A641.4.3.RB - Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence

I began flying helicopters in the Gulf of Mexico in 2007.  I quickly realized that as a pilot I had lots of down time, between four and six hours each day.  My job was to transport government safety inspectors to the oil rigs located off the coast of Louisiana.  Each morning I would fly two or three inspectors to their destination platform and then wait for four to six hours for them to be done with their inspections before flying them back to the airport in Lake Charles.  I felt that I needed to do something productive with the free time I had each day, so I decided to work to complete my bachelor’s degree.  After I earned my bachelor’s degree in 2009 I knew I would eventually return to school to complete a master’s degree; it was a goal I had set for myself when I was young.  However, at the time I did not feel ready.  I wanted to take a break from school and recover from the education burnout I was experiencing.  

I quickly learned to use my free time at work productively.  I read a lot of books and studied topics that interested me.  I learned about photography and how to use Adobe Photoshop.  I studied about the American Revolution and the Civil War.  One summer I spent quite a bit of time fishing from the platforms!  However, I always knew that eventually I would return to school.  I was busy serving as a bishop for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, raising six small children with my wife, and coaching my daughter’s softball team.  I didn’t think I would be able to go back to school until I had fewer responsibilities.

As the years went by I began to feel that I was not progressing professionally; I started to feel burned out with my job.  My job was great, It provided me a good living and allowed me to provide my family with a nice home and all the necessities of life.  However, after eight or nine years of doing the same job day-in and day-out I began to feel the monotony of the “daily grind.”  I don’t think I ever got to the point that I dreaded going to work, but I certainly was not enjoying my job as much as I had in the past.  I started to lose the sense of job satisfaction that I had experienced for several years.  I started to feel like I was not really accomplishing anything, that I was not moving forward personally.  I began to want to change something, I just didn’t know what.  However, I started to feel trapped; the job was really good for my family, I was home every night, made a good living, and had plenty of time to spend with my wife and children.  I knew that if I changed to a different contract flying a different aircraft I would have to sacrifice family time, and I would probably have to spend significant time away from home.  However, I felt that I needed to make a change so that I could feel the job satisfaction I had felt in the past.  I was stuck between wanting to have quality time with my family, and wanting to experience job satisfaction and avoid burnout.  I had decided years before that I would always put my family first, so it was never really a difficult decision to stay on that contract, but I realized that I needed to do something to feel job satisfaction and accomplishment again.  

One morning it struck me like a lightning bolt: I woke up knowing that it was time to go back to school.  I knew that returning to school would give me the feeling of achievement that I was thirsting for.  The idea of going back to school had overwhelmed me for years because of my responsibilities outside of work.  However, that morning something changed.  I suddenly felt the desire to go back to school like I had not felt in a long time.  Within a week I had enrolled in the Master’s in Leadership program that I am currently pursuing.

As I started my coursework I began to feel job satisfaction and the sense of accomplishment that I had not felt in a long time.  I felt that I was using the time I had each day while I was offshore to accomplish something and progress both personally and professionally.  The sensation of job burnout was consumed by the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Boyatzis, Rochford, and Taylor (2015) explained that as an individual strives to achieve their “ideal self” a “tipping point” exists that will be a motivator for sustained change.  The tipping point is crossed when the right combination of positive and negative emotions are experienced.  Change is provoked when we reach the tipping point in the balance of positive emotional attractors (PEA) and negative emotional attractors (NEA).  “PEA and NEA are self-regulating states; therefore, once a person is in either a PEA state or a NEA state, the person will remain in that state until a tipping point provokes a shift to the alternate state” (Boyatzis et al, 2015, p. 4).

During my first few years of flying in the Gulf of Mexico I experienced enough positive emotions to stay content with my job.  I felt job satisfaction and regular positive emotions such as accomplishment, adventure, and personal development.  My perception of myself during that time was close enough to my ideal self that I did not feel the need to make any significant changes and I did not feel a real need or the desire to go back to school.  Perhaps the thoughts and goal that I had up to that point in my life of earning a master’s degree were driven by something akin to what has been described as my ought self (Boyatzis et al, 2015), but it had not become part of my vision of my ideal self.   I felt it was something I should do, but I really didn’t want to at that time in my life.  Boyatzis et al (2015) stated that some negative emotion “is required to move a person from vision to action” (p. 2).  As the years began to pass the positive emotions that I experienced, such as job satisfaction, began to wane and give way to negative emotions, such as dissatisfaction and boredom.  When I no longer felt the same level of satisfaction and achievement I had felt previously I was pushed past the tipping point.  The negative emotions I experienced were enough to get me to make a change; to go back to school to pursue a master’s degree.  If I had returned to school before that point I probably would have struggled to stay motivated and engaged since I would not have reached the tipping point.  If I had waited longer to return to school I likely would have experienced far more negative emotions related to my job and might have made a more drastic decision that would have negatively affected my family.

For a person to discover his ideal self he must regularly experience positive emotions such as efficacy, hope, and openness (Boyatzis et al, 2015).  However, a certain level of negative emotions are also essential to push him past the tipping point and motivate him to action. Reference

Boyatzis, R. E., Rochford, K., & Taylor, S. N. (2015). The role of the positive emotional attractor in vision and shared vision: toward effective leadership, relationships, and engagement. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 670. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00670