Emotional Intelligence has gained currency world over with Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, published in 1995. The Harvard Business Review has hailed emotional intelligence as “a ground-breaking, paradigm-shattering idea,” one of the most influential business ideas of the decade.
It is said that emotionally intelligent people are more successful in their careers, relationships and so on. The good thing is that, you can learn to become emotionally intelligent.
All of us are emotionally intelligent in varying degrees. Let’s look at how to we become more emotionally intelligent. But before that let us understand what it really means. Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of one’s emotions and manage them. It doesn’t stop with self as we are a social species and hence it encompasses others in our life as well.
According to Goleman, emotional intelligence comprises of four domains: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness and Relationship Management. Let us look at each one of them.
Self-Awareness
It is the ability to recognise our emotions and what brings those positive or negative feelings. It is these feeling that help us to accomplish something or make us feel offended or even give up. It is also the clarity we have about our values and purpose in life.
If you want to develop this skill, all you have to do is do some deep introspection and be honest with yourself. You will soon discover what is stopping you from achieving results, how your emotions are affecting you and why you get frustrated. You will also understand the triggers for your emotions.
Developing this skill is not difficult but requires patience and perseverance. Once you begin to understand your limitations and inhibitions, you will be able to deal with situations around them.
Self-Management
It is the ability to have control over our emotions, be composed in stressful situations and in case you do get distressed, recover quickly. Effectively, when you are able to manage your emotions for your own good and good of others and face challenges skilfully. This make you more adaptable and achievement oriented, you start having a positive outlook and also become more resilient. It is a great leadership skill and also extremely helpful for personal relationships.
Self-management starts with practising the pause. The moment you take a deliberate pause you will stop reacting to situations. Another powerful way is to remember the golden rule Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you do this, your ability to understand the situation and respond to it will change.
This will make you more adaptable and resilient. This will also enhance your perseverance and lead you to be successful in your relationships. It will also make you a more likeable person.
Social Awareness
It is the ability to interpret other people’s emotions and deal with it appropriately. Each one is a different person with different thoughts and emotions. Being able to relate to different types of people and communicate with them effectively makes it a desirable leadership trait. It also helps in building strong relationships.
Having learnt to be effective in self-management, you would need to understand body language or non-verbal cues to practice being a good listener. Also learn to be more empathetic and compassionate. Once you have acquired all this, you would be a more acceptable person at work and in social circles. Your leadership quality would also grow.
Relationship Management
This is the ability to manage all relationships – with spouse, family, team members, bosses, juniors and others in society. We often see that some people are able to influence others even if they do not have positional authority. They are also sought after as mentors. They inspire others. They have the ability to bring out the best in others. People seek their company.
To develop this skill, you would need to be a person with a positive thoughts. A person who is fair. A person who does not blame, complain, justify or judge. You also would need to be a person who is willing to accept the others as they are.
The journey to become more emotionally intelligent is not difficult, it only requires your focussed and sincere effort. Take the first step today…
