Increasing EQ NOW Should Be HR's First Priority

As we were saying yesterday, we realised that, while the mental health crisis precipitated by the Covid trauma and the fundamental changes in the workplace continues, we can not ignore yet another crisis - that around the lack of emotional intelligence that we see in every organisation and at every level.?

It is as urgent if not even more so because it informs our collective ability to heal from the trauma and to adapt to the new normal - the higher everyone’s EQ, the more self-aware, self-repairing and more invested in growth and a healthy mind and psyche for both their own self and the team.?

In other words, as we have said before, we strongly believe that the HumanDebt can only be tackled by the individuals and teams themselves through human work and that human work needs them to have a rather high EQ.?

And a high EQ is far from typical for most people. After all, what should we expect when nothing is done to increase so-called "soft skills" around emotions and communication in any formal setting? So what is it that we can do to change that and change that fast? Enter intentional, empowering practice formative action. We deliver it through our Team Actions or Plays in the Team Wellbeing and Psychological Safety Dashboard’s Playbook and this series that we have just announced will be under the “EQ Quick Wins” umbrella and touch on topics such as:

- Naming emotions;

- Recognising internal triggers and increasing self-awareness

- Recognising emotions in others;

- Increasing our capacity for compassion;

- Expressing Empathy;

- Mirroring;

- Moving from self-awareness to team awareness;

- Conversational turn-taking;

- Encouraging relating;

- Creating a gratitude pathway;

- Collectively reaffirming purpose;

- Understanding and sensing the emotional bond;

- Recognising team dynamics;

- Breathing and mindfulness;

- Learning how to assess intentionality and apply that;

- A view of impression management against looking “too emotional”;

- “Put yourself in my shoes” exercises;

- Vulnerability practice

In this video, I go over why we needed to find the most efficient way of delivering an increase in EQ and confidence level. I go over what we have discovered as a company when it comes to this topic while working with our clients and I also underline that we view each Play in this series as tackling two different aspects:

- An educational injection - Knowledge delivered as clearly as possible to empower the team with basic definitions, clarity and a shared vocabulary around emotions, body language, reactions, triggers, etc

- A hands-on section - Tips, tricks, ideas, and suggestions of things to experiment with to bring you up to emotional guru level quickly.?

In the first play of its sort which is already live in the software in the Playbook for existent clients today, they learn the definitions of the basic emotions sets then they do exercises around Social mirroring and are given a few actionable tips for an action that comes easy and naturally to some and is debilitatingly hard for others: looking into each other’s eyes.

The goal of the entire “EQ Quick Wins” Series of plays is to make the human work more accessible and easier to engage with on a regular basis by removing some of the impostor syndromes that exist around the formerly taboo topic of emotions at work.?

We hope to hear from you - come and pick our brains and do your own EQ-increasing campaign or come speak to us about getting our software in your organisation but whatever you do, don’t ignore the above, people will not invest the time or know the efficient ways to deliver knowledge that will get them up to speed on this topic on their own and we oughtn’t to expect?they would.

If you’re engaged in any L&D activity these days and it isn’t to transform command and control into servant leadership or to increase your people’s EQ and communication and help them develop a human work practice I would urge you to look at what you’re doing instead and ask yourself how in the world you can justify its priority over these glaring imperatives.

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At?PeopleNotTech?we make?software?that measures and improves the wellbeing and Psychological Safety of teams, come see a DEMO.

“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt?.”

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link