Ep 6 - From Rage to Reconciliation: Can Emotional Intelligence Transform Conflict?

In this episode of the EQuipped Podcast, we explore a bold question: Can emotional intelligence play a role in resolving conflicts, from global war zones to local civil unrest? 🌍 🤔

Join us as we discuss how understanding and managing emotions can impact everything from international diplomacy to street-level protests. We'll dive deep into the principles of emotional intelligence — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management — and examine how they could be applied to bridge divides and foster understanding in some of the world's most heated conflicts.

Whether it's on the border of a war zone or in the midst of a protest, emotional intelligence might just hold the key to a more empathetic and effective approach to conflict resolution. Tune in to discover how!

👉 Don't forget to subscribe for more insights on emotional intelligence and its real-world applications!

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to equipped. We are back after a little bit of a hiatus due to vacations and those kinds of things, and we wanted to have a little bit of a chat because since we've been away, there's been quite a bit happening in the world and indeed in the UK, and we've still had a fundamental focus on the world of emotional intelligence. And always think about that as we've been on various vacations and days away and those kinds of things. But I was asked a question over this period. I was having lunch with, with a friend and we were talking about emotional intelligence and they asked a question about if I was dropped on the border of a war zone, say Israel and Gaza, where there's a lot of problems going on right now, how could emotional intelligence help? Now, this took me back, I must admit, this took me back and it really made me think, because we deal with a lot of the topics that we discuss on a far more micro level than that. We are dealing with interpersonal situations and not that kind of level, but it was a really interesting thought process. What did you say? Well, if we take it back to emotional. See you later. Bye. I did this kind of stuff and was like, wow. We've had a brief chat about some of this, but it was a really interesting. It would be interesting to hear your views on how, if you could bring emotional intelligence to that kind of macro level, how would it make a difference from those four quadrants of self awareness, self management, social or other awareness and interaction management, but at the level of culture, society, countries, governments, those kinds of things? And it really does add a different spin on how we think about conflict. And in the UK, we've had situations of civil unrest and those kind of things. So what are your thoughts on this? Well, before we continue, this is still Aaron. I'm still Harry. I'm still Aaron. It's good to be back. It's been a while. Sorry, you were saying? My thoughts. Your thoughts? Your thoughts, yeah. That's a question I wouldn't dream to answer, really, because the thing with emotional intelligence is you can have it, but you have to actually choose to use it. I don't think it's necessarily a lack of emotional intelligence. I think it's just an unwillingness to actually go there. I think there's an idea or a mission in mind, and emotional intelligence in the way of actually building bridges would hinder what they're trying to do out there. So it's an impossible question to answer, really. I think there's definitely emotional intelligence within the people. It's when it comes to the leaders where I think there's going to be a reluctance to even entertain the idea of understanding one another, to try and build those bridges. And that's a sad thing. And that's what we're seeing here in the UK as well. As far as there's been an uprising of the far right against, you know, the immigration and migrants, and there's any attempt to actually engage in an emotionally intelligent discussion about that, I just don't think people are ready for that yet because there's just far too much anger and they feel like that point hasn't been made enough yet to almost engage on a constructive dialogue. And that's the problem. If there's not a will, then all the emotional intelligence in the world won't make it happen. Because right now you have a government, or government in particular, the UK government, that are they really thinking about the best way forward? And obviously they are talking to leaders, they are talking to people within the community and those kinds of things to work out the best way of going forward. So they are getting that, but they are not talking to everybody potentially, so they are coming from their own position of this is what we think is. Is best. And I think there's a problem in that by not listening to everybody involved in some of these things, they're not getting all of the messages and they're tiring with quite a big brush. And I think what we saw was, you mentioned the far right and there was definitely a huge swathe of far right people and just idiots that were out for attention. I mean, two of the same thing, to be fair. And those guys were out there and just taking it as an excuse to smash things up. Now, I watched a video on YouTube and there were like, 1112 year olds that were just protesting, but just walking down the street and smashing up random terrace houses that had no connection with anything, that any message that was trying to be literally shitting on the wrong doorstep, just smashing up cars, smashing up, and there's that kind of behaviour, looting and all that kind of stuff for the government to come down hard on. There is no excuse for that kind of thing. But, and not. But. And there are some people who were in that protest that did feel that they had a right to process. Peaceful protest. Yeah. And I think that's where some of the issues with some of the rhetoric that came out of the government caused more problems with tarring everybody with. With that same brush as we saw. Yeah, it was. It was lazy, I think. And I think a lot of it was about self protectionism in the sense that the government has got us to where we are. I mean, I know we've got a new government who's come in. However, year after year, every single election, the public in Britain have been told we're going to get migration down. And they keep telling us that, but it keeps going up. So it's not. You don't necessarily have to be super right wing, racist, bigoted to be upset of promises being broken. And I think people have got a right to express how pissed off they are at the fact that they keep getting told something and it's not happening. And as you said, it's been slightly tarnished by a bunch of thugs who are creating mayhem. But where the government have probably. Well, now, where they have messed up a little bit is they've too quickly kind of tarnished everyone as right wing thugs. And the problem they've got is people. A lot of those people there, the majority, I would say, because, of course, we only see the images of smashed cars and buses on fire. There'll be loads of people who generally are upset about that broken promise. And the more that they're banded in with the people who are smashing up buses, the more the government are actually going to push them in that direction. You know, if you're constantly getting accused of thieving and everyone assumes you're thieving all the time, you're probably going to fucking thieve. Because, you know, if I'm going to get blamed for it anyway, why not? The government just need to probably relax a little bit on that. And I think they're slowly getting there. The media are probably doing their best to try and ham up the fact of how much violence there is. But we've seen loads of peaceful protests and the problem is you just don't get reported as much. I think there's a problem in that as well. In that I was listening to the news and they were speaking to a particular lady that lived in an area of the country. I can't. But where it was. And the question was, do you feel safe? So she was. I'm not sure where she was from in the world's ethnic background or anything, but do you feel safe in your community? And her response was, I've seen no problems in my community. However, looking at the news, yes, I do feel unsafe. Yeah. So the news is perpetuating some of that stuff. So there was no issue with safety. But because of what's being reported, it changes people's perception of the community. It's like, yes, community is unsafe, yet I have no evidence for that in my community. And so that I think the media has a lot to answer for with regards to its reporting and not showing, as you say, some of the peaceful protests should be shown as well and document that rather than just trying to sensationalise what's going on with the far right side and the thuggery and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, they're not stupid. They know fear does two things. It sells and it controls. And right now, big media, that's what they're looking to do. And what the government have got to try to do is pull themselves away from that rather than being absorbed into it and actually look at, rather than trying to create division, try and build bridges. And this goes back to the question of, you know, what would you do in the west bank? You know, the whole goal is to try and build bridges. And it starts with empathy and it's people, people often confuse empathy with. It's a bit. It's feeling how others feel, which in many people's eyes is almost like it's just a hippie way. You know, let's all take drugs and feel each other and all that. But it's not really. It's about understanding why someone else would feel a particular way. And if you can do that, if you can go on that journey, it's much easier to open a dialogue. You don't have to agree. It's just about understanding their perspective. And if you understand it, you can open up the conversation and you can influence it. And it's much, much easier to start building bridges when you kind of build the bridge from your side first. Definitely, yeah. And I think it's. So we're talking conflict management at this point on a smaller scale, all the way up to a macro scale. And it's where you address the situation because you don't. If you leave things to fester and I, by kind of labelling everybody with the same thing and not addressing it, you are exacerbating a problem. And those people feel less heard than they did originally, which is why they were protesting, which then pushes them on further because they don't believe any change is happening there. And there's a model that we talk about in some of our training, which is that staircase of terrorism. Yeah. So go on, walk us through that. Which leads us from that point of view where we're all at the beginning. So this is from Fatali Mogadab. And you start, everybody starts off on the ground floor. We're all staying on the ground floor, usually, unless we feel like there's something that is causing us to believe that we're disenfranchised in some way or being unfairly treated or not being hurt, those kinds of things. So life isn't great and if we're in that situation, then we want to make a change, which is when we move up to that second. So this base layer is just kind of just no real concern either way, just steady, right? We're all there, but we're all there on that ground floor. But if we feel like this is not fair, I'm not getting what I'm entitled to or I feel disenfranchised or there's an unfairness in society, then we tend to move up a staircase, which is where we want to make a difference and actually make a change, that social mobility stuff. And when you move up to that second thing, if you then have the ability to make a change and you protest and something happens, for example, or you shout and you ask questions and that happens, then cool, great, you're back down and everything's happy again. But if you don't, if you see that there's a lack of justice or an inability to do anything else, then that's when you move up again. And that's what we're seeing in the UK, to that third step, which is where we start to displace aggression. I'm really angry with the situation and where do I point that anger toward? And is it the government? Is it a particular group of people, in this case targeting immigrants, for example, because it's all the immigrants fault and all that kind of stuff. That's the rhetoric that's being thrown out. And when you have loudspeakers or organisations that grab those people and tell them the reason this is the case is because of those, those organisations and those types of people are looking to hook those people and recruit into that system. So you end up then with this displaced aggression going into that direction. If we still don't get what we want, then that can move up to the next step, which is when we start to shift in our moral engagements, we disengage from our current models and think, well, you know what? Maybe violence is way to go. So you would say we're torching into what's a fourth step. Well, so this. Yeah, so this will be the kind of the fourth step. So we've moved away now from, okay, we're displacing aggression on where do we point this, this anger up to that point of now we're thinking, you know what, you know, violence isn't bad, but I think now maybe it is. And it's easy to convince people at that point. So again, you're talking about people that are loudspeakers in worlds of trying to convince people, especially in a terrorist situation, move them into that, you know what? It is justified. So you start to shift people in that moral behaviour and the next step is then to do that them versus us piece. So people move up from that once those morals are shifting, to move them up to their evil. They're bad people over there. We're the good people, we're the righteous people, we're the ones that are fighting the best fight. We're doing the right thing that's wrong and then obviously the next step up from that would be terrorist act. So we're not saying people that are involved in the riots and things are up there, but it's a dangerous fight. It's a. I think they use terrorism actively looking at using terrorism act to get people get caught anyway. So you're seeing those steps from people that are feeling like they're unheard. There's injustice to then move up to that step of trying to make a difference but being unable to be heard and not doing anything to then displacing their anger to then changing in what's acceptable morally to do about the situation. The danger is then going up there to having a bigger divide, this categorization of them versus us, whether it's us versus immigrants or whatever it might be that them versus us is, which is what we were seeing in those riots very much that thing. There were temples and mosques and everything being destroyed and vandalised and all those kinds of things. So you're seeing that division and then the next step is then you're a hero because you're fighting the good fight and off you go. We see that a lot, obviously in the islamist terrorism side and that's where a lot of the research came from. But you can see that same thing in all kind of processes of that radicalisation step, moving from being unhappy and not being able to do anything about it to the point where you'll do something silly about it. Do you think the government are doing the right thing to almost prevent people from getting onto that fifth and 6th step right now? That's where a lot of the research came from. So a lot of the research is looking at. There's not. You shouldn't be focusing on those steps up there anyway because by the time someone gets it's too late by that point because there's already a heavily ingrained, indoctrinated kind of sense of you're doing the right thing because you've had a complete moral shift, because we see it with de radicalization as well. Like, it takes years to get someone down from level six down back to a zero. And the problem is, it seems like it's taken a very short. Maybe it hasn't taken a short period of time from going from maybe zero to two, but from three to five, it seems like it's been very, very quick. And it almost seems like if you don't address it when it's at two and three, it can progress all the way up unbelievably quickly. And then once someone's there, it takes ages to get them back down. So if you miss it at, like, two, level two or three, or you don't address it two or three, you're kind of screwed, aren't you? Yeah. And that's the thing where people are feeling, you know, I'm not happy, I want to be heard, at least heard, and where that's not happening. So that's step two. And if you then labelling people as we're not listening to you, you've got nothing to say, you're far right, you've then got that face, you're making that problem worse, which then creates more displacement of aggression at that next step and moving on up, and then you start to have shifts in the morals. So, yeah, getting people early on and being fair about a system of justice, obviously, but listening to all sides of an argument and yet peaceful protest, everyone has a right. Not everyone in the UK. We have a right to protest and that's what we don't have a right to do, is hate speech and all those kinds of things. And that's what we were seeing, which is people that have moved further up and they're doing that then versus us in group versus out group stuff. So, yeah, I think there's. You can see what's happening and it goes up and down and then it will go quiet for a little bit and then someone else will shout loud enough. And you've got some people that have got loud enough voices to rally people around them. Yeah, there are plenty of people out there. And you've got famous celebrities, I won't mention names. There are people that are saying the wrong thing at the right time to cause a stir. That's what we saw. Well, I think it was Andrew Tate was one of the messages that came out after the Southport tragedy, that was almost one. It was one of those, those instigators of that message being sent out there to create that then versus us in group versus ingress out group kind of thing, adding more fuel to the fire, false information, clearly, as we all know. And where you have that more radical person and radical, I'm talking on a threshold of someone that doesn't get involved with protests at all, that more conservative side, nothing party, but conservative side, with regards to protesting down to radical, the people that will start it, we're all on a spectrum, and these people are often very charismatic and they shout loud enough and have a following enough to rally enough people. And the more people that they're there, the people that are over here will start to gravitate to them because more people are doing it. So that threshold of when you get involved with this kind of stuff, and then you have some people that join the party just because they want to smash the f***, as we saw. I mean, that. Actually, I'm going off on a bit of a tangent, but the whole idea now that it seems like the right wing of society are having a bit more of a resurgence, for lack of a better word, I wonder how much that is connected to the increasing kind of fight against free speech and how nowadays it's much harder to speak your mind without being put down by society. And everyone's always said, the moment where you shut down discussion, it will just go down into the sewers and kind of for men. And it feels like now that an opportunity has been given to them and the opportunity, I think the first thing that kind of blew everything up was the stabbing of the young girls. Yeah, exactly. So that gave an opportunity for everyone to kind of rise up and rightfully so. Everyone was really, really angry. Angry, I think, are throwing rocks at the wrong people. Yeah. I mean, not that you should throw rocks, but. And it was big enough to pull that all out. And I think if the dialogue had always been there, if we hadn't been kind of trampling on free speech as much as we had been, would the immediate impact of that have been as big and explosive as it was? And I think that's a valid point, because if people are afraid to say something, people aren't happy with the status quo, but they don't think they have a right to say anything, or they have the option of saying anything because they're afraid of being shutting down. Being shut down, then it's that same problem of that second staircase, isn't it? It's like, I'd like to make a difference in the world, but every time I try and say something, I get shut down. Absolutely right. So then I'll take it out on someone else, which is the next step, because I can't make a difference, I'll take it out on someone else. So is there a crossover there? So by shutting anyone down, whether you have strong views from a right or a left, and it doesn't, we make those categories. And again, they're very them and us kind of categories that we play into when we do those things. There's been a lot of very vocal right and far right rhetoric that's coming out right now, but equally, we've had a lot on the left as well. And as soon as someone comes out and says anything that's more right, you're getting what you're talking about, which is that you can't say that and if you can't say that, but it's my. It's how I feel. Now, there is a line in law that says, you know, you hate speech, you can't do hate speech and all that kind of stuff. But we shouldn't be shutting down people that are. That are angry, annoyed at the world or feel unfairly treated, as long as they're not being hateful. So you can still have constructive dialogue, no matter how strong your views. We should still be able to have those very heated debates without demonising either side. To be fair. It's such an interesting point that I've always thought about the frustrations people have about not being hurt or that level two you're talking about will always come from authority or government. But what we've seen over the last kind of four or five years is it's actually coming from society. So it's not. Yes, it is coming from the media, the government and the big authority organisations out there. But really, the thing that is starting to piss everyone off is it society, it's the social media, it's the groups who are just normal people who have almost been jumping on people and cancelling people. And I've never thought of it in that way, really. I've always seen it as being like a top down thing, but it's kind of side to side now as well. Yeah, it is. And I think it's. And again, coming back to emotional intelligence, it's about that, yes, being self aware and managing yourself and wanting to listen, wanting to be more socially aware more widely. Not just social awareness as in me versus me, me versus you, me and you, but the wider society. Let's listen, let's be socially aware to what everybody is saying, how everybody feels, so that we can then move to that interaction management and manage the interactions within society in the right way. People don't feel they're getting what they want. We know that's a universal trigger for anger. So that's when you get the displaced anger. So yeah, I think it's an interesting thing to consider. It's a big question and it all started from that one question I was asked around being dropped on the border of a conflict zone. Clearly. Well, just let's go back to that then. So if you just bring it a little bit closer to home. What if you were dropped in between the protests that are happening now and parliament? Would you be able, would you be comfortable in addressing that question? Well, I think it's the same, it's not the same thing. So on scale it's completely different, obviously, and the topic is different, but it still requires both sides to look at the other side. And it's that perceptual shift, isn't it, of everybody is, everybody is on both sides. Government shouldn't be because the government should have panels and communication with community and be getting all messages. But are they? Because within a government you have a government that is a labour government or a conservative government. So the people within that that they listen to predominantly are people that have the same values, views, beliefs, those kinds of things. And the same on this side there's a group of people that are all surrounded by the same people with the same kinds of messages. So it's harder, it's harder to hear and think about the other side. So the government needs to make sure that they're listening to everybody within that group. So there are, yes, there are far right people in there. There are thugs in there. You don't need to listen to the thugs, they're just there to causal ruckus. Don't need to listen to them. I'll still do more if you don't listen to them. But you know what I mean. So, but the more balanced voices that are in there from different areas of this huge swathe of people, some that are just feeling really annoyed and really unheard, some over here that feel really badly treated, some over here that feel something else, all of these voices need to be listened to. And these people over here need to consider that the government are trying to balance so many different views. So it's difficult to please absolutely everybody. So whatever they do, someone's going to be unhappy. I wouldn't want the job in the government for that reason, because you're having to take from one place to give to another with budgets and all that kind of stuff. But they've got to be careful with. I think that from a PR point of view, it's the narrative that comes out there, that big labelling approach. And again, that comes down to it's conflict management, but it's not per se emotional intelligence, but it is really. It's that being aware of us and wanting to pay attention to other and really trying to build that bridge that you were talking about earlier, to have some kind of level of dialogue while the anger is really high. That's not going to happen, clearly, because refractory, period, people will see the world through the lens of the anger they feel. So now would be a good time because things have quieted down in the UK. Find the people. Find those radicals that kicked things off in those protests. Some of them are in prison now, obviously, but, yeah, find those people, the peaceful protesting people that have a point that they believe is valid and want to be heard and get around the table and speak to those people altogether, you know, if it's possible. It depends how. How well balanced those people are and if they can have a debate without it being hateful or anything like that. Yeah, exactly. That's the problem anyway. So that was some depth. It's not something that we've really thought about up to. Up to this point, beyond kind of. Yes, we talk about things like terrorism, radicalisation and stuff within programmes, but I think it's one of those things that we're not going to be able to fix it. But I think the more people that become aware of what we're trying to do, I'd like to think an entire government will watch the equipped podcast and think, you know what, those guys have a point, but I doubt that. But hopefully there are ideas that you have and we'd like to hear about them in the comments. And we will both be back probably next week. I think we've got a plan, right? Definitely next week we've got a plan. So any ideas? Throw them in. We've got a few, but, you know, we'll add a few more in, definitely. And we'll see you then. Excellent. Thanks very much. All the best.