THE TRUTH ABOUT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Too many people these days are getting the concept of Emotional Intelligence wrong. They think it’s all about controlling your emotions and those of others, stuffing emotions, not expressing them, and potentially acting robotic.

Current societal conditioning has made emotional intelligence practically a superpower, and the lack of emotional intelligence has the power to destroy relationships, personally and in business.

It is each of our own responsibilities to understand our emotions, and to work with them to optimize our abilities and best use our emotions’ affect to enhance our meaning and convey our messages with rigor and authenticity.

The following list of words identify some emotional states, with which many of us are familiar. Check in with the feeling that each word brings...

Each of us is responsible for the awareness, acceptance, and management of our unique emotional states, and having the discipline to understand them and adjust them toward the state that we each choose is the best for us. It is also important to allow yourself to feel the emotions that you are feeling, respecting the messages they are sending you, lest your emotions get the best of you, and you lose your bearing, self-control, and professional competence. 

One of my associates (Sylvia) is often emotionally “reactive,” often slipping into fits of anger, based on frustrating situations that are completely out of her control. She gets caught-up in the drama of a situation, and quickly spiral into an emotional fit, not realizing that her relative lack of awareness and self-control is inflaming the situation, increasing her stress levels, alienating her from the people on her team, and potentially damaging her health by increasing her blood pressure and general anxiety levels. 

The real key to having an effective EQ is knowing how your emotions effect you, and use them in your favor. Here are some actions each of us can take to optimize our emotional intelligence, resilience, and capability: 

1. Get to know your emotions. Allow them to show you how to translate and understand the true meaning and essence of messages, either communicated or received.
2. Don’t stuff your emotions. Feel them, understand them, work within them.
3. Understand how you are wired. Delve into your family of origin situation, and determine how you were conditioned to think the way you do. With this awareness, you can then accept or shift your mindset, heart-set, and psychological nuances.

ESTABLISH YOUR BASELINE

It’s important to first determine your baseline emotion, establishing and deciding on what emotion you’d like to most consistently have. Then it’s all about self-awareness as you deviate from that position, calibrating and governing yourself along the way.

For instance, if your ideal default emotion is peace and serenity, and then you feel frustrating creeping in, it’s time to respect that awareness, feel what’s causing that emotion to happen, and adjust your situation to bring you back to baseline, lest that frustration lead toward an extreme toward anger and rage.

On the other side, if you see melancholy creeping in, it’s important to be aware of this and consciously adjust your feelings, lest your emotions start trending toward sadness and depression.

EMOTIONS ARE ALL ABOUT GIVE AND TAKE

Emotions go two ways: how we process and transmit them, and how we receive from others.

Regarding receiving emotions, here are some fundamentals:

• Control what you can, and stop trying to control what you can’t. Many people exercise control dramas, which can influence how are you emotionally process conversations.
• Don’t take things personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others do and say is a projection of their own reality. Stay immune to the opinions and actions of others.
• Don’t make assumptions about other’s situations. Instead, ask questions and express what you really want. Communicate clearly to avoid misunderstandings and drama.

Regarding how you transmit emotions, the key to effectively managing those emotions is to again create a baseline that you consider to be ideal for you. That baseline is usually somewhere between rage and anger and sorrow and despair. You, and only you, can determine what your optimal zone of emotional intelligence is.

Once that zone is established, it’s your responsibility to be aware of what will pull you off that foundation, and exercise your ability to control your emotion, to re-calibrate and reposition you into that optimal zone of emotional effectiveness.

Chris Steely is Managing Director of GPS Business Group, a veteran international business consultant, serial entrepreneur, professional facilitator, coach, extreme leader, and executive strategist with repeated success pioneering business development efforts, working with companies and thought leaders around the world.

He's trained and coached over 1,000 business coaches in 26 countries, and served as one of Tony Robbins' top business coaches for three years running.

He’s an MBA, former U.S. Marine Corps Logistics Officer, former corporate vice president and senior director of a public IT company, business owner, NCAA national champion and coach, and inspirational author & speaker.