DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Referred to as EI (emotional intelligence) and EQ (emotional quotient), the topic of emotional intelligence has fascinated me for years. In fact, the topic of Human Behaviour has intrigued me for as long as I can remember. Given that I am a Career Development Practitioner, my true passion is about how we behave at work. I have spent this year studying Emotional Intelligence centring my learning specifically to how EI relates to work performance; how workers identify and manage their own emotions and react to the emotions of others.
SELF-AWARENESS AS A CATALYST
I know you will have met people in your own career who appear to have an intense awareness of themselves; heightened emotional intelligence you might say. Then, there are others who do not even seem to be remotely aware of their own behaviour and how it impacts on their colleagues or leader; even worse, clients! Even if you told them, they would not see what you see.
If you stop and think about you right now, the one constant factor in all your interactions and endeavours is you; you are the common denominator. You are there at work. You are there in your relationships. You are there at school, the sports club, on holiday; the list goes on. Knowing and understanding yourself is therefore paramount. Self-awareness really is the catalyst to so much change. I have seen it time and time again in my coaching work.
EMOTIONS BLENDED WITH NEUROSCIENCE
Anyone who has ever worked with me or heard me speak will have heard this as I say it frequently. We have about 3,000 thoughts an hour; 50-70,000 thoughts every single day. That is a lot of thoughts and a lot of busy energy going around in our brain via neural pathways.
A big part of being emotionally intelligent is being aware in the first place of our emotions and how they affect us. How they flow on to create our behaviour. Before we have an emotion and before we act out a behaviour, we have a thought. About 3,000 thoughts per hour. Are you consciously aware of what thoughts you are having? Here is a fact: we simply do not know that we do not know what we do not know. Try consciously observing your thoughts for ten minutes. Notice what you notice.
To be scientific for a moment, if you participate in new activities, you are training your brain to create new neural pathways. The pathways get stronger with repetition until the behaviour is the new normal. This also goes for thoughts. I used this method when I first set up business. If I had a negative thought like self-doubt that I could be successful, I learned to notice those thoughts and retrain my mind to look at the situation differently. I had Henry Ford’s saying on my wall, in fact, I still do – Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right!
There will always be events and circumstances in your life that you cannot control. But if you learn to control your thoughts, your mood and behaviour no longer depend on circumstances but on you. When you regain control over your thoughts, you regain control over your feelings and actions. Your thoughts shape your reality more than anything else. Therefore, not having control over your thoughts equals not having control over your life.
Emotional control is a big part of emotional intelligence. If we look at emotional intelligence in the workplace, knowing how our behaviour impacts our teammates and leaders is also key.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world, today I am wise, so I am changing myself. Rumi
HOW CAN YOU DEVELOP EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?
If you are wondering how emotionally intelligent you are, you could take an assessment. In fact, we have a dynamic assessment called the EBW (Emotions and Behaviours at Work), and the comprehensive report will also let you know how others are likely to receive you. You can check it out here if I’ve piqued your interest – My Emotional Intelligence https://www.team-reboot.com/my-eq
As for developing your EQ, here are a few practical things you can do to get started.
Practice observing your emotions – Constant advances in technology mean we are often connected to our work in some way shape or form. Life is busy and it is easy to lose touch with our emotions. To reconnect, set a timer at various times of the day. When the timer goes off, take a few deep breaths, notice how you are feeling emotionally. Pay attention to where that emotion is showing up as a physical feeling in your body; what does that sensation feel like? The more you practice, the more it will become second nature.
Monitor your thoughts - A thoughts journal is a simple exercise that can be done as quickly as two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night. For the next seven days, write down the first thoughts you have in the morning, then reflect on your thoughts at the end of the day. In my coaching work I usually have about 10% of people try it and without fail get an incredible insight into their thinking. What typically happens is as they are going through the week is they automatically start to notice their thoughts throughout each day.
Notice your behaviour trends – When you feel an intense emotion, pause. What happened? Observe how you act when you’re experiencing certain emotions, and how that affects your day-to-day life. Managing our emotions becomes easier once we become more conscious of how we react to them. There is also great benefit in naming a feeling or emotion. This can instantly lessen the charge or intensity of the emotion.
Query your own opinions – Ever noticed that we tend to hang out or talk more openly with people who have similar viewpoints to us? If we do not have awareness of this, we could very well find ourselves in a filter bubble, meaning we are only surrounded by views and opinions we agree with, while being sheltered from opposing perspectives. Take a little time to read the other side of the story and have your views challenged (even if you still feel they are right). This will help you understand other people and be more receptive to new ideas.
Take responsibility for your feelings - Your emotions and behaviour come from you, they don’t come from anyone else and once you start accepting responsibility for how you feel and how you behave it will have a positive impact on all areas of your life. This is where true emotional intelligence is really born!
FINAL WORD
Go ahead, take a step toward being one of those people who have a deep awareness of themselves. Monitor your thoughts, be more aware of your emotions and act more purposefully rather than accidentally. And, as our last paragraph said, true emotional intelligence will rise out of you when you take responsibility for your feelings.
Go on, your career and inner self will thank you for it!
BRENDA
FOUNDER AND FACILITATOR AT TEAM REBOOT
PROGRAMS
MY EQ (EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE)
FEEDBACK
OCTOBER 14, 2020
DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Referred to as EI (emotional intelligence) and EQ (emotional quotient), the topic of emotional intelligence has fascinated me for years. In fact, the topic of Human Behaviour has intrigued me for as long as I can remember. Given that I am a Career Development Practitioner, my true passion is about how we behave at work. I have spent this year studying Emotional Intelligence centring my learning specifically to how EI relates to work performance; how workers identify and manage their own emotions and react to the emotions of others.
SELF-AWARENESS AS A CATALYST
I know you will have met people in your own career who appear to have an intense awareness of themselves; heightened emotional intelligence you might say. Then, there are others who do not even seem to be remotely aware of their own behaviour and how it impacts on their colleagues or leader; even worse, clients! Even if you told them, they would not see what you see.
If you stop and think about you right now, the one constant factor in all your interactions and endeavours is you; you are the common denominator. You are there at work. You are there in your relationships. You are there at school, the sports club, on holiday; the list goes on. Knowing and understanding yourself is therefore paramount. Self-awareness really is the catalyst to so much change. I have seen it time and time again in my coaching work.
EMOTIONS BLENDED WITH NEUROSCIENCE
Anyone who has ever worked with me or heard me speak will have heard this as I say it frequently. We have about 3,000 thoughts an hour; 50-70,000 thoughts every single day. That is a lot of thoughts and a lot of busy energy going around in our brain via neural pathways.
A big part of being emotionally intelligent is being aware in the first place of our emotions and how they affect us. How they flow on to create our behaviour. Before we have an emotion and before we act out a behaviour, we have a thought. About 3,000 thoughts per hour. Are you consciously aware of what thoughts you are having? Here is a fact: we simply do not know that we do not know what we do not know. Try consciously observing your thoughts for ten minutes. Notice what you notice.
To be scientific for a moment, if you participate in new activities, you are training your brain to create new neural pathways. The pathways get stronger with repetition until the behaviour is the new normal. This also goes for thoughts. I used this method when I first set up business. If I had a negative thought like self-doubt that I could be successful, I learned to notice those thoughts and retrain my mind to look at the situation differently. I had Henry Ford’s saying on my wall, in fact I still do – Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right!
There will always be events and circumstances in your life that you cannot control. But if you learn to control your thoughts, your mood and behaviour no longer depend on circumstances but on you. When you regain control over your thoughts, you regain control over your feelings and actions. Your thoughts shape your reality more than anything else. Therefore, not having control over your thoughts equals not having control over your life.
Emotional control is a big part of emotional intelligence. If we look at emotional intelligence in the workplace, knowing how our behaviour impacts our teammates and leaders is also key.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world, today I am wise, so I am changing myself. Rumi
HOW CAN YOU DEVELOP EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?
If you are wondering how emotionally intelligent you are, you could take an assessment. In fact, we have a dynamic assessment called the EBW (Emotions and Behaviours at Work), and the comprehensive report will also let you know how others are likely to receive you. You can check it out here if I’ve piqued your interest – My Emotional Intelligence https://www.team-reboot.com/my-eq
As for developing your EQ, here are a few practical things you can do to get started.
Practice observing your emotions – Constant advances in technology mean we are often connected to our work in some way shape or form. Life is busy and it is easy to lose touch with our emotions. To reconnect, set a timer at various times of the day. When the timer goes off, take a few deep breaths, notice how you are feeling emotionally. Pay attention to where that emotion is showing up as a physical feeling in your body; what does that sensation feel like? The more you practice, the more it will become second nature.
Monitor your thoughts - A thoughts journal is a simple exercise that can be done as quickly as two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night. For the next seven days, write down the first thoughts you have in the morning, then reflect on your thoughts at the end of the day. In my coaching work I usually have about 10% of people try it and without fail get incredible insight into their thinking. What typically happens is as they are going through the week is they automatically start to notice their thoughts throughout each day.
Notice your behaviour trends – When you feel an intense emotion, pause. What happened? Observe how you act when you’re experiencing certain emotions, and how that affects your day-to-day life. Managing our emotions becomes easier once we become more conscious of how we react to them. There is also great benefit in naming a feeling or emotion. This can instantly lessen the charge or intensity of the emotion.
Query your own opinions – Ever noticed that we tend to hang out or talk more openly with people who have similar viewpoints to us? If we do not have awareness of this, we could very well find ourselves in a filter bubble, meaning we are only surrounded by views and opinions we agree with, while being sheltered from opposing perspectives. Take a little time to read the other side of the story and have your views challenged (even if you still feel they are right). This will help you understand other people and be more receptive to new ideas.
Take responsibility for your feelings - Your emotions and behaviour come from you, they don’t come from anyone else and once you start accepting responsibility for how you feel and how you behave it will have a positive impact on all areas of your life. This is where true emotional intelligence is really born!
FINAL WORD
Go ahead, take a step toward being one of those people who have a deep awareness of themselves. Monitor your thoughts, be more aware of your emotions and act more purposefully rather than accidentally. And, as our last paragraph said, true emotional intelligence will rise out of you when you take responsibility for your feelings.
Go on, your career and inner self will thank you for it!
BRENDA
FOUNDER AND FACILITATOR AT TEAM REBOOT
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4 年Thanks for sharing such a simple and powerful article on a rather complex topic of emotional intelligence ??
People & Operations Manager with a passion for Processes
4 年Couldn’t agree more Brenda, EQ within leaders is almost a prerequisite in current times to people management