How To Harness the Power of Emotional Intelligence To Improve Your Workplace

If you can provide a workplace where your employees relate to each other, you’ll see an increase in profitability, productivity, and innovation. Tapping into the power of emotional intelligence is a surefire way to make this happen.

Picture your ideal colleague, employee, or supervisor: What qualities do they have? Mental intelligence (IQ) is definitely important for success in life, but the characteristics that make a person — and an employee — really great are cultivated through emotional intelligence (EQ).?

Emotional intelligence is defined as one’s ability to communicate effectively, empathize easily, overcome conflict efficiently, and manage emotions calmly — essentially, it means to know your emotions and harness them for good. Wouldn’t someone with those qualities be a great teammate??

People are clamoring for connection in the workplace, and a company with a supportive environment that fosters this spirit of connection will be able to attract top candidates.?

Employees want to feel appreciated, and even as many workplaces remain mostly virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are ways to ensure this attitude of graciousness and community. In fact, it’s more important now than ever.?

Knowing how to foster emotional intelligence in yourself and your employees is the first step to being able to Create Magic At Work?. After you’ve developed EQ, you can begin the exciting process of uncovering your spiritual intelligence (SQ).?

But first, here are three steps for exercising emotional intelligence, with simple tools to make this practice easier. This will set you on the path to becoming a transformative and innovative leader or employee.?

Three crucial tools for emotional intelligence

1. Look inward and prioritize self-awareness ?

The first step to being an emotionally intelligent person — who can inspire others to tap into their own emotional intelligence — is twofold: be aware of the fact that you experience emotions, and think about the triggers that cause these emotions to bubble up inside you.?

Any workplace is chock-full of potential emotional triggers, even for the calmest employees. Say your coworker sends you an email that appears rude or combative, and you start to feel emotionally hijacked: What do you do? Believe it or not, the fight, flight, or freeze response you might automatically gravitate toward comes from an ancient defense mechanism that our brains are wired to perform in scary situations.?

But a rude email from a coworker isn’t life threatening — no matter how mad it makes you feel! And the fight, flight, or freeze response that may help you in a truly dangerous situation will only limit your innovation and productivity at work.?

By taking stock of the things that trigger you, you can prepare for these types of situations. The first step of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, and by checking in with yourself and recognizing what sets you off, you’ll be in the right place to handle rocky workplace dynamics without losing your cool.?

2. Develop an emotional management strategy ??

After you’ve identified your triggers and recognized your emotional weaknesses, the next step is figuring out how to deal with these feelings.?

It’s well known that deep breathing can help calm down some of those intense feelings that come from being emotionally triggered. Taking some deep breaths will not only give you a moment to pause, but the extra oxygen will actually go to your brain and allow you to problem solve and find creative solutions for the problem you’re encountering. Deep breathing should be your first line of defense in a triggering situation.

If you want to go deeper into developing a strategy to manage your emotions at work, consider creating an “appreciation anchor”: something you’re grateful for that you can think of whenever you feel attacked or are in a situation where the tension is running high.?

If you can carry a physical object with you — such as a locket, crystal, or picture of your loved ones — that will bring you back to thinking about everything you’re grateful for, you’ll be brought back down to earth.?

Once you’re aware of your own emotions and have a strategy in place to deal with them, you can start to innovate and think creatively at work, and you’ll be able to implement big-picture ways of building emotional intelligence at work.?

3. Build connections with your employees and colleagues ??

If your workplace doesn’t offer a sense of connection to its employees, they will be disengaged and uninspired.

Isolation and loneliness are all too common in offices everywhere, both physical and virtual. These feelings are not just costing you money but also the kind of creativity and innovation that comes from a well-connected team of people who feel heard and appreciated.?

On a personal level, you can challenge yourself to be the spark to a more well-connected workplace by building a bridge with people you disagree with. Since you now know your emotional triggers and have a way of managing them, you’re in the right space to start empathizing with the person who may have set you off in the first place.?

If someone sends you an email that threatens to send you reeling into the fight, flight, or freeze space, it’s probably not your first move to think about how they’re feeling in that moment. But if you do, you might realize that they could be having a hard day, or that the intent of their email probably wasn’t to cause you harm. You can reach out to this person and rewrite the story from a heated email fight to an opportunity for connection and compassion.?

As a leader in the workplace, you need to be willing to take the high road in order to cultivate a spirit of togetherness that will create happy employees and generally improve your company’s output and productivity.?

Plus: Don’t burn yourself out!

It can be tempting to put in a few extra hours of work a week — or to ask your employees to stay overtime — when you’re stressed out with tons of unfinished projects at your feet. But working more than 55 hours a week is not only unproductive, it’s actually a serious health risk.?

You won’t be able to experience any of the benefits of emotional intelligence if you’re exhausted and spending all of your time thinking about work.?

Going deeper: Spiritual intelligence?

So you’ve established emotional self-awareness, an emotional management strategy, and are beginning to foster connections with your colleagues and employees, prioritizing compassion above all.?

Now what?

Emotional intelligence is really only the first part of how to Create Magic At Work?. After you feel comfortable with EQ, it’s time to explore spiritual intelligence (SQ), which is a 21-skill framework developed by Cindy Wigglesworth.?

You can only get to a place of career and personal enlightenment by first becoming in tune with your EQ and then diving headfirst into uncovering the secrets of SQ. And despite its name, you don’t have to be religious at all to find your spiritual intelligence!?

There is so much to look forward to if you decide to take the leap and start paying attention to your EQ and SQ. Stay tuned to the Create Magic At Work? podcast for your guide to developing these vital workplace skills.?

An international advocate for healthy workplaces by coaching and training an elevated leadership skill set, Amy Lynn Durham is the founder of Create Magic At Work?, author of a book by the same name and host of the Create Magic At Work? podcast.