Emotional Intelligence In A Nutshell

There has been a massive growth in the popularity of Emotional Intelligence since Daniel Goleman’s publication, "Emotional Intelligence " Increasingly, people have recognized the important role emotions play in their actions. When you replace the word ‘action’ with ‘performance’ you can start to understand the impact EI can have on a company’s bottom-line.

In his series of ‘Inner Game’ books, Timothy Gallwey explains performance in a simple equation which I truly love and uses as a standard in my coaching practice to help people boost their performance

P= p – i (Performance = potential - interferences)

What Gallwey is saying is that each of us has the potential to improve our performance, but what stops us are individual interferences. In EI terms, the interferences we all possess are essentially negative attitudes, beliefs and habits that prevent us from performing as well as we could.

So what is Emotional Intelligence ?

Definition I personally like , offered by Sparrow and Knight , who have done tremendous work on Applying emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the habitual practice of using emotional information from ourselves and other people and integrating this with our thinking and using these to inform our decision making to help us get what we want from the immediate situation and from life in general.

EI broadly embraces two aspects of intelligence

1) Understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behavior and all

2) Understanding others and their feelings

?Research into multiple intelligences, Howard Gardner describes these two aspects of intelligence as Intrapersonal intelligence – being intelligent in picking up what is going on inside us and doing what we need to do about it?

Interpersonal intelligence – being intelligent in picking up what is going on in other people and between other people and doing what we need to do about it.

How intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence are connected to emotional intelligence ??

Intrapersonal Intelligence means , Self Regard , Self Awareness and Self Management?

While Interpersonal Intelligence means , Regard for others , Awareness of others and Relationship management .?

Let's Look at each precisely?

Regard

Self-regard Or Self-Esteem

How much do you value yourself as a person? Self-regard is about who you are, not what you do. All too often I have done with myself and also I have seen while for producing transformation in their lives that people develop conditions of worth to substitute for self-regard, focusing on what they achieve or own rather than who they are. If we like and accept ourselves it will have a positive impact on all situations .

Regard for others

How much do you value others as people, as distinct from what they do? How often do you find yourself making judgements of others based on your own values?

Imposing self over others , I found the most common in corporate culture where leaders make mistakes and create harm for organizations and while view others with own view of world make employees demotivated . It is perfectly acceptable to criticize other people’s behavior (as long as it is constructive criticism), but never acceptable to judge them as a person. For example, ‘What you did was stupid’ is very different from thinking or saying, ‘You are stupid.’

Awareness

Self-awareness

How much are you in touch with your intuition and feelings? How well do do you listen to what your body is telling you? Hundreds of times a day our emotional brain communicates with us via feelings. People with low self awareness often don’t notice this or learn from it.

Awareness of others

How well tuned in are you to the feeling states of others? How well do you pick up on other people’s non-verbal cues telling you how they are feeling? Do you regularly show empathy towards others and really listen to what they are telling you??

Self-management

Emotional Resilience?

How well do you bounce back when things go wrong? It is a fact that we will all experience negative things in our lives that will trigger negative emotions. Emotional resilience is about how effectively you recover from these situations, turning negative attitudes, thoughts and emotions into more positive ones?

Personal Power

How much do you take control of your life, seeing yourself as being responsible for your own actions? The opposite of personal power is to see yourself as a victim, always looking to blame other people or things for your failure to succeed.

Goal Directedness?

How clear are you on your goals and how much do your attitudes, beliefs and actions support you by moving you towards these goals?

Flexibility

Change is a fact of life. All of us will experience regular changes at work and at home. Flexibility is about how free you feel to adapt your thoughts, attitudes and behavior in times of change, seeing change as an opportunity .?

Relationship Management

Trust

It is not good to totally trust all people all of the time, as this may lead to disappointment At the same time, the world would be a very lonely and negative place if you are always suspicious . Emotionally intelligent trust lies somewhere in the middle, being carefully trusting of people and remembering when it may be wise to keep things to yourself until that trust has been earned

Interdependence

Do you depend too much on others, worried about how successful you would be on your own? Do you link your own identity too much with those around you, finding false security in the fact you have successful friends or are married to a great partner?

Do you believe that the only way to get something done properly is to do it yourself? Do you think working with others holds you back and that you are much better off doing things on your own?

Interdependence is about having healthy attitudes about working with others. While recognizing that you can be successful on your own, it is about truly believing that cooperating with others will lead to something more productive (having a 1+1 = 4 philosophy).

Conflict Handling

Both of?extremes?, Passive means Shy , move away from conflict ?and Aggressive means View conflict as a battle where there is a winner and loser ,?are ineffective ways of managing conflict.

?A healthy balance between these two approaches is being assertive; standing up for your own wants and needs while at the same time being prepared to listen to, understand and compromise with others .

I am pretty sure that you have gained enormous insights about Emotional Intelligence and I believe you will translate them in your daily living to design a better tomorrow and if you want to talk about in detail about Emotional Intelligence and empowerment in your life , feel free and open to talk with me .