“It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head – it is the unique intersection of both.”
– David Caruso
Emotional Intelligence is so important for personal and professional fulfillment. It builds stronger relationships, creates success at work, and achieve career and personal goals. Emotional Intelligence or EQ is the capacity to understand and manage emotions in a positive way to relieve stress, communicate effectively, overcome challenges, and defuse conflicts. It impacts different aspects of everyone’s daily life; such as behaving and interacting with others.
The modern workplace is characterized by open communication, teamwork, and mutual respect among employees and their supervisors. Emotional intelligence bears an important impact on the self-development of managers and leadership qualities. This impacts visible positive relations and gaining the emotional commitment of employees.
Developing EQ can greatly influence, success. EQ profoundly affects our choices by creating options that may not have otherwise imagined or considered to be possibilities. Below are some ways to increase Emotional Intelligence.
Self- awareness
“Know Thyself.” – socrates
Self-awareness is the ability to recognize, and understanding your own emotions. The key to cultivating self-awareness is by recognizing your emotions it affects thoughts, behaviors, and decisions.
How to improve Self-awareness
- Practice noticing how you feel throughout the day and the source of your emotions.
- Consider how negative emotions impact people around you.
- Manage your emotions on the job to avoid inappropriate behaviors.
- Take an honest look at your own strengths and weaknesses.
Emotional Regulation
“The first and best victory is to conquer self.” – Plato
It is the ability to control strong emotions by not acting impulsive or destructive manner. Emotional regulation helps to develop the ability to consider better decision-making outcomes to particular situations or problems.
How to improve Self-Regulation
- Practice waiting before responding or making a decision.
- Try to stay away from office politics, drama, or conflicts.
- Rather than complaining, accept uncertainty, frustrations, and disappointments as part of any work environment.
- Find ways to release and manage stress.
Empathy
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Empathizing with others, we develop a deeper bond of relationships. It influences other people as well as our own by our actions and behaviors.
How to improve Empathy
- Try to view situations from the other person’s point of view.
- Validate it by looking at the person’s point of view.
- Examine your own attitude and motives.
- Listen and reflect back on what the other person is saying, so it’s clear you both understand what’s being communicated.
- Practice the GOLDEN RULE – Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Social Skills
“Make sure you are understood. Don’t blame the other person for not understanding. Instead, look for ways to clarify or rephrase what you are trying to say so it can be understood.” – Joel Garfinkle
People with emotional intelligence are able to build trust quickly with other teams.
How to Improve Social Skills
- The best way to improve social skills is through effective communication.
- Learn the elegant art of persuasion. It involves making real connections with people based on passion.
- Become the person who finds solutions and resolves conflicts.
- Understand the person you’re talking to.
It is vital for managers and other business leaders to seek new hires with emotional intelligence. With these initial 8 tips, it provides a good starting to discover the foundation of emotional intelligence.
“If you could multiply what you know in your head and in your heart, your IQ and EQ, by the power of everyone you’ve ever e-mailed or could contact by social media and other technology, what would you do?”
– Erica Dhawan, Author
Practice Observing how you feel
It is easy to lose control of our emotions, take a few breaths and notice how you’re feeling emotionally.
Pay Attention to how you behave
Managing our emotions becomes easier once we become more conscious of how we react to them.
Question your own opinions
It is easy to fall into an ‘opinion bubble’. It is the state of existence of opinions where it is constantly re-enforced by people with similar viewpoints.
Take responsibility for your feelings
Your emotions and behaviors come from you, you should be responsible for how you feel and how you behave and it will have a positive impact on all areas of your life.
Take time to celebrate the positive
Celebrating and reflecting on the positive moments in life is a key part of emotional intelligence.
Don’t ignore the negative
Reflecting negative feelings is just as important as reflecting positive feelings.
Don’t forget to breathe
To manage your emotions to avoid outbursts, and don’t forget to breathe.
A lifetime process
Remember that emotional intelligence is something that needs to be developed and requires continual improvements.
“Business is all about the rhythm. But it’s the melody that makes a song beautiful. Emotional intelligence allows you to untie rhythm and melody.”
– Aurorasa Sima
EQ is synonymous with self-awareness because it enables us to live our lives with intention, purpose, and autonomy. EQ has two major components: Personal Competence and Social Competence.
Personal Competence includes self-awareness which helps to manage their emotions. While Social Competence includes social awareness and management of relationships.
EI has been noted to be implied across the workplace having an essential component in determining leadership effectiveness mainly when leaders are dealing with teams in the workplace. Positive emotions in the workplace can lead to high morale, improves performance and better job satisfaction. Here are some tips for keeping an organization emotionally balanced.
- Stress Management Classes
- Activities that promote team spirit.
- Offering assistance who require help in managing their emotions.
- Clear policies and procedures.
- Tensions should not be allowed to grow.
“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand if you don’t have self-awareness if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
– Dr. Daniel Goleman
We all have different personalities, different wants and needs, and different ways of showing our emotions. Assessment and predictability of EI leading to success is still a very important issue to be addressed. Essentially, emotional intelligence in the workplace comes down to understanding, expressing and managing, good relationships and solving problems under pressure. Developing emotional intelligence takes time and commitment, but having a strong EQ is a necessary quality for career success.
