Emotional Intelligence
“...when it comes to shaping our decisions and our actions, feelings count every bit as much – and often more – than thoughts...we have gone too far in emphasising the value and import of the purely rational in human life...”Daniel Goleman - ‘Emotional Intelligence’
What is it?
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of people around you. A person with high emotional intelligence is capable of understanding feelings and managing relationships with others much more effectively.
Why do we need bother about it?
Quite simply because emotions can and do drive our behaviour – sometimes much more than we realise or than we would care to admit!
What can we do about it?
You can practice some techniques to raise your awareness and to start to understand and manage the impact of your emotions and the emotions of those around you.
Here are a few ideas:
o Develop your emotional self awareness. Sit quietly and reflect on daily events and how you have felt. Keep a written note of your feelings and why you have felt them. Look through your notes for patterns - positive and negative. Keeping a written note helps you to detach from the emotions and allows you to understand your feelings better.
o Take responsibility for your own emotions It is important that you accept your emotions as your emotions. Often people talk about emotions as if they just “happen” or that other people create the emotion in us…”she made me angry”. When you feel like blaming someone ask yourself why you are really feeling as you do and think about how you can change that?
o Understand and show respect for other’s feelings…step into their shoes Imagine you are ‘the other person’ in situations you have to deal with. How do you think they will be feeling and do you know what their emotional ‘hotspots’ are likely to be? As you start to analyse and think about empathy and different emotional perspectives it may make you think about dealing with it in a more effective manner.
o Use your emotions We can all have good and bad feelings. Once you understand your emotions you can begin to manage them and to change the way you feel. Have a mental image of what makes you happy and confident – make the image colourful, bright, big and well defined. Make negative images small blurred and black and white. Allow your positive images and feelings to play a more ‘active’ role in your life.
o Manage the ‘hotspots’ Everyone has emotional ‘hotspots’. There are things which get you ‘hot under the collar’ and when your view on these topics is challenged – sometimes unwittingly - by others you may stop listening and start arguing or ignoring. It helps if you recognise these areas and manage them for yourself and know what they are for others so that you are sensitive in your dealings.
o Recognise that emotions can be contagious Everyone brings their emotions along with them to work! You may not think you are showing much emotion but there is a good chance that your facial expressions or body language speak volumes on whether for example you are happy, sad, enthusiastic, disillusioned, detached, or angry. In particular if you are the leader of your team or department then your emotional state can substantially impact on others. Manage your emotions to make positive feelings contagious.
o Think about how you think about your emotions You can impact how you feel by trying to think about it more. Saying “That man (or woman) really upsets me” is likely to generate feelings of anger, unhappiness and loss of control. If you try to ‘frame’ this differently by saying “This is difficult for us both and it still needs to be sorted out” leaves the door open to further thought and reflection and will tend to generate less negative feeling.
o Emotional hijacks Emotions are essentially impulses to act which have been etched into our nervous system over the last 50000 human generations. Quick decisions about whether to run or to fight were vital for our survival in prehistoric times. This is required less nowadays but ‘knee jerk’ reactions can still occur when passion overwhelms reason. Pause for reflection to consciously manage any emotional hijack which can be counterproductive.
What can we do to help?
We are accredited in the use of the Hay Emotional Intelligence model and profiling. We use the Hay model - summarised in this matrix - as a framework for our approach to this vital area of learning for individuals and for organisations. This can include embedding EI within Leadership Learning Programmes or in producing EI work books to support learning and development objectives.