Leveraging Emotional Intelligence as a Superpower

The term “emotional intelligence” is thrown around a lot. Do you really know what it means?  

Here’s a definition:

It is the ability to recognize and understand emotions in ourselves and others, and then use this awareness to manage our behavior and relationships.

Unless you are a nutty professor or a superstar researcher who works alone, emotional intelligence is probably more important than intelligence quotient (IQ) in your job. The good news is that, unlike our IQ, we can improve our emotional intelligence with awareness and effort. 

Core Components

The core components of emotional intelligence typically include:

  1. Self-awareness: Understanding your emotions, strengths and weaknesses, and how they affect your behavior and decisions. 
  2. Self-regulation: Once you are self-aware and know your strengths, weaknesses and triggers, you are better able to control and redirect negative emotions and keep your cool under pressure.
  3. Empathy: Understanding and considering the emotions of others.
  4. Social skills: Interacting well with others and building healthy relationships through skills such as communication, teamwork and conflict management.

How Emotionally Intelligent are You? 

If you display these behaviors, you probably have opportunities to improve your emotional intelligence.

  • Become overwhelmed by emotions and have trouble managing them.
  • Have trouble with giving and receiving feedback.
  • Blame others for problems.
  • Don’t deal with conflict well.
  • Dismiss the emotions of others.

Top 5 Ways to Improve Emotional Intelligence

Of course, it depends on the individual’s needs, but my top five tips to improve emotional intelligence are below:

1. Improve your self-awareness by:

  • Taking assessments such as the Enneagram or Working Genius.
  • Reflecting on who you are, what you enjoy, what you don’t and why you do what you do. 
  • Soliciting feedback from others on how you show up and how they see you. 
  • Identifying your strengths, weaknesses and triggers.

2. Practice the pause when you are feeling stressed or emotional, so you can respond rather than react.

I use the COPE acronym for this purpose.
C – Catch yourself when you are feeling stressed or emotional.
O – Observe what is happening in your body and your mind.
P – Practice the pause by stepping away, taking a few deep breaths, drinking some water or whatever it takes to calm yourself down.
E – Evolve from your initial reaction to pick a better response to the situation. 

3. Work on becoming more empathetic by listening attentively, asking open-ended questions, being nonjudgmental and aware of others’ reactions and non-verbals.

4. Elevate your communication and conflict management skills through training, mentoring and practice.

5. Practice mindfulness as it helps you stay present, reduce emotional reactivity, reflect and pause before responding impulsively to situations.

 

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