Behik Blog

In order to be truly effective at reading emotions in yourself and in other people, you should try to integrate all of the skills we have discussed in this chapter. Here is a guide to help you synthesize your emotion-identification competencies:

1. Pay attention: attend to and accurately identify your emotions and moods, and look and listen to the person

2. Process the verbal information:

   Emotion words used

   Tone used

   Speed and pitch of words

3. Process the nonverbal information:

   Facial expressions

   Eyes and mouth

   Posture

   Gestures (interpreted in context)

   Words, tone, and situation, as they relate to gestures

4. Look for consistency or inconsistency:

   Match between words and tone

   Match between expression, words, and tone

5. Analyze discrepancies, but be aware of the misleading nature of discrepancies:

   • People laugh when grieving

   • People may not wish to admit feelings

6. Become self-aware of:

   Your own emotional reactions

   Your personal reaction

   Your feelings

   • We sometimes mimic others’ emotions

   • We may feel uncomfortable around certain emotional displays

7. Check it out:

   Use language such as “You seem” to confirm others’ feelings

   Determine your awareness of feelings

   Provide an offer of encouragement to open up

   Lastly, it often helps to check out your observations with another observer.

   It’s not easy, but we believe that with practice and feedback you can improve your accuracy of emotion identification. And once you have good data, you are ready for the next step.