium or a channel. The channel in the Berlo's model, are our five senses, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching. We usually mix the senses in our communication as the messages received by several senses at once. This is why non-verbal communication is so important, as we will see further in this module. Finally, the receiver is the one that decodes the message that has arrived. Again, the same set of subjective factors that have influenced the sender now influence the receiver. The communication skills of the receiver, basically the listening skills, the attitude of the receiver towards the sender, the knowledge about the subject of the conversation, the cultural and social system under which the conversation is being done, and only after those subject factors has modified the message, it is finally received by the receiver and a response can be done. This simple model is used for uncovering many things that effect our communication, but it has several shortcomings such as like a feedback, the linearity of the process, and the lack of noise factor in message transmission. However, it's easy to picture and I think it's a good starting point for analyzing the human communication.
Beliefs and Stereotypes

As you have seen in the SMCR model of communication, there are many subjective factors that affect the conveying of message between two individuals. The most powerful ones in my opinion are the beliefs and stereotypes held by each individual in the communication. Let's dig a little bit further. A belief is a statement or a premise that is held true by an individual. We say that he or she has this belief. The belief may or may not stand the test of the objectivity. Of course, objective beliefs such as boiling water is hard, are referred to as knowledge and they are shared by many individuals. What we usually are not aware of is that each one of us holds many subjective beliefs on many different things and they influence our communication by adding a bias or a partial perspective emphasis to the original message. A stereotype is a generalized belief about a group of people or ways of doing things. It's a mental shortcut that simplifies the processing of information and the classification of different observed situations into common buckets. However, the parallel of the stereotype is that of minimizing the role of the individual and over emphasizing the importance of the group to which the individual pertains. The MBTI and Enneagram personality type examples that we have seen in the previous modules, of course their examples of the stereotypes. There are no pure personality types, but the individuals may share common traits now and then. The stereotypes help us picture the common image. Let's see how the beliefs and stereotypes influence our communication. Imagine a dialogue by a manager and a developer. The manager wants to know how much it would take to code a Feature X, in order to know how to plan the workload for his team. So he asks, "Hi Jane! Have you seen the specs for the Feature X? How long it would take to implement it?" The developer's hearing the message. She has a belief that the estimation scale is highly valued for a developer and also their precise estimate or mark of good estimation skills. So she adjust her massage and consciously to emphasize that she has correctly estimated the workload. "Well, I've done an estimate and I am sure that it would take eight days." The manager hears the answer. He has the belief that precise answers are accurate answers. This is a common bias in estimation. So upon hearing that eight days are the estimate, he takes it as firm value and plans accordingly, but the estimate happens to be entirely subjective to Jane. How would the same dialogue look like if we take out the unconscious beliefs? "Hi Jane! Have you seen the specs for the Feature X? How long it would take to implement it?" "Well, I have done an estimate and I think it would take between six and twelve days." Jane has allowed for the uncertainty to show for the estimate and she hasn't adjusted the message for the belief that a precise answer is a mark of good estimator. "Between six and twelve days? Why?" The manager has perceived uncertainty in Jane's answer and now tries to reduce it by asking for an explanation for the uncertainty. "The specs for the user permissions are somewhat vague and I think there are some hidden assumptions there. We should confirm them to get a firmer estimate." Jane has received a question and she has interpreted correctly. She could have interpreted as a doubt in her estimating skills if she has a belief that asking explanations about one estimate is doubting the estimation skill. As you can see in this simple example, the beliefs in stereotypes can greatly influence our communication. We will see now how to deal with them in one of the following sections of this module.
Types of Communication

When I've explained the communication model in the previous section, I've mentioned that our different channels for the communication. Accordingly, we can speak about different types of communication according to the main channel that is being used. When we think of human communication, the first type of communication we think of is the verbal communication. The verbal communication involves the user's spoken language and it's done face to face by phone, radio, or by conference call. The verbal communication is mainly rational as it involves a conscious effort to encode and decode the intended meanings into words and sentences. However, our emotional state attitude, and beliefs can consciously effect the verbal communication as we've seen in the previous example. A non-verbal communication is the observable behavior and cues during the communication that are not expressed verbally. They include our gestures, face expressions, body posture, our dress, and even our sense, or smell. Non-verbal communication is operating on an unconscious level. As interpretation of the non-verbal queues is done by the limbic system, which is our mind operating system if you remember from the first module of this course. Finally, written communication is the communication done by email, messaging, or exchanging documents. It is usually more precise than a verbal communication, but it also reflects our communication style and our words choice, punctuation, spelling mistakes, and so on. We will see the non-verbal communication in some detail as it's usually the part of the communication that we as technical people are not familiar with. Non-verbal communication is not a language in itself. It should be seen as a compliment and extension, to the verbal communication. We use non-verbal communication to reinforce our verbal message and to add more meaning to it. Remember that non-verbal communication is mostly an unconscious activity. It happens frequently that our non-verbal message contradicts our verbal message as we can control our words more easily than our body and gestures. We should be aware of the non-verbal cues when communicating, so that we can incorporate that feedback and adjust that message. It's also worth knowing that non-verbal communication is also dependent on the culture. For instance, nodding your head up and down is usually meant to express approval, but in Greece, nodding your head up is used to express disagreement. The body posture is one of the first non-verbal expressions that we get when speaking to someone. It reflects the degree of confidence or receptivity to the other person. If we speak to someone who has a closed posture such as crossing their legs, folding their arms, it might mean that they feel uncomfortable or they are in defensive stance toward us. Usually, as the level of confidence increases, the body posture open gradually. The body posture is modifiable in the sense that we can adapt to different posture and will. There is a technique called mirroring where we mirror the body posture of the other person and their unconscious mind reads this as rapport, interest, or approval. Controlling body posture is like adopting other personality traits. It takes energy and require conscious effort. However, as or bodies and minds are connected, when we adapt to posture, we also experience the small change in the thought process. For instance, if we adopt a more open posture to signal receptivity to the other person, our mind is also going to be more open to the messages coming from the other side. As I've said repeatedly during this course, our mind dislikes conflicting inputs and adjusts by harmonizing our posture and our thoughts. Eye contact is the non-verbal way of indicating attention and interest. Establishing no eye contact with someone usually means ignoring them, and keeping the eye contact for a long time indicates high level of intimacy with the other person. When listening, eye contact indicates that we are attentive to the speaker. When speaking, we usually do shorter eye contacts and establish longer eye contact to indicate that we are finished and it's the other person's turn to speak. Gestures are the movements made with our hands, arms, or body including our face gestures. The most common gestures are the one that indicated common concept, they're called emblematic gestures. An example of an emblematic gesture is a hand wave to say hello/ goodbye or the thumb up to indicate okay. The emblematic gestures are also culture dependent. A second type of gestures are the illustrators. These gestures reinforce the spoken concept such as moving our hand in circles when we say over and over and again. The effect gestures, are the facial gestures that indicate our emotions. They're usually genuine and very difficult to fake. The effect gestures can be positive or negative when referring to the tightness or relaxation of the muscles that form the gesture. Usually negative gestures involved furrowing or squinting and positive gestures involved widening and opening. There are also gestures that indicate physical or physiological need and are called adaptors. These gestures involve scratching our hands, yawning, tapping, fidgeting with a pencil, drumming the fingers, and so on. They might indicate nervousness or boredom, but they might also indicate a real itch. We should focus on the repetition more than on a single occurrence of the adaptive gestures. Another type of non-verbal communication is the closeness or the distance between the speakers and it also indicates the level of intimacy. The higher the distance, less familiar we are routine the other person. There is an intimate distance, which is usually reserved for our family. The personal distance, which we use for friends and coworkers, the social distance, which is used for doing business or social conversations, and the public distance, which is used for addressing a large group of people. Sometimes the distances reduced unwillingly. As for example when traveling in public transportation or attending a concert. That's why we feel uncomfortable in those situations. As our non-verbal reading or a situation indicates excessive familiarity to the rest of the people, but fortunately, our mind offers an explanation that the distance is due to other factors. This is a common pattern as we'll learn more about our unconscious behavior. We can be aware of the unconscious response and then adjust it using our conscious mind. This is in effect to personal growth mattered in action. We detect our involuntary patterns and change them, first consciously, and slowly it will be done unconsciously, and then the involuntary pattern would be replaced by deliberately chosen pattern that is more useful to us.
Caveats

After seeing the characteristics and features of interpersonal communication I have to highlight some usual misunderstandings we do in communication. The first one is that we are used to having symmetry between the message sent and the message received. In computer systems the meaning of the message is the same on both sides of the conversation. However, in human conversations, the meaning of the message is almost always different as perceived by the sender and receiver. Why is that? Well, you remember the beliefs. We mostly control what we say except when being drunk, if I may so. What we say is composed of two parts. What we express, or the exact words, and what do we mean by that or the meaning. As we have seen, our beliefs can influence the expression of the message content, but we can also adjust for it as we have seen in the example conversation with Jane and the manager. The same message is conveyed to the listener. The expression is the same, but the meaning is usually different. Their beliefs are different and their translation of our words or the expression into their concepts and ideas is prone to subjective bias. The consequence of this is the fact that what we saw is not what the other people hear or in other words, we hear what we want to hear. We can't control whether other people understand of our message, so we must ensure that a message is clearly understood and not misunderstood. How do we do that? Well, we might ask the other person to rephrase their message and check if their understanding is the intended one or as a listener, we might use active listening. Active listening consists of rephrasing the received message and bouncing to the other person to check for inconsistencies. Let's see an example. Jane is concerned by the consequences of installing a new database system in the development environment. She goes to the system administrator and asks him about his opinion. Jane says, "How should we install this database system to our server?" The system administrator understands that she doesn't know the installation steps and points her to the installation manual. "I'll send you the installation instructions right now." Now Jane is puzzled, she has meant one thing and she got totally different answer. She angrily responds, "No, I don't want the installation instructions! I know how to find them!" The conversation goes awry because of a misunderstanding. Now, let's see active listening in action. Jane says "How should we install this database system to our server?" The system admin responds, "What exactly is your concern? Do you want to know the installation steps for a database system?" Jane answers, "No, I am concerned about the impact it might have on our existing environment." By simply rephrasing the meaning that the system administrator got from Jane's question, a possibility for a misunderstanding was avoided. The conversation is now flowing about real concern. Another thing to look in for conversation are the defense triggers. When we hear negative news about us or our work, we are automatically placed in the defense mode. In that mode, we are not listening, instead we are building our counter arguments. The explanation is straightforward. Our unconscious mind is built to react quickly to any threat in the outside world. Now, the threat is mainly symbolic because it's criticism, but the reaction is still the same. When hearing criticism about us, our mind triggers the defensive mode and the communication is almost impossible. Knowing this, there are two solutions to the defensive triggers. One is to avoid that triggers by separating the fact from the person when you have to deliver negative news. So instead of saying, you are stupid when someone makes a mistake, the correct thing to do is to say, what you did was stupid. It doesn't trigger the defense mode as a former sentence does, as you are not addressing the person, but the fact that was stupid. The other solution is to be aware of the same fact and the receiving side. When faced with criticism, separate the fact from your person. You may have done something wrong, but it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you. This is something that happens among programmers when code reviews are being done. Any criticism of one's own code is felt as a personal criticism to the programmer. You, are not your code. Remember that.
Communication in the Workplace

Knowing about a communication process and how it's influenced by many factors out of our control is a very useful tool to enhance your communication skills in the workplace. First, you should be aware that anything you say will be interpreted by others and there are no guarantees that these interpretations will match your original meaning. It is your duty to clarify, repeat, rephrase, and illicit questions to make sure that what you have meant to be understood is what actually gets understood. As you have seen, active listening and rephrasing helps us in this matter. Conversely, when on the listening side, use active listening and rephrasing to make sure that your understanding is the one that the speaker really meant. It may sound awkward at first, but eventually, you will have less and less misunderstandings. One other things to have present at the workplace is to be aware of your non-verbal language and how it reinforces or denies our spoken message. Being aware of our non-verbal cues is one-step forward in being in control of our unconscious reactions and harmonizing our intentions with our behavior. Look for the same cues in others when they are listening. They will give you feedback on how effective your communication is, it's a skill learned over time as any other skill, so don't be afraid of feeling strange at first as you still don't control it completely. Do you remember your first program or your first network configuration? Your technical skills were just beginning to manifest themselves. It's the same thing with non-verbal communication. If you want a detail discussion about effective communication for technical people in manager roles, there's an excellent course at Pluralsight made by Dane Appleman called, Introduction to Leadership and Management for Developers. I highly recommend that we follow through. There is one simple workspace dynamics called Johari Window, which can make us aware of what we communicate to others. The name Johari comes from the names of the inventors Joseph and Harrington. It consists of selecting six or seven traits that we feel identify with from the fixed list of attributes. The same thing is then done by our colleagues without us seeing it. They also pick the attributes that define us. After we have done the selection of the attributes, the results are compared and placed to grid. The Johari Window grid is divided in four quadrants across two dimensions whether it's known to us and whether it's known to others. The attributes that both we and our peers have identified are placed in the known to self, known to others quadrant. The attributes that only we have identified are placed in the known to self, hidden to others. The attributes that only our peers have identified are placed in the hidden from self, known to others. The meaning of the quadrants is as follows. The first one know to us and the others is our public image that we are aware of and the others perceive from us, sometimes it's called Open or Arena. So to say, it's our public interface to the world. The large this area is, the more effective our communication will be. The second quadrant, known to us, but not to anyone else, is our Hidden or Façade area. We might choose to reveal more of ourselves to others as we gain confidence with them, thus reducing the size of our hidden quadrant and incrementing the size of our open quadrant. The third quadrant is our Blind spot. It's the part of our personality that others see, but we are not aware of. Being aware of our Blind spot is an excellent personal growth skill. The fourth quadrant is the unknown. Here are our unknown skills and traits and so we become more aware of our strengths and weaknesses, we might discover that we have more skills than we first were aware of. When we begin to work in a new place, our open quadrant is relatively small. With time and interactions, our open quadrant grows as we move more information from Hidden and Blind spot quadrants into open. As a group exercise, I find Johari Window a very useful tool to improve understanding among your colleagues, which in turn fosters effective communication.
Summary

In this module, we have seen how human communication works. Unlike computer communication, human messages are influenced by subjective factors which include our beliefs and the beliefs of the listening party. We've also seen how our verbal communication us also accompanied by the non-verbal communication and how important it is for both communications to be in sync. At the end, we have also see how effective communication involves active listening and rephrasing and you have also learned the powerful self-awareness technique called Johari Window. In the next module, we'll further explore the group dynamics that it will occur inside teams, companies, and departments. See you there.
Group Dynamics
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will explain the dynamics of communication, power, and influence in groups. As groups are everywhere around us, knowing groups dynamics adds a valuable tool to your human behavior understand toolkit. Groups are the basic units of social organization. They can be small as a development team in a small project or they can be huge as the crowds in a football match. In essence, group is formed anytime when two or more individuals interact with one another. What is so fascinating about groups is that the behavior of the group can be predicted fully by understanding the individuals in the group. It almost seems that group have behavior of its own. Puzzling, right? Well, this question has puzzled scientists in the last couple of centuries. The father of modern group psychology is a German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin. In the 40s, he developed an explanation for the behavior of the individuals inside a group as a function of their own personality which you have seen in the previous modules, and the group environment itself. He even started the organizations and did the pioneering work about theory of leadership and management styles. Group dynamics, a term owned to Kurt Lewin, is a fascinating world of behaviors and psychological processes that happen in social groups. In the last decades, this field has been studied to provide insights for leaders, managers, sociologists, psychologist, and many other professional. Now as we are comfortable with basic notion of human behavior, let's go to know more about group dynamics and what happens there.
Group Psychology

Let's begin with defining a couple of words that we'll be using in this module. We have seen that a group is simply two or more people interacting together. There are several types of groups, but we'll focus on the groups where the group members share a common goal and identify themselves with a group. There are many examples of such groups, a peer group, sports squad, hobby club, a household team, and so on. Groups can be divided into subgroups with their own identity and norms, but still encompassed within the common group. For instance, the developer community is a huge group. .NET developers are a huge subgroup of the whole developer community. SharePoint developers are a subgroup of a subgroup, and finally, the user group of SharePoint developers in Washington DC is a subgroup of its own. Each group has it peculiarities, but there's a common sense of pertaining to bigger group so that a Washington DC SharePoint developers can feel simultaneously being a part of a bigger SharePoint developer family, or a .NET developer world, or even the all encompassing developer community. An individual can identify himself as a member of a particular group. We then say that it's his or her in-group. In the same fashion, an out-group is the group that he or she doesn't identify with. For example, I could feel that my coworkers in a team are a part of my in-group and the sales people, just a few desks away are clearly part of an out-group, but if we speak about the group encompassing the whole company, then they are all a part of my in-group. This is an almost quantic property of groups where people are at the same time are and aren't in the same group as you. Groups are formed by forming a physiological bond between individuals. Usually it is due to perceiving that individuals share a common category. For instance, the UI people, the system admins, the sales people and so on. In some cases, we do not only identify with some individuals to form a group, but we also do not identify with others, which is a fact known as negative identity. The others will be part of our out-group. Groups can have roles, values, norms, communication styles, and status differences. They act as a common framework for behavior inside groups. A group role is a specialized function of individual group member such as leader, the organizer, and so on. The roles might be explicit as is in project team or self emerging. If a role matches an individual personality type of trait, the role is comfortable and effortless. While a role that clashes with it is hard to play. This is a practical example of the benefit of self-awareness. We can check if our roles are aligned with our psychological disposition. A group has a set of shared values. The values act as rallying points for its members. For instance, open source community is a clear example of shared values about software developmental freedoms. However, the shared values are not always so beneficial, as having shared beliefs and stereotypes can lead to in-group bias, which means that one will unconsciously favor members of the group over non-members of the group. The group also has in internal set of norms. The norms regulated the acceptable behavior inside a group. Usually, the norms are informal and are not written down. Group norms can be very powerful. For example, a team that expects a certain called quality level can have more success with that informal norm than a formal management quality improvement initiative. Group members also can communicate in a centralize or decentralize way. Decentralize way is when all the communication is transmitted from one person to all the others. It's clear and consistent, but can easily restrict the free flow of information. The decentralized communication is a free flowing, but it can easily become inefficient and messy. A common theme in human psychology is this, there are no good and bad choices, each group fits the certain communication style. Finally, the members of a group are usually not all peers. In many groups there are status differences such as age, seniority level, experience, and so on. In many companies, the status differences also translate into salary grades, and even norm flexibility. A group member is subject to two simultaneous forces inside a group. On one hand, each individual attempts to express its own uniqueness according to the psychological preferences. On the other hand, the same individual strives to fit in the group because groups provide a sense of security and belonging to something beyond one self. This tension between two passing forces can sometimes be expressed as a collective self. This meaning that an individual uniqueness transforms to a group uniqueness while still conforming to the norms and uniformity inside the group. These effect of norms inside a group can influence ones behavior even when the individual leaves the group, for a considerable amount of time after that. For example, retired soldiers keep their units norms and values in effect for sometime after their retirement.
Group Decision-Making

The groups strongly influence their individual decision making. This is a fact that is not widely known, but has been proved right many times the hard way when over and over again highly intelligent people fail to make optimal decision while under the influence of group thinking, but let's start with the good news. Not all group influence is negative. There is a tendency for people to perform better when in presence of others, which is known by the name of social facilitation. It implies that a performance of an individual does not rely only on his or her own skills, but also on being aware of being watched. This fact has interesting consequences such as the studying is often better done in groups than alone. The studies groups have shown that status in a group aren't performed solo students, but only when the group has enough discipline to avoid distractions. However, the social facilitation is not universal. Only the world practiced or the routine task will receive a boost. While unfamiliar or complex tasks will suffer extra performance degradation. For example, a runner in a city marathon will run faster when running with a group as he or she would do if running it alone, but on the other hand, a newbie programmer will perform worse if watched by other colleagues on his first task. Now, let's see the dark side of the group influence. The first dark influence is called conformity or peer pressure. It is the tendency to behave aligned with the group norms instead of one owns preference. It is generally thought that the cognitive dissonance or the fact that our mind tries to reconcile two opposing desires is in the root of conformity. Unconsciously, we avoid being outcast by the group if we stick with our behavior, even if it's clearly the correct one. The fear of rejection is usually stronger than the conviction of right choice. By default, our mind prefers conforming over dissenting, but the price of conforming is repressing the dissenting opinion to the unconscious mind. However, we can make this consciously, by conforming to the group decision publicly while still manifesting your dissent and keeping your core belief intact. In my opinion, this is a better way of reducing the cognitive dissonance as it avoids using repression as a defense mechanism we have seen before. The second dark influence of a group is called polarization. It reflects the fact that the initial idea, inside a group, attract supporting voices easily, as it's easier to support than to come up with alternatives. In other words, it takes us less effort to rally around an existing opinion. However, this has two unpleasant consequences. The first one is that a first opinion receive this proportionate amount of spotlight and support and this can be exploited by shooting first. The second one is that this behavior tends to filter out potentially valuable opinions even before their merits are evaluated. Therefore extra care should be taken to avoid supporting the opinions by mere polarization of facts into world squashing ideas before even evaluating them, just because there is another idea in gaining traction. The stronger influence of polarization is called Groupthink. It occurs in highly close-knit groups. Where the group cohesion is the most important value. Groupthink acts as a loud speaker of the most influential members of a the group and the ______ removes dissenting opinions. Extreme Groupthink happens in total-terrain societies, sex, and calls. Groupthink also enhances the self perceived image of the group and adds an aurora of in infallibility and invincibility to the group. Groupthink happens when a group is highly cohesive and whether there are structural factors that help Groupthink. This may include lack of checks and balances, or the insulation of the group from the outside world, or even being under excessively stressful situations. The most important risk factor for the groupthink is the agree of group uniformity and cohesion. The more close-knit the group is, the greater the danger that independent and critical thinking will be replaced by the groupthink. Groupthink can have positive effect too. Sharing a positive mindset can increase motivation and act as a source of emotional solidarity. For example, the agile manifesto, helped create groupthink in agile organizations that encourages excessive optimism and discounts early warnings and criticism of the solution. In this case, it helps get starting with the agile methodologies where the small iterations minimize the risk of waterfall style projects. In this case, groupthink allows for shared illusion that can help breech the initial obstacles in a _____ option, but the most groupthink examples are negative indeed. One clear example of negative corporate groupthink influence is the demise of the leading Swiss airline, Swissair. For many years, the company has been considered a sure asset with no risks. That warranted the name of flying bank. The airline profits exceeded the forecasts year after year and these successes blinded the management board to any critical thinking about strategy. Instead, groupthink clouds the feeling of invulnerability and any symptoms of trouble were dismissed as pessimistic. Over time, the poor decisions taken as the result of the Groupthink that was focusing only on self-fulfilled prophecies and ignored external input led to the financial collapse of the Swissair in 2001. To avoid groupthink, the group has to ensure that objective and fair criticism of the ideas can take place. The leadership should avoid expressing opinions before ideas are evaluated to ensure independence of decision making process within the group. Furthermore, the group should seek external opinion to contrast with their own. All this should avoid sliding down the path of groupthink. Kennedy administration learned from the mistakes of groupthink such as stereotyping the opponent and uncritically accepting CIA plants that lead to the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs 1961 Invasion. When the next serious crisis struck in 1962 with the Cuban Missiles Crisis, there were measures to ensure multiple independent options of action. At the end, it helped prevent negative groupthink errors and diffused the crisis peacefully.
Leadership

Even in the most democratic and self organized groups, there are members of the group that influence group behavior more than other members, they are called leaders and their ability of enlisting the aid and support of other people in accomplishing common tasks and goals is called leadership. There are many theories of leadership that try to explain how and why leaders emerge. Some theories say that leaders are born, which means that our personality traits are indicative of leadership. Other theories say that leadership are made by the situation, other theories say that leaders are made by the situation and that a single leader can fit different leadership situations with the same results. I'm not going to spend time explaining leadership as there an excellent course by Dan Appleman called Introduction to Leadership and Management for Developers, which I gladly recommend for in-depth learning of leadership and management. There are many leadership styles, which are the ways of how leaders guide, plan, and motivate people. I'll briefly introduce each one of the common leadership styles together with the strengths and weaknesses. The first leadership style is the Authoritarian style. In the Authoritarian style, leaders keep strict and close control of their followers. Usually, there is high emphasis on following policies and procedures. The leader is often physically and social separated from the followers and manages by direct supervision. The communication is top down and little feedback, if any, is gained from the group. The benefits of the Authoritarian leadership are simplicity and the excellent short-term results it suffers in combination with clear cut practices. The disadvantages of the Authoritarian leadership are many, burn out of the group, use of threats and punishments as an enforcing tool, high turnover, absenteeism, mistrust generation among the group members, and other lack of input by the majority of the group. The Authoritarian leadership is also called a classic leadership and it is still used in military and security forces where there's a clear command hierarchy to be followed. It is also used in emergency situations when there is little time to make decisions. Bureaucratic leadership is where the leader manages by the book and the procedures are per-bound to the work of the group. In this style, the leader is a mere enforcer of the policy that is set in place and follows the rules with occasional consulting with leaders higher up the hierarchy. The benefits of Bureaucratic leadership are clarity and low chance of misunderstanding. While the lacks of the leadership style included total disregard for unforeseen situations, increasing group disinterest in the work, and causing disengagement from the common goals. This style is best fit for dangerous or delicate work that has clear cut procedure put in place to ensure safety and compliance, in critical fields such as farmer industry, mining, aviation, and police. A democratic or a participative leadership happens when the leader makes the group part of the decision making process. A democratic leader informs the leader of everything that effects their tasks and shares the load of decision making and problem solving among the group members. The input from all the members is taken into consideration. The benefits of democratic leadership are increased motivation and a sense of accomplishment and personal growth inside a group. This style also increases trust inside a group. However, democratic leadership is also slow, it requires more effort than any other leadership style, and it can cause different or even contradictory decisions to be taken during the course of time. The best fit for this type of leadership is when the group is highly skilled and each member is mature enough to contribute to the achievement of the common goals by taking a part in the decision making process. At the end of the spectrum, we find that Laissez-faire or hands off leadership. In this style, the leader is merely a first among equals and all leadership and management is done by the group in a democratic fashion. The benefits of this leadership style are similar to the democratic leadership benefits such as dramatically increasing the engagement, trust, and sense of accomplishments inside of a group. However, this style can only be used in highly skilled and highly trustworthy group as there is little room for correction that can be done by the leader. In the democratic leadership, the group proposes and the leader decides, but in the Laissez-faire leadership, the group makes the decision as a whole. As you can see, in order to achieve more quality in the leadership, we have to place more trust in the group and the group has to be mature enough to take more and more responsibility from the leader to the whole group. In markup opinion this is correlated to the level of self-awareness and responsibility of individuals themselves. As you can't make a self-relying group with unreliable members. The personal growth from a passive person, to whom things happen into a self-aware person that chooses what things should happen to and the leadership evolution from Authoritarian to hands off, go hand in hand or if you let me express this idea in concepts, it's the match between the collective self-awareness of the group and the sheriff responsibility of the group. For a leadership to be effective both sides have to match. Using the Authoritarian approach in a highly skilled workforce, is a recipe for disaster, as is using the Laissez-faire approach with a group of novel programmers.
Group Dynamics in the Workplace

The workplace is commonly where most group dynamics take place. In the working world, all of us need to work with others at one time or another and often groups, themes, and committies are formed to come to a common goal, solution, or development of a product. By knowing good processes happen inside groups and how they work, you can better adapt to the groups you are a part of or you can influence steps to more positive behavior inside the group. A group comes together to focus on finding common solutions or building a final project. This can be very effective to the project or solution because individuals in different roles in the workplace, different backgrounds, and different experiences, have a variety of points of view and they are able to contribute. This group diversity leads the final product that contains more information on more topics that would not have been included without a variety of thoughts and ideas. Group projects sometimes make members feel that others are not contributing their fair share of that the project is suffering due to ineffective time management of other members. Some members of a group can be highly independent and prefer to work alone rather than in group. They can feel that their best work comes from completing projects individually. Many group issues can be alleviated with effective communication as you have seen in the previous module. Groups should decide on the consistent form of communication that all group members utilize such as email, phone, instant messaging, or any other tool that is shared among the group members. In addition to the communication, having an effective leadership is also very important for the group. Deciding on a group leader is an effective tool and avoiding negative group dynamics that may arise. Leaders main goals are to keep positive group dynamics, make sure that everyone in the group is heard, and keeping the group set to a time schedule. In essence, group projects may see issues arise when the groups are made of strong personalities and some individuals do not feel comfortable in a group setting, but a strong structure of such communication, time guidelines, a electing an effective group leader, a group can accomplish a goal and be very productive. We have seen how social facilitation works or how we perform better when watched. The opposite of that is called social loafing and is frequently seen at workplaces. Social loafing is the phenomenon of people deliberating exerting less effort when working inside a group. It's observed over and over again from the simple fact of pulling a rope in a group where every member exerts less pull than he or she would exert if pulling alone. To the underlying communities filled with lurkers, the group members that do not participate but watch. The loafers are also sometimes referred as free riders. Why social loafing occurs? It's generally thought that the risk factors for social loafing to happen. The first one is the sense of being lost in the crowd where each individual feels less accountable to the group because the responsibility has been diluted across all the group members. Also, low motivation inside a group makes social loafing happen even more and finally, the dispensability of effort increases the chance of social loafing. This means that if our efforts are less likely to be noticed, then we are less compelled to exert the efforts. This happens in very large groups. For example, voters turnout is generally low in elections because the individual contribution is so small that the voters do not feel that it's worth the time and effort. By knowing all this we can decrease the chance for social loafing by splitting the large groups in smaller groups where the individual effort is noticeable. It also helps to increase involvement by making the tasks challenging but feasible and the key here is that the more motivated the group members are, the less social loafing will occur.
Summary

In this module, we have seen how people behave differently when placed inside a group. We have learned the group defining characteristics such as the norms, values, roles, and communication. We have also shed light into the pearls of groupthink and the group conformity and how to avoid them. We have defined the importance of leadership and how it may manifest inside a group. At the end, we have reviewed how groups operate in the workplace. We are now ready to learn something more about human emotions in the next module.
Emotional Intelligence
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will explain the emotions and how to understand and manage them. The emotions are one of the things that are almost uniquely human and their also the thing most separate from rational logic mind that we usually use in fields of technology. First of all, we should define what emotions are. Emotion comes from the Latin word esmovio, which means to move out or to excite. Defining emotions hasn't been an easy task throughout the centuries, but now the scientific community agrees that emotions are complex, subjective, psychic, phenomena that has psychological, cognitive, and behavior components. Let's break this definition into parts. First, emotions are subjective, which means that they only can be felt by the person experiencing them. As with other psychological phenomena, we can only observe the effects of emotion in the person's body and behavior. Emotions are also involuntary, which means we cannot fake them completely. Emotions are complex, which means there are many factors that can influence a person to trigger the emotion and it's response. These factors are mainly subjective to the person and that's why different people experience emotions differently. Emotions have physiological components, which means that our body changes as the result of an emotion. Emotions trigger release of different hormones in the bloodstream. They race or lower the heartbeat rate and the blood pressure. They can also influence our muscles, skin, and other organs. That's why people sweat in anxiety, tremble in fear, and get euphoric with happiness. It's the emotion translated into body response. Emotions also affect our mind and we say that it's the cognitive component of the emotion. Our mind analyzes the situation that has triggered the emotion and sets expectation according to the beliefs and previous memories of both emotion and the situation. The same cognitive process can also trigger additional or secondary emotions as a result. This cognitive component of emotion is unique to each person as it's strongly influenced by the beliefs, personality, and previous experiences. The behavioral component of the emotion is the facial expression and the body language that we express when feeling the emotion. The facial expressions and body language are mostly unconscious, as we have seen in previous module that spoke about communication. The behavior component of the emotion is seen and interpreted by the others. However, it's also dependent on culture and personality of the individual. Let's see an example. Suppose that Jane is working on a project. She receives an email from her project manager congratulating her on her latest delivery. She experiences the emotion of happiness. Her body pumps two hormones serotonin and dopamine into the brain bloodstream. At the same time, the Cortisol hormone output is reduces which leads to body relaxing. This is the physiological response to happiness she experiences. She feels confident that she can tackle the next delivery and she feels proud of herself. She also thinks that this email should be saved for her performance appraisal that is due in three months. All these thoughts and feelings are the cognitive responses to Jane's happiness. At the same time, she smiles and opens her body posture while reclining a little bit on her chair. This is the behavioral component of her emotion. As you can see, even a basic emotion such as happiness is translated into a complex interaction of body, mind, and behavior responses. All of them add to the richness of the emotions experience.
Types of Emotions

There are two main theories on how we should classify the emotions. One theory sustains that our emotions our discrete and different from one another. Another theory says that emotions are constructed from their components and are grouped together. It resembles the same discussion we had regarding personality types or traits. I think that most emotions are discrete enough, while at the same time there are some emotions that can be classified differently in different cultures. For example, in some African languages, shame and fear are expressed by the same word reflecting that they experience both as part of the same emotion. Also, there are some emotions that are local to certain culture such as the motion of saudade or melancholic longing for something absent, in Portuguese speaking countries. In any case, there are some primary or basic emotions that are universal enough. Most psychologist agree on six basic emotions; anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Let's see them one by one. Anger is the emotion we experience when wronged, denied, or offended. It is generally thought that anger is one of the basic survival emotions together with the fear. Our body heart rate increase, our limbs get more blood, and we experience a surge of adrenaline that helps the body get ready for the anger reaction. Our face changes too, our brows lower when our jaw is clenched, our lips are narrowed. On the cognitive level, anger makes us feel optimistic because it makes the danger we face look small. At the same time, our analytical capabilities are diminished and the brain uses shortcuts such as stereotypes to assess the situation. On the other hand, it gives us energy and focus by ignoring everything but the perceived threat. Anger usually leads to retaliation or hostile action or withdrawal or hostile inaction. These two are the primary anger ones. However, our cognitive abilities can help channel the anger into understanding and insight, which is more constructive than the two hostile responses. Disgust is the emotion we experience when faced with something revolting. Probably the disgust emotion has evolved to prevent us from eating food that may harm us. In a way disgust is a warning system that something is wrong. Our mind has gradually applied the emotion of disgust to non-physical situations such as sexuality or moral values. When feeling disgust, our body heart rate decreases. We wrinkle our nose, while our upper lip is pulled up and our brows are slightly lowered. Disgust is also one of the emotions that's clearly felt more by woman than by men. On the cognitive level, it helps us avoid or exclude potentially undesirable things, behaviors, or people. However, it can lead to dehumanization as disgust can form beliefs that the disgust triggers are not human enough. As it happened in the age of conquest when primitive civilizations whose behavior or morality was disgusting to the norms of the Europeans, were treated as savages and not as fellow human beings. Fear is the emotion of being threatened or in danger. It has evolved to prevent us from being harmed by triggering a fight or flight response, which means that it makes us confront a threat or avoid a threat by fleeing. Fear should not be confused with anger, although they are similar. Fear involves a threat, while anger involves something unjust. Many times fear can trigger anger as a reaction to an unjust threat. Also, fear is different from anxiety which is an overreaction to undetermined threat in the future. When afraid, our blood rate and pressure are higher. Blood from our limbs is withdrawn from the trunk and the skin exhibits goose bumps or hairs standing up. This is a biological response to a threat that makes us seem bigger or scarier to threat, like the puffer fishes that increase in size when facing a threat. Our face is also changed. Our brows lift up, eyes are open, and the mouth is slightly open. The cognitive processes involving fear responses usually magnified the negative input to our senses and fill our mind with negative thoughts. Fear makes us suspect everything and reevaluate assumptions. There are several universal fears such as fear of animals and fear of heights which have evolved from our mechanism of self-preservation, but fear can be trigger by any real or perceived threat and that's why we have fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of spirits, fear our public speaking, fear of spiders, fear of flying, and so on. Fears can be rational such as the fear of dangerous situations and irrational when it's totally inappropriate. Irrational fears are called phobias. Fear can be managed by the cognitive processes that reduce the perceived threat. For example, children have fear of darkness, but gradually, as they grow and learn, they do not react to darkness with fear anymore. Happiness is the emotion of the well-being. It may range from feeling content to be overcome with joy. It is the most positive emotion and in many traditions, happiness is the main goal in life. In the Constitution of the Untied States of America, the pursuit of happiness is defined as one of natural rights together with life and liberty. When we feel happy, our body releases a combination of hormones such as endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. It also reduces the levels of stress hormone Cortisol. Our face changes to show smile by raising the cheeks nearer to the eyes. Also the crow's feet wrinkles around our eyes are visible in a happy face. A fake smile such as the smile displayed to appear friendly in a social situation, lacks the eye wrinkles and the raising of the cheeks. Our cognitive response is to be optimistic and to minimize the dangers, and we also tend to think more about the other people and how we can make them feel good. Happiness also makes us think creatively and our thoughts tend to focus on the big picture instead of details. Sadness is the emotion of loss, despair, and helplessness. When we are sad, our body metabolism is slowed down. We also make cry tears. Surprisingly, there is no commonly accepted theory of why we cry and the proposal range from toxic substance removal to evolution inheritance as the reaction to cave, fire, smoke. The facial expression of sadness has slanted brows and a frown indicating defeat. Eyes often lose focus too. Lips are slightly curved downwards. On the cognitive level, sadness feels our mind with negative thoughts and often leads to rumination or focus thoughts on the cares of sadness. It also increase impatience and impairs our financial judgment, as it tends to focus on instant gratification. On the good side, sad emotion enhances deductive reasoning as shown by sports teams who learn more after a defeat. As opposed to happiness, sadness is the emotion that is social undesirable. Therefore, many times we don't let the coping process finish as we are enticed by others to smile and to show happy face. However, it is not beneficial in the long term. Staying with the sadness or coping is the natural healing process for the mind and it should be respected. On the other hand, revolving too much in the emotion of sadness and the excessive rumination can lead to depression. Surprise is the emotion of experience at an unexpected event. It's duration is very short and depending on the origin of the surprise and it's nature it can lead to secondary emotions of fear, joy, or confusion. On the physiological level, our muscles are tensed, our shoulders raise, and our arms stretch forward and the head moves backward. The common pattern called startled reflex. This movement tries to protect the head and the neck from the sudden threat. Surprise is shown by facial expression of raised eyebrows, wide open eyes, and dropping jaw with partially open mouth. On the cognitive level, surprise is short lived and our mind quickly evaluates the origin of the surprise to check if it's a threat or not. Surprise also boots our information gather process. There influenced by our previous experiences. For example, watching a scary movie will startle us first, when something happens out of the blue, but after seeing many such movies, we are no longer surprised by sudden appearances as we are more familiar with them. Of course these six emotions are not the only ones. We have many more, but these six are the most natural ones. There are many emotions that involve a combination of other emotions as for example the contempt, which is a combination of anger and disgust or the awe which is the combination of fear and surprise. There are also primary and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are the ones we experience first as the in- moment response to the stimulus. The secondary of emotions are the results of the primary emotions cognitive process. Usually the primary emotion is not fully processed because it clashes with our beliefs and norms and then the contradiction between the feeling of the emotions and the beliefs about emotion can cause a secondary emotions which are usually negative. For example, there's a widespread belief that men do not cry or feel sad. When faced with a loss, a man's primary emotion is to experience sadness, but as the inner belief says that feeling sad is not good, the emotion of sadness is repressed and instead a emotion of shame or guilt is trigged as the result of the cognitive dissonance. More often than not, the secondary emotion is carried over for some time. Negative secondary emotions can mask the primary emotion, clear response, and make it harder to find out why we feel in a certain manner. Don't worry, in no time we will see how to avoid the trap of secondary emotions.
Role of Emotions

So now that you have seen what emotions are and you've familiarized yourself with the basic emotions, you might ask yourself, what emotions are there for? What is the role of emotions in our life and behavior? First of all, emotions are primary motivation mechanism. When we feel a particular emotion we are compelled or motivated to perform a certain action. For example, before an important exam, we can feel anxious. This anxiety drives us to study harder in order to minimize the anxiety by taking a positive action towards the better graded exam. We also tend to do activities that feel us with positive emotions such as happiness or joy, where at the same time we tend to avoid activities that feel us with negative emotions such as fear or sadness. Emotions are also an important component of the decision making process. On one hand, we can anticipate future emotions that a decision may trigger. For example, when we choose a course to book, we might anticipate regret if we don't choose a specific course. In this case, the anticipated regret has served as an indicator of respected value for the decision. Immediate emotions during decision making can also alter the process as we have seen in basic emotions, but for example, fear makes us decide actions that minimize uncertainty, while decisions take in under anger often lack analysis. Emotions also play the role in survival. This role of emotions has been inherited from our humaniod ancestors, where emotional input was very important to evaluate situations because our cortex was still small enough to make the decision making process rational enough. As we have seen, fear makes us fight or flight and disgust the void ingestion of spoiled food. Also, anger makes us more likely to confront the threat. Emotions are also connected to the communication process. We transmit our emotional state primarily by body language and facial expressions. As we become more aware of our emotions, we can also clearly state them in the conversation to minimize the misunderstanding. When we tell someone that we are sad, happy, or angry we give important clues to them in order to understand us better. In the same way as our own emotions communicate to others, we also interpret the emotions displayed by other people to give us valuable social information. It's very important to be able to interpret and react to the emotions of others. It allows us to respond in the appropriate fashion and make deeper and more meaningful relationships with our social network, which means our friends, colleagues, and family. It also allows us to effectively communicate the emotional situations such as dealing with an angry customer for example. In this way, understanding the emotional display of other people, gives us clues on how to respond in a particular situation. As you have learned, our emotions serve a wide variety of purposes. Emotions can be persistent, powerful, complex, and even life changing. They can motivate us to act in particular ways and give us clues and insights we need to interact meaningfully in our social environment.
Emotion Perception and Management

In the last 30 years, emotion perception and management has been recognized as one of the important tools in social interactions and self-awareness. The term Emotional Intelligence or EI has been coined to express the ability to identify, asses, and control emotions of oneself or others. Emotional Intelligence has been modeled by Peter Salovey and John Meyer in 1989 as four different factors. Emotion perception or the ability to perceive emotions in oneself and in others. Emotion reasoning or the ability to use emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity where the emotions help us prioritize our attention. Emotion understanding or the ability to find the meanings behind the expressed emotion and emotion management or the ability to regulate and respond to emotions. The four factors or abilities are arranged from more basic to more complex and the complex ability is built on the simpler ones. Daniel Goleman has popularized the emotions intelligence to wider audiences in the 90s. His model of emotional intelligence is based on five major competence and skills. Self-awareness or the ability to know your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values, and goals and how they impact others. Self-regulation or the ability to control or redirect disruptive emotions and impulses while adapting to the environment. Social skill or the ability to influence or move other people in the desired direction. Empathy or the ability consider other people's feelings when taking decisions and finally, the motivation or the ability to be driven to achieve something for the sake of the achievement. Let's illustrate the emotionally intelligence application with an example. Suppose that Joe has been working on a project that is experiencing delays. He and his team have put extra hours into the project only to receive feedback from the customer that blames them for the delay and requests even more extra work to steer the project home. Joe arrives home and his child spills a glass of juice on him while playing around. Joe vents his anger to the child screaming at him. This is an example of low emotional intelligence as Joe wasn't aware of his emotion and his letting his unconscious mind handle the emotional response. Let's image that Joe has high emotional intelligence. When he arrives home he is aware of his anger towards the customer, but unjustly blames him and his team. When his child spills a glass of juice on him Joe is aware of his reflex anger response, but chooses not to do it. With self-control, he minimized the incident. Later, he relaxes himself with a bath and decides to hold a meeting with the customer to steer the project back to its track. In this way, Joe shows that he is identified his emotions and he is managed them as the indicators to guide his actions. His anger has led him to tackle the root problem instead of venting the anger to his environment. This is emotional intelligence in action. Basically, it involves putting you in control of your emotional response and it takes away the reflex response from the unconscious mind.
Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Emotional intelligence is a very important skill for the workplace. In fact, people with high emotional intelligence have tremendous advantages that far outweigh the highly intelligent people who may be moody, prima donnas or have temper tantrums. Emotional intelligence doesn't mean to be nice or to let the emotions flow freely as if nothing happens. It means the managed feelings in an intelligent way were both individual and common goals are achieved. There are certain skills associated with high emotional intelligence that correlate to success at work including self-awareness, social skills, self-control, and motivation. High emotional intelligence also helps to manage stress. Work can be stressful and employers want to know that the employees can handle the stress in productive ways. They also want to know that the employees are self-aware enough to know how other people perceive them including clients and customers. We can use our knowledge of emotions to help us solve specific problems. In this summary, we can see which emotion helps which problem solving situation. Knowing that, we can set the mood of the meeting to the right emotion. For example, when people are in a sad mood are asked to develop persuasive messages they typically come up with better quality arguments and more persuasive messages then people in a happy mood. Emotions can be contagious. This phenomenon is often happening in the workplaces where the office mood can highly influence the individual productivity and behavior. We have seen in the groups dynamics module that a group can influence the group members. It's also true for emotions. Our mind has the ability to mimic the emotions of others as we perceive them. It's called mirror effect. When our people smile, we tend to smile back. When other people are sad around us, our mind also feels sad. At the workplace, the higher ranking members have more potential for emotion cotangent. This is why toxic leaders can suck the energy of the whole team. So what's the lesson for applying emotional intelligence in the workplace? The message is pretty much the same as it's been throughout this course, apply common sense. Treat your coworkers with respect and build meaningful relationships with them. Always try to go forward with a positive attitude. You remember the emotion cotangent, it works both ways. If you're having a bad day, let the other people know that you are struggling. It will prevent misunderstanding and will remove the guess work in your interactions. If you feel anger or frustrated about a problem on the work, take some moments to actually think why and look beyond the emotional response. Many times, it's the same process of looking inside that dissolves the power that a problem has on you. Finally, in your interaction with your colleagues, be in tune with them. Ask them how they feel and actually care about the answer. Slow and steadily your emotional intelligent skills will build up. I tried to apply all of this in my work too. For example there are days where I feel really exhausted, by listening to myself I can identify the feeling, look for the closest end solutions in a preemptive fashion. On those days, I plan my daily contributions according to my emotional state, which means that I don't put too much on my plate on those days, so I avoid the potential feelings of failure. By acting in tune with my emotions, I reinforce the positive ones and let the negative ones dissipate slowly.
Summary

In this module, we have seen then anatomy and the role of emotions. We have learned about six basic emotions and the difference between primary and secondary emotions. We have seen the concept of emotional intelligence as the ability to identify, assess, and mange emotions in yourself or in others. Finally, we have seen how to apply these lessons in the workplace with special attention to emotion cotangent. Emotions are also connected to the stress, which we will cover in the next module, see you there.
Stress
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will introduce stress response and how to manage it. Stress is a common place behavioral situation in the modern life and it can have very damaging results to the stressed person and his or her surroundings. Stress in psychology is a persistent feeling of strain and pressure. While a small amount of stress is beneficial as it improves our motivation, when we speak about a stress usually we're referred to excessive amount of stress that is harmful. Human experience stress when they perceive that the mechanisms to cope with the stressful situation or stimulus are insufficient. In a way, stress is our red light that signals that a stress stimulus over powers our current capabilities. Animals suffer from stress too. When a pack of antelopes on a watering place is attacked by lions, they experience stress while escaping from the chase. However, when the threat is over, the antelopes are no longer stress and peacefully return to the watering place. They don't spend time thinking about future attacks or get anxious when near the water place. There is even a book about this phenomenon called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.
Stress as a Defense Mechanism

As seen in the previous example with the antelopes, animals experience stress while under direct threat or in a dangerous situation. Once the stress source is removed, the stress response is removed too. When our ancestors dwelled in caves and lived in tribes, they also experienced stress in the situations where they faced direct threats such hunting mammoths or fighting other tribes. In this way, their stress was entirely consistent with the threat response. During our human evolution, our stress response has evolved with us to greater sophistication. In addition to the stress coming from direct threat or external source as before, we can also experience stress that is created by our own perceptions and thoughts. This kind of stress source is internal and it can be maintained for a long time. Let's review how stress works in general. It all begins that a perceived or imagined stimulus that triggers the stress reaction. This stimulus makes our body segregate adrenaline and cortisol, two man hormones that contribute to the stress levels. Its purpose is to make our body face the threat and get short term boost in energy. The first phase of stress is called reaction alert and it's very similar to the fight or flight reaction we have seen in the emotional fear. If we managed a threat, the stress will usually fade away. The defense mechanisms especially the immune system, increase the workload to counteract the threat. Our blood pressure rises, the digestion is reduced in order to concentrate all the available energy into fight or flight. Sugar in the bloodstream is absorbed to get a quick supply of energy for the muscles. Our skin blood vessels are constricted to minimize blood loss in case of injury and a production of estrogen and testosterone, the sexual hormones, is interrupted. Up until now, the body reaction is perfectly normal for a threat response. The second phase of stress is the one that makes it a problem, it's called adaptation. In the adaptation phase, our body is exposed to the stress response for more than is needed to get a reaction and it still maintains the alert in our body. This continued alert state of the body is what typically ______ organism, as it keeps our energy levels high by sacrificing long-term processes in the body. Continued adaptation leads to the third phase of stress, the exhaustion. Our body can't maintain the alert levels anymore and our defense our weakened. We are more vulnerable to other illnesses and this is why stressed people get sick more often. Okay, let's recap all of this get a clear understanding of why we experience the stress. Our body natural response to a threat is the one and one only, fight or flight. When our threats were naturally occurring such as when hunting animals and fighting other tribes, we were stressed only for the duration of the stressful action, but in the modern world, we don't face direct threats anymore. The threats are now inside our head and are caused mostly by our beliefs and thoughts. However, the response mechanism in our body is the same caveman model we had thousands of years ago. Our body is placed in alerted state. The only difference is that the threat source comes from our mind, but our body reacts in the only way it knows. As our perceived threats can be sustained in our thoughts for a long time, the alerted state that was fit for short stress situation, now causes our body to be exhausted, as it has to be maintained continuously. This exhaustion makes us vulnerable to additional melodies and it can be very harmful to our health.
Stress Triggers and Types

A stress trigger or a stressor is a situation that is perceived as a threat and it engages the response, which leads to stress. For a situation to be stressful, it has to drive you NUTS. I'll explain. It has to contain one or more of the NUTS letters. It has to be either Novel, Unpredictable, Threat to the ego, or it has to give you little Sense of control. For example, a moody boss would be unpredictable and the arrival of a new child would be a novelty. So they qualify for a stressful situation. There are some physical stressors such as extreme temperatures or pain, but unfortunately, most of our stressors are psychological. What does it mean? It means that in order for a situation to be effectively stressful our mind has to believe that a situation is stressful or complying with the NUTS acronym. This is why the same situation stressful for one person and absolutely normal for another one. Our perception mostly influenced between the beliefs and memories we have, as we have seen before, is the one that makes psychological stressors possible. Not only the immediate stressor makes us feel stressed, the psychological anticipation of the stressor can also trigger stress when we ruminate about upcoming situations. Our brain doesn't differentiate between anticipated stressor and actual stressor, it triggers the stress response all the same. If we face stressful situation only when they actually happen, our stress is called acute stress. It is mostly unavoidable, but as it's short in duration, it doesn't lead to the adaption and exhaustion phases. We can say that the acute stress response is the stress response we were designed to experience. Remember that we used to hunt mammoths and it was a stressful activity, but short in duration. If we are constantly exposed to stressors, real or imagined, it's a different story. We are now experiencing chronic stress. Our stress response system isn't designed to be triggered constantly and it causes wear and tear to our body. You can compare it to the breaks of a tax in a city and the breaks of suburban resident car who doesn't commute. Which one do you think will have more tear in the breaks? The taxi breaks of course. There in action constantly and a rode very quickly. Chronic stress can also make us more sensible to additional stressors, as it lowers our tolerance level. For instance, when we are experience constant stress at work, we might respond very badly to any command by our colleagues. Our mind can modulate the response , as well as when we are rested and in result, the stimulus bar is lowered leading to a vicious circle of additional stress. However, constant exposure to the same stressor over and over again, can have a beneficial result too. We get used to the stressor and our stress response is lowered. When I started speaking in public I was stressed every time and it was several days before the speech. Now as I have more practice with public speaking, it's not a novelty and you can feel a certain degree of control, so my stress response is much reduced. I still feel the stress response when I face the audience, but it dissolves as I go along the first couple of minutes in the speech. What I want to highlight here is that a stress response is still present, but it's a normal stress response, not a chronic one. In some situations such as posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD and burnout, the chronic stress that is experienced can lead to total exhaustion or stress hormones. This can render the person totally incapable of having a normal stress response.
Stress Management and the Practice of Mindfulness

So, how should we manage stress. I'm afraid there is no universal recipe for that as we have seen the most stressors are stressors because they are perceived as NUTS, novelty and expected threat or diminished sense of control. So every person will react differently to the same situation. The first thing to do is to recognize stress response by its symptoms. When we are aware that we are stressed, we can look for the stressor or the situation that triggers the stress response and once we identify the trigger or the triggers, we can look for ways to cope with them. I use a technique called mindfulness. It has been popularized by Dr. John Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Kabat-Zinn has taken the concept of mindfulness to Buddhist teachings and has used it in the clinical practice for stress and depression reduction with really good results. So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is a non-judgmental way of focusing attention to something. It's generally practiced by paying attention to the present experience in a moment to moment basis. In this way, there are no judgments and the opinions about the perceived experience only the information that our senses capture and our mind identifies, as the dog in the picture. Mindfulness gives us four main abilities the first one is the ability to shut off the auto pilot in our mind and bring focused attention at will. The second one is the suspension of judgments and opinions in our heads. The third benefit is that we can describe the reality with sense with no distortion and finally the affordability of mindfulness is to reduce the reactions triggered by our unconscious mind. When we apply mindfulness to stressful situation, we observe it and pay careful attention to thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. By reducing the mental chatter in our head, we can identify patterns of emotional response to the stressor. This emotional response will give us information about how we face the stressor. As you remember, our third response is fight or flight so we have to identify whether our stressor makes us fight or flight. For example, if I had received an email asking me for something that I'm not in the mood to lookup right now, I avoid answering right at the moment. This is flight response to the threat. The tension between the need to answer it and the postponed response that is done by the treat response of flight, is what drives for attention and stress until the email is answered. By applying mindfulness, I have identified the stressor and the stress response I experience. The next step in mindfulness is to identify whether the stressor is something we can control or do something about. If it is, we can do something about it to reduce its influence in us. If not, we can acknowledge that a stressor is something that will happen whatever we do about it. Our mind can then use this information to avoid recognizing a stressor as a stressor. We said before that a stressor has to be NUTS. So by recognizing that a stressor doesn't comply with NUTS, reduces the possibility of it being processed as a stress trigger. Most people, feel very uncomfortable about a fact that there are situations out of our control, but it's true that the range of our control over the world is very tiny indeed. Uncertainty is the norm and embracing this fact instead of perceiving this as a threat is an important step in stress reduction. For example, when I'm caught in a traffic jam, I recognize that whatever I do, I will still be stuck there until the jam is cleared, so I don't experience stress. What I can do, or my range of control, is reduce to basically to notify the delay to somebody who may be waiting for me and keep the mindful observation of my thoughts, emotions, and sensations, honking the horn or shouting to other drivers wouldn't add any benefit to the traffic jam. As a checklist, I recommend the following three questions to dissect the stress situation. The first one is to ask whether my behavior is consistent with a flight response. Avoiding the stressor keeps the rumination in our head, and makes stress worse in the long term. The avoidance or flight from the stressor increases the wear and tear of our body and mind. The second question is to ask whether I can do something about the stressor. As we have just seen, it keeps our attention to the things that we can do something about and avoids the stress of uncertainty. The third question is to ask myself what I tend to do to deal with stress. The coping mechanisms range from using humor and physical exercise to eating and drinking compulsively. This will help us do more of the beneficial activities and avoid activities that make the problem worse. How should we recognize which one of them are the beneficial ones? We should use mindfulness to observe the level of energy we have after the activity. So, resting, using humor, eating healthy, doing physical exercise, hobbies, and fostering effective relationships such as friends and family leave us with more energy than before and therefore, there are things to do to repair the damage that a stress does to our body and mind.
Stress in the Workplace

Workplace is a common source of stress. Long hours and heavy workload can quickly cause burnout and demotivation to even the most capable team. By knowing how stress works and how to manage it, you can keep your energy and be more productive. In the previous module, we have seen how emotional intelligence enables us to identify our emotional state. We can use it to detect when we are stressed and then manage our internal emotion experience that acts as a clue to what is the exact stressor. So it pays off to be aware of your emotions. There are a couple of things that we can do to reduce possibility of stress at work. The number one thing to reduce stress at work is to learn how to say no. We constantly bite more than we can chew and the occasional successes can't beat the stress in the long term. The third is that there is always a choice. If we know how much we can undertake, we can respectfully decline additional workload. It doesn't mean shrinking from our responsibilities on the contrary, by declining additional workload, we are keeping current commitments and avoid slipping on them. Let's see an example of this. John is currently developing the database connection model for the Project X. He still has a week to go through. His manager approaches and asks him "Hi John! Can you do a quick modification of the widget Z? We need it for tomorrow afternoon." Let's say that John accepts this new workload. He stays late to do both the Project X and widget Z coding. He's tired and he doesn't rest well, so his code is plagued with small parts that add more time to the coding and testing the code. He slips both commitments and his health has taken its toll for a week of long overtime hours, but John has a choice. When his managers asks him to modify the widget Z, he says, "Yes, I would gladly do so, but I still have a week to finish the Project Excel? Would you like to stop the work on Project X and do widget Z instead?" Now the ball is on John's manager court. He answers "No, we can't miss the deadline. Can you just squeeze in these modifications?" John keeps his assertive response. "Without sacrificing the Project X quality I can't. But these modifications can be done by Jane's team, I heard they have some capacity still left in this release." His manager has to decide whether to insist on John taking the extra workload, causing additional friction, or to speak to Jane to see if her team can accommodate it. In addition to learning how to say no, the second best stress reduction tip is to find what recharges you keep doing it. Even small things can lift your mood, increase your energy, and make you feel like you are back in the driver's seat. Take things one-step at a time and as you make more positive lifestyle choices, you'll soon notice a reduction in your stress levels. Getting enough sleep is a must. You can't function in the long-term without letting the body and the mid rest during the night. Find your necessary sleeping time and don't cut into it because every time you do, you're taking a shortcut and your body suffers. Eating healthier also helps to keep the energy levels high during the day. Avoid sugary food such as processed meals and soda drinks. Eat smaller more frequent meals instead of bigger ones. Coffee can give you an extra kick yes, but overdosing in caffeine is a recipe for more stress. Regular exercise is beneficial for the body, we all know that, but it's also beneficial for our mind as it releases hormones that reduce stress. It doesn't mean you have to sweat yourself in the gym every day, as even regular walking and taking the stairs instead of the elevator still gives positive results. As an added benefit, exercise is an excellent opportunity to practice mindfulness. The last tip for reducing stress in the workplace is to prioritize and organize your work. Your schedule should be balanced with both light and challenging tasks. You should plan for regular short breaks that recharge your energy and clear your mind. Also, drop any tasks that aren't truly necessary as they will drain you with no end benefit. Learning to delegate is hard as our natural inclination is to control all the details. However, once mastered, it's a powerful tool for reducing your chance of task overload. So to stretch your stress reduction in and out of your workplace, begins with understanding of our stressors and our responses to it. However, the three tips we've just seen such as avoiding over commitment, taking time to recharge, and managing your schedule, are a quick ways that it can take a lot of stress off your back.
Summary

In this module, we have learned how our body experiences stress and it's stress response is a valid defense mechanism for momentary threats. However, our mind can also perceive threats in any situation and our body reacts all the same. We have seen how prolonged stress response is detrimental to our physical and mental health. We have learned about the stressors and why they trigger different responses in different people. On the stress management side, we have learned about mindfulness or non-judgmental attention that can help us dissolve a lot of mental chatter about stressful situations. We have also seen a couple of tips on how to manage stress in the workplace.
Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)
Introduction

Hello, this is Edin Kapic from Pluralsight. In this module, I will introduce core concepts of Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP a discipline that tries to explain our behavior in terms of the mental models we store in our head. NLP is a brainchild of two Californians, Richard Bandler a computer science and a mathematic student and John Grinder a professor of linguistics. In the 70s, they studied how excellent communicators and coaches perform. They studied three renounced therapist, Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson and they also incorporated the research from logistics, psychotherapy, and anthropology. The theoretical foundation of NLP can be traced from its three key words. Neuro points us to the neurological system, the connection between our mind and our senses. According to NLP, we experience the world through our senses and translate sensory information into our thought processes both conscious and unconsciously. These thought processes are also active a neurological system, which effects physiology, emotions, and behavior. It's a two way communication. Linguistic clearly points us to the language as a mind construct to form concepts. We use language to make sense of the world, to capture, and conceptualize experience, and communicate that experience to others. In NLP, linguistics is the study of how the words we speak and our body language influence our experience. Finally, programming refers to the ability to encode or mentally represent our experiences. Our personal programming consists of our internal processes and strategies or thinking patterns that we use to make decisions to solve problem, learn, evaluate, and get results. NLP allows us to record our experiences and organize our internal programming to get the desired outcome. This is very similar to the way we program computers, but in this case, the computer is our own mind. To see NLP in action, let's make a short exercise. Close your eyes and imagine that you are in your kitchen on a hot summer day. You take a lemon from the fridge and hold it in your hand. It's cold to the touch. You bring it closer to your nose and you smell it. You also observe the lemon and you see its color. You can feel the weight and the regular surface of the lemon skin. Now you take a knife and cut the lemon into halves. You notice that the smell is stronger now as you bring the half lemon to your mouth. You bite the lemon and you let the lemon juice sting your mouth with its acid sweet taste. Now you can feel that your mouth is salivating. Your brain has heard words, only words, but they describe the reality that your brain experienced namely that you were holding a lemon. This illusion of reality has the same effect on the brain as the real reality and this is the linchpin of NLP. You will see more of it in the following sections.
Maps

NLP has several guidelines called presuppositions. One famous guideline or presupposition of NLP says that the map is not the territory. Don't worry, the explanation comes in no time. Maps in NLP are the mental representations of the reality. As we experience the world throughout our senses; sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste, we take the inputs from the sense and create the mapping for the data in our brain. For example, if you have to describe what C# is and you're a C# programmer your internal representation or a map of C# in your brain is very detailed and rich. If you ask the same question to the Java developer, her internal representation of the C# concept will supposedly be smaller and focusing on the broad image. Finally, if you ask a non-technical person to describe C#, chances are he wouldn't even have a map for that concept. We are constantly mapping the reality we experience through our senses to the maps in our mind. We also map our thoughts or imaginations to the maps we have in our mind. The eagle is always looking to reaffirm itself by being reflected in our mental maps. The maps are always a partial image of the reality. We can have full sized maps to cover each and every aspect of the reality. Our senses are not perfect and they can feel only a part of the realties. For example, we can only see and hear and now our frequency range of all the available spectrum. Even worse, our brain discards the most of the data coming from our senses and records only the most prominent features. This is why we say that a map is not _____. I mentioned maps in our brain as a huge database with key columns and data columns. Some of the data columns are empty because our senses haven't provided information or this information has been discarded during by mapping brain. However, our mind doesn't understand empty data and uses inference and recalling to fill in the voids in our memory. When you remember something a map of that experiences are retrieved from the database. All empty columns are filled with false data that seems to fit with the available data. This is why we can have false detials in our memories. If someone says to you, I bought a new car, you then begin to guess more information, if that person doesn't tell you what type of car, you then create your own ideas about the make, color, and age, based on what you've already decided about its use and the persons preferences. So if you think that a person is joyful and fun, you may decide that they bought a sports car. If you think they are safe and cautious, you may decide that they have bought a conventional car. We all have maps in our mind. There are no good and bad maps per say, only useful and useless maps. Our map is useful if it aligns with our intentions and behavior to get the desired outcomes. The maps are snapshots of reality written in the past. They can get easily outdated and we all know that using an outdated map is a risk. For example, I have a particular map that I know it's outdated, but I'm still struggling with. When I was two years old, I fell down the staircase in my house. Probably I have written the concept of hate as falling down in my mental map and even today I feel anxiety when I approach any place from which I can fall down. This outdated map is slowly being replaced by new maps that take into account that hate doesn't mean falling down in every case. The maps can also be drawn into the future. We can use our imagination to picture future things. When we are imagining something that doesn't make us feel good, we feel sad. Conversely, imagining future things that feeling good can make us feel good in the present and act as a powerful motivator to take actions. The important thing to remember here is that we never think or operate on the reality itself. We also operate on the map of that reality. This is our playing field.
Representational Systems

Now that we have seen the concepts of maps in NLP as the mental representations of the reality captured by our senses and filtered by our mind, let's go deeper to see how our senses work in cooperation with our mind to store the information. Imagine the meal you had last. You can picture the dish in front of your eyes. You can remember the smell of the warmth of the food. You can remember sounds of the cutlery and the music that was playing in the background. You can also remember the taste and the texture of the food as you were eating it. Until now, we have focused on what or the content or our map or memory. Let's focus on how we acquired this map or memory. As we experience the reality to our senses, we do selective filtering on three broad information channels, namely the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic. Visual channel includes the picture we store in our mind. The auditory channel includes the sounds and the words we store and the kinesthetic channel includes the emotions, touch, smell, and taste. These different sensory channels auditory, kinesthetic, and visual are called representational systems. They are also known as modalities. We can use all three modalities every time, but usually there is one dominant modality for each one us in a given situation. For me it's the visual modality. For example, in school, I memorized formulas and names by memorizing the exact page in the book when they were written. So, how you can know which modality is your preferred one. In NLP you listen to the clues that you words give away. Let's see it an example. Three people explain their last holidays together in Rome. Let's start with John. "First we took the flight to Rome. We saw the Coliseum, the Roman Ruins and the city of Vatican. The weather was clear. You should have seen us there, like a pack of tourists making photos." Jane explains her version of the trip. "It was an astounding trip. Rome is so nice… I remember standing in the market with all the noise of the crowd and the sellers yelling… I tell you, it was so authentic." Finally, Jack explained his memory of trip. "I was upset about visiting Italy, but I should have felt as ease. I remember the food, it was delicious and mouthwatering. Nobody beats the Italians in cooking!" John, Jane, and Jack have let implement clues in their narrations. We can see that John has left visual words such as saw, clear, seen, photos. His narration is also sequential, so he has a preference for the visual modality. Jane has used auditory words like noise, yelling, tell, she also uses a rich vocabulary with words like astounding, and authentic. Therefore, she has a preference for the auditory modality. Jack has used words like upset, felt as ease, food, delicious, that indicated he paid attention to the feelings, taste, and smell. He has a preference for the kinesthetic modality. This doesn't mean that Jack doesn't remember the sites or that Jane doesn't remember the taste of the food, it just means that each one of them has stored more information coming from one of the three modalities. We have seen, heard, and understood how words can convey clues about the representational system they belong to. By the way, now you understand why I use the verb to see so much in this course, I'm visualize type of course. However, there are some words with no attached sensory meaning. For example, ask, answer, think, they are neutral to the senses. You can even speak in a neutral way which is highly logically, but very unappealing to any human being. Let's see an example. Have you ever felt death by Power Point in a business meaning, cold facts and natural language, they don't get processed or mind mapped so easily as they lack the sensory information. This is why reading a legal document feels so boring and reading a speech by an inspired reader is uplifting. There is another side of representation system clues plainly shown to anyone who can see our face, our eyes. It seems that when we access one of the information modalities, our eyes move in a specific direction. You can think of our eyes as the disk activity indicator lights with six possible signals. The visual channel is indicated by looking up. If we look up and to the left, it indicates recalling visual memories. Looking up and to the right, means imagining something visual. The auditory channel is suggested by looking to the sides without raising or lowering the eyes. Looking left gives away remembering sounds and words and looking right, means constructing sounds and words. Looking down and to the left, means that we can engaged in an inner self dialogue. It is not auditory channel, but a kind of kinesthetic self-feeling. Looking down and to the right, suggests that we are engaged in tactile or emotional memories or constructs. Of course, if the person your observing for a clue is left-handed, the clues are reversed as to the left and right. Each modality has several submodalities. Submodalities are the fine distinctions we make within each representational system or a modality. They help us remember what we have seen, heard, felt, smelt, and tasted both externally and imagined. For instance, we are more likely to remember a large bright picture than a small dark one. In this case, the brightness is a submodality of the visual modality. The submodalities according NLP is the smallest building blocks in our maps and memories. There are many submodalities to each of the three main modalities. For example, visual representational system, can have submodalities of brightness, size, color, focus, movement, perspective, so on. While the auditory system can have submodalities of volume, pitch, duration, rhythm, distance and the kinesthetic system can have submodalities of temperature, texture, pressure, location, vibration, intensity, and so on. One of the basic NLP techniques involves changing the submodalities of our maps. We recall the memory of the map and we then increase or decrease one of the submodalities. For examine, if you remember your seaside holidays as a picture of the beach, you can change your perspective from an aerial photo to the beach seen with your own eyes. This modification of the submodality increases or decrease our reaction to the map or the memory we are recalling. We can use this to enhance the positive feelings and decrease the negative feelings associated with a particular memory. In the NLP treatment for phobias, the mental images of the phobia reactions are selectively dulled and reduced by decreasing their submodalities. The capability of manipulating submodalities is important for the technique of anchoring, which we'll introduce in just a moment.
Anchoring

NLP also adds some more insight to the role of our emotions. As you recall from the module of emotions, one of the roles of emotions is provide motivation. In NLP _____ the emotions and feeling in any given moment are called a state. You can be in a positive, neutral, or negative state. You can trigger states with a technique called anchoring. In the same fashion, a boat is secured using an anchor, we will use anchors to feel ourselves with positive states feeling and emotions. So, what's an anchor? An anchor is an external stimulus that triggers a particular internal state or feeling. For example, you smell an orange and you feel the warmth of that holiday you had in California. The orange smell is an anchor to the memory of the warm holiday. The process of establishing an anchor is mainly involuntary. NLP explains that our memories are stored together with the sensory data, so whatever strong sensory data was there during the memory storage, acts as an anchor for that memory. As our memories can be positive or negative, the anchors can put us in positive or negative states too. It's not the anchor, it's the memory that the anchor triggers. As an exercise, try to look for your anchors. When you see, hear, or sense something it makes you feel good or bad, pay attention. That thing is your own anchor. Now we know what anchors are. Armed with this knowledge, we can influence anchors and their response. In the first place, we can create new anchors to help us get into desired states at will. By providing ourselves with anchors to positive states, we can trick our mind into replaying positive emotions when we need them most. The process of setting a new anchor is simple. First, we have to get a clear idea about the desired state. It may be feeling bold, happy, relaxed, attentive or whatever positive state you would like to experiment. The second phase is remembering when we have been in this particular state. By paying attention to submodalities and the memory, we can boost the feeling to relive the sensation as intense as possible. Once we are in the highest possible desired state, we then create an anchor. It can be kinesthetic such as a group or a hand gesture, auditory such as a specific sound, or visual such as a picture in our mind. The intense feeling we experience will be written to the mental database together with the sensory data, which includes the anchor. The anchor should be prominent enough to ensure that is the most powerful sensory data for that particular memory. Later, when we need to get into a positive state, we can fire the anchor. This means repeating the same gesture or imagining the sound or the picture we established as anchor. The anchor will trigger the associated memory and we'll feel the emotional state of that memory again. Not only we can create new anchors, but we can also manage the existing anchors. Boosting an existing positive anchor is easy, adjust your plate while you enhance the submodalities of the feeling or the memory. So it will be stored again with the extra intensity. However, we can't really delete the anchors we don't want, the negative ones. Imagine that you usually take a cup of coffee with a cookie. The act of grabbing a cup of coffee can be the anchor for the state of craving for a cookie. If you want to control your weight, it is clearly a negative anchor for you. One thing we can do with a negative anchor is to desensitize the anchor reaction. This means to get in the strong positive state and then we introduce the anchor in small doses. In our cookie example, this means getting into a state of assertively refusing the cookie with the coffee. Then, we picture grabbing a cup of coffee and practice being tempted with craving for a cookie. The desensitizing weakens the anchor reaction until it's practically non-existent. We can also chain anchors. It is done to bridge a negative anchor reaction to a positive state that can be triggered easily. We overcome this by passing to gradually better states. For example, if we cannot directly jump from angry to relaxed state, we can anchor towards some state first. Anger and worry are somewhat similar, so the anchor will work. Once in a worrisome state we can enter to the state of curiosity. In the same fashion, then we anchor from curiosity to relaxed. Curiosity and confusion are used for neutral states that can diffuse emotional charged situations. Finally, we can collapse negative anchors by firing two anchors simultaneously, a negative and a positive one. We should hold the positive anchor a little bit longer than the negative one. This weakens the negative response and in time the negative anchor will fire the positive reaction as the existing negative reaction will be overwritten. A word of caution though, anchoring is a technique that is great, but we shouldn't over do it. Negatives states sometimes serve as the communication channel for our unconscious mind to point to a problem that has to be solved. For example, feeling tired can simply be consequence of exhausting work, not a negative state. By firing positive energizing anchors instead, we mask the underlying problem and we can experience a burnout if we keep doing this.
NLP in the Workplace

NLP is a very useful tool to have in our behavior toolbox in the workplace. The first practical application of NLP is just getting to know yourself better. By identifying your maps and your preferred representational systems, you can find what makes you perform at your best and then apply those findings to get optimal performance when you need it. You can use anchoring to get into positive states of mind. The best state is the one that lets you explore beyond your comfort zone. By identifying your preferred modality, you can experience learning using the best sensory channel whether it's visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. For example, I learned foreign languages best in a visual way picturing the words and synthesis together as they are written. Other people learn best by repeating and hearing the words or kinesthetic people, they learn best when immersed in real situation using a foreign language. However, the best application of NLP in the workplace is improving the communication and the relationships with your colleagues. Let's pick up these improvements in some more detail. We have seen the two main representational systems or modalities. You can identify your colleagues preferred way of the sensory input and use it to the let the communication flow to the most sensitive channel. For example, I had a boss who's preferred modality was auditory. By being a visual myself, I was annoyed by his constant insistence in checking by phone. I kept sending status emails, which is my preferred way of communication. When I learned about these concepts in an NLP course, I understood where our communication problems came from, so I changed to call him from time to time to update on things and the communication improved. It was not what that changed, it was the how. Another application of the three modalities is when you have to prepare a presentation. Be sure to combine and include visual information such as pictures and graphs, but also include carefully selected words and evoke powerful emotions to be sure that everyone in the audience can experience the preferred modality. Even more, combining all these modalities makes your message a memorable one, as it touches all the senses at the same time. One key technique of NLP communication is understanding how to establish rapport with other people. Rapport means that you are listening and you are listened to. It enables two way communication by people. Even if we prefer to engage with similar minded people, rapport is the key to success and influence in both your personal and professional life because it's about appreciating and working without differences. Building rapport means getting in sync with the other person without mimicking them. It's starts by developing a sincere interest in what they have to say. Begin by understanding them instead of trying to get understood first. Pick up on the verbal clues that the other person uses to find their preferred modality and adjust your expressions to their preferred modality. You can also notice frequent expression and ideas they express and use them sparingly in your own conversation. Another technique for building rapport is to breathe in unison with the other person. Look for the chest and neck movements discreetly and adjust your own breathing accordingly. Even if it sounds funny, it works. Also, look for the body language and mirror their own posture with care. All these actions work together to remove any communication barriers and to let the communication flow unhindered. Rapport is a precondition for influence. If you are in rapport with other person, you're ideas get more reception and attention. Effective sales people take time to establish rapport with the perspective customer and get a genuine appreciation of their needs. It's from this sincere position of walking in the other persons shoes that effective sales come from. It is also important knowing how to break rapport. Breaking a rapport signals that we want to end the conversation. It should be done step by step getting slowly out of sync with the other person. We should also pay attention to the other person clues of breaking rapport, as it works both ways. Listening to someone who doesn't get the non-verbal hints that you want to leave is at least tiring. One of the most powerful learning that NLP had for me is one of the key presuppositions of NLP. It is the one says that every behavior has a positive intent. It stuck to me as being counter intuitive, but the fact is that it's ultimately true. A positive intent is what makes us do actions. The other people can only observe the behavior and the effects of that behavior. If the effects are negative, we describe negative intent to the person who calls them. However, the intent is always positive even to people who do terrible things, they have positive intents according to their maps, beliefs, and values. Maybe the presupposition would be better expressed as every behavior has a positive intent, just not always to anyone else. In practice, knowing this presupposition allows you to look beyond the behavior and straight to the intent. Many times we can find positive intent if we really look for it. I'll illustrate this with an example. Suppose that you smoke in your work time. You know that smoking is bad for your health, but you still smoke. Your behavior is objectively negative, but you have just seen there is always a positive intent to it. Maybe smoking makes you relax from work. In this case your intent is positive, you want to relax, but your behavior is not. Being aware of the separation behind the intent and the behavior, is what makes possible to change the behavior to express the intent, or the relaxing, with more positive action such meditation. The positive intent behind any behavior is a powerful presupposition to have. Of course, being a presupposition it can be demonstrated. However, if held true, it can empower you to look for positive outcomes. It also goes well hand in hand with another NLP presupposition that says that people choose the best available action they can. What it means is that when faced with an intent, which is positive, people have a choice of action. In our previous example the intent was to relax. The old choice was smoking. If the only best relaxing method that you know is to smoke, then it's crystal clear why you express your intent of relaxation by smoking. However, you can widen your choice of action by finding alternatives. If you know and interiorize the negative consequences of smoking, you are going to look for healthier actions that make you relax. As you have seen you always choose the best available option. It's the common error to believe that other people have the same choices as we do. As they may not be aware of it.
Summary

In this module, we have covered the basic notions of neuro-linguistic programming or NLP. We have seen that we operate in the mental representation of reality we call maps. These maps are made by filtering the information coming from our senses. The maps are stored together with the sensory data and we have three representational systems or modalities visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. We have seen how anchoring can trigger positive states of mind or reduce the negative ones. Finally, we have seen the importance of rapport and the positive intent and communication and behavior of others. Hopefully, by the end of this course you have understood some basic notions about the complexity of the human behavior. As I said before, I'm not an expert but I've shared with you what has worked for me to make my personal and professional relationships more effective and sincere. In my opinion, the understanding of our mental schemas and mechanisms help us override the unconscious behavior and replace it with intentional behavior. It's a continues action and it works best when put in practice. As the technical people usually have preference for understanding with less for putting into practice, I want to stress how important it is to experience the concepts we will learn about especially on the emotional and physical level. You can learn about playing football from books and videos, but if you don't hit the ball and run, you won't experience it. I wish you happy experimenting and a lot of insight.