Q. How can I strengthen my Emotional Intelligence and use it to improve my career?
A. In today’s fast-paced world of competitive workplaces and turbulent economic conditions, each of us should be searching for effective tools that can help us manage, adapt and strike out ahead of the pack. One way to do that is to become more Emotionally Intelligent.
Emotional Intelligence, a term first made popular by psychologist Daniel Goleman in his bestselling book Emotional Intelligence, essentially refers to the ability to monitor and manage your emotions in a positive way. Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, is understood to be as important (or even more important) than IQ.
In fact, understanding and managing your Emotional Intelligence is the number one predictor of professional success, say Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, authors of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. It is no secret that EQ is critical to your success. But knowing what Emotional Intelligence is and knowing how to use it to improve your career are two very different things.
Here are some tips:
- Understand the impact of your EQ. EQ is so critical to success in moving your career forward that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.
- Become self-aware of your emotional intelligence by taking the assessment found in the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Bradberry and Greaves.
- By taking the assessment and reading the book, learn the four skills that together make up your EQ (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management) and take steps to develop each.
- Become more self-aware by getting to know yourself under stress. When you feel stressed, stop. A highly emotionally intelligent person is able to step back and notice their own thinking, and their own reaction to those thoughts. Taking time to “think about your own thinking” can actually lower your stress level.
- Ask yourself this question: “How comfortable am I in my own skin?”
- To increase your self-awareness, embrace feedback with open arms. Many of us are afraid to have a coach, boss or colleague give us feedback because we don’t want to hear anything negative. Learning to see feedback as helpful, rather than negative or scary, is a sign of growing emotional intelligence.
- Notice when you feel defensive or threatened, and remind yourself to manage your own emotions intelligently.
When you not only accept but seek out feedback, you will discover things you tend to do, say, think and feel that you have previously failed to notice or understand. This process can be uncomfortable because some of the things you’ll discover are unflattering or things you’ll want to improve. That said, it’s much less painful to seek out this information on your own than wait until someone brings it to your attention and stalls your career.
What is one step you’ve taken in the last six months to increase your Emotional Intelligence? Leave a comment to tell us about it.
