The Groove 138 - How to Increase Emotional Intelligence for More Creativity
HOW TO INCREASE EMOTIONAL INTELIGENCE FOR MORE CREATIVITY
If you strive to solve problems in ways that haven’t been done before or to leave your mark in the world by expressing it through your business, art, words, content, designs, or anything you produce, you must start connecting more profoundly with people.
Caring deeply about others and spending real time with them in person matters not only for developing social and emotional skills, but it’s also paramount to creativity and innovation.
Developed over almost 70 years in both the 20th and 21st centuries, Lucian Freud’s artistic practice was the antithesis of the lightning speed and restlessness of our digital era. His profound connection with his subjects and the slow and deliberate way in which he rendered his paintings have a lot to do with why he achieved his financial success and historical relevance.
Be a True Witness of Human Nature
Lucian Freud in his London studio in 1969.
We can spend a lot of time watching people casually on the street. We can scroll and see others on social media. Everyone is doing that anyway. What would be truly revolutionary is to invest a serious amount of time getting to know other people. That’s exactly what Freud did.
His paintings were generally somber and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. Freud never painted from photos, but instead from real models, ranging from family members to Kate Moss to British civil servants to studio assistants to Queen Elizabeth, who reportedly sat more than 20 times for Freud. (A fast portrait for the artist given that some of them took more than one year, encompassing seven nights a week with each of the sittings lasting for about five hours, totaling more than 2,400 hours!)
This may sound excessive, but not to Freud, who understood the ethos of his work and what made him unique in this world: “Getting to know them is part of doing the portrait. These portraits can take a very long time. A relationship always develops. It can be difficult, as well. I can be very demanding.”
This deeper look was the key to turning those canvases into fascinating and celebrated psychological portraits. "The harder you concentrate, the more the things that are in your head start coming out.”
When did we lose this desire to get to know other people like this? It’s time to become true witnesses of human nature again.
Cultivate Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. It is a feature of human psychology with implications for intimate relationships, educational outcomes, and business.
A 2017 study sought to examine the relationship between a facet of emotional intelligence called “empathic accuracy” and creativity, unequivocally concluding after examining 200 subjects that people who are high in EI seem to have a leg up when it comes to creativity. This starts with curiosity and respect for other people at work or in business circles and expands to having the ability to sustain a conversation with a stranger that spans more than superficial pleasantries.
Freud was a master at this: “I don't try to represent what I think I know about them. I would rather learn something new. Doing a portrait is about seeing what you didn't see before. It can be extraordinary how much you can learn from someone, and perhaps about yourself, by looking very carefully at them, without judgment. You must make judgments about the painting, but not about the subject.” Of this, his models often said that Freud was an “outstanding raconteur and mimic” and that his company could have been “addictive”.
This isn’t just circumscribed to art. People who work in companies whose leadership is curious about their employees’ emotions and empathetic about their feelings report a sense of confidence that stems from mutual respect and trust among team members, normally called “psychological safety”. When this sense of safety is present, people can take risks, voice their ideas, and work through them, usually with more creative and successful outcomes than if that didn’t exist.
Slow Down
I’m terrible at slowing down. It’s like every project and item in my to-do list is burning in my hands. In some instances, it does serve me well to be fast. After 23 years living in Manhattan, I could be the embodiment of the “New York Minute”. But fast doesn’t always mean better. It also takes from my ability to connect more deeply with more people because I’m always on the run.
Far from this rush, not only did Freud take months or years to complete a painting in the presence of his models, but he remixed his colors with each brushstroke and once wondered if Americans liked his paintings because “America moves so quickly and I move so slowly.”
Sociologist Liah Greenfeld points out that we are busy not because our physical and economic survival requires constant exertion on our part, leaving us little opportunity for spiritual restoration - relaxing, getting rid of the sense of busyness - but because we are incapable of perceiving and taking advantage of the opportunities for repose. We are restless.
I bet you have thought about this too. Why are we so restless? How do we find that sweet spot between efficiency, hitting deadlines and finding the time to connect deeply and emotionally with others?
I don’t think most people can spend 2,400 hours studying a single work subject the way Freud did, but intentionally slowing down and spending a quality hour here and there every week with prospective clients, employees or business acquaintances can help paint a good human picture and build empathy and connection with them in ways almost nobody is willing to do today.
Freud was intense about forging these bonds but also clear about who he was as an artist and what he was looking to do: “There is also a subtle aura that can be seen in different people. I don't mean that in a religious or mystical sense at all. It's a presence you can sometimes capture with paint. That's why I have to have the model always in the room, even when I'm painting the background.”
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TEDX TALK
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