Do you want to build stronger relationships and succeed at school and work? And ultimately achieve your career and personal goals? Then you must improve your emotional intelligence which can help you adapt to any workplace environment to perform better.
Besides intellectual ability, you also need emotional intelligence to achieve success in your life. Emotional intelligence (otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ) will help you excel in your career.
The intellectual ability or your intelligent quotient (IQ) isn’t enough to achieve success in your life rather it’s your emotional intelligence (also known as emotional quotient or EQ) that will help you manage the stress and emotions and excel in your career.
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What does it mean to be emotionally intelligent?
If you ever experience any stressful situation, visualize yourself as an observer, not a participant. Almost like you are looking down on the situation from above changing your perspective. Notice the corresponding shift in your emotional state. This self-awareness now freed of its emotional charge will help you realize how you are impacted by the situation and how you are impacting others. This is emotional intelligence that can help you to tune in to the emotions that others experience.
Leading with this emotional intelligence will help you and entire organizations realize their full potential and improve their relationships with others.
Effects of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence lets us deal with a wide range of emotionally challenging situations. Having a good set of emotional intelligence skills will help you operate on an emotional level that will develop a more successful workplace.
Once you’ve developed most of the basic skills of emotional intelligence, you’ll be able to –
- Manage your emotions without allowing them to swamp you.
- Discern others’ emotions and respond accordingly.
- Think rationally about the consequences of any arguments.
- Motivate yourself to get any job done ultimately increasing overall team performance and productivity.
- Advance towards your academic or professional success, improve relationships, amplify communication skills, and so on.
- Relieve yourself from chronic stress, anger, anxiety, depression etc.
- Empathize with how other people are feeling and consider how you would respond if you were in their situation.
- Increase your leadership skills.
- Increase overall team performance.
Why should you aim at improving Emotional Intelligence?
We all want to build a good social relationship in the workplace for better job performance. At work, you have to motivate yourself to get along with others considering the negative feedbacks and workplace scenarios. To clarify, too much stress can stand between you and your success if you are not so good at managing it. And that’s why you need high emotional intelligence which will reward more career success than having a high IQ.
So, here are some common reasons to focus on improving your EI:
- Trying to blend in new work environments.
- Seeking to make new friends at work.
- Wanting to excel in your career.
- To prosper as a leader or as a team.
Steps to improve Emotional Intelligence
There are many steps to improving your emotional intelligence but learning how to manage the stress is the first and foremost one. Because, if you can’t manage your emotions you are probably not managing your stress either.
- Pay attention to what other people are feeling.
- Listen to what other people have to say.
- Even body language can convey a great deal of meaning.
- Sensing others’ feelings will help you consider different factors that might be related to that emotion.
- Put yourself into someone else’s perspective to understand their point of views.
- Empathize with other people.
- Imagine how you would feel in their situation.
- Build an emotional understanding of a specific situation to develop stronger emotional skills in the long run.
- Learn how to reason with emotions.
- Consider how your emotions will influence your decisions and others.
- Always think about the outcome.
- Think about how other people respond to assess the role that their emotions play. (guilt trippers)
- Curb your thoughts while listening to others’ stories.
1. Optimize social skills and self-control
Do you know how to communicate and cooperate well with others? If you don’t know how to engage with others, then it’ll be hard for you to improve your emotional intelligence in your workplace. Having a good set of social skills and the ability to self-control will certainly make you a good candidate for any job and help you flourish your relationships in the workplace. So, here are some steps that you can follow to increase your self-control and social skills.
Social Skills
The best way to understand the interactions between you and your colleagues is to develop your interpersonal skills also known as social skills. It’s very important to develop good relationships with people in your workplace. Here are some tips on improving your social skills:
- Learn to realize how effective you are at controlling your emotions.
- Don’t overreact in any situation.
- Be enthusiastic while delivering any information.
- Otherwise, nobody is going to listen to you.
- Try to appear confident in your workplace at all times.
- Be eloquent while speaking in any conversation.
- Avoid mumbling! Use goodwill gestures to build productive relationships.
- Use goodwill gestures to build productive relationships.
- Try to connect with others showing empathy and common interests. It’ll help you to understand other people’s emotions better.
- Focus on building your communication skills such as listening, writing and non-verbal skills as well. These are the key factors to avoid any misunderstandings in conversations.
- Have a mindset to engage in any situation with flexibility. Be open to new ideas and accept the changes.
- Don’t be a pessimistic person. It’s important to remain positive to improve emotional intelligence.
- Get rid of any distractions in your workplace no matter how chaotic your surroundings are.
- Always be polite to your colleagues.
- Last but not the least, Patience is the key! It requires a lot of patience and time to acquire and practice social skills.
Self-Control
Self-control is a prerequisite before developing your social skills. When you are having a hard time dealing with your team, for example, feeling angry or disappointed in your teammates because they are not concentrating well on the given tasks, or you got offended by any means, you should control your emotions instead of firing back. Here are 6 Ways to improve self-control:
- Having the ability to recover from any difficult situation.
- Putting your temptations aside.
- Making sure that your willpower or motivation never gets drained.
- Always try to stay focused on your task no matter the distraction.
- Try focusing on one objective at a time.
- Getting your hands busy with multiple tasks will always put your motivation off and make you exhausted.
- Don’t take actions based on your impulses.
- Take on a healthy diet and make sure you are not sleep-deprived.
To exert self-control powers you must remember that affability is always welcome in any workplace. Hence, you should try to become easily approachable to talk to and coordinate with others in a friendly way.
3. Think before you leap
You should never act without thinking about the consequences. When a heavily imbued emotional event happens, you should take some time before responding. This will allow everyone to think more pragmatically to calm their emotions. On the contrary, if you have a tendency to react to the moment, it can lead to negative aftermaths.
4. Self-awareness
Self-awareness is one of the most important key components of emotional intelligence. It means having the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and how they affect others. Self-awareness encompasses a realistic self-assessment of your strengths and weaknesses and knowing how others recognize you. Besides, you should be adept at understanding your emotions. Always consider the different factors that contribute to your emotions. Having a better understanding of how your emotions affect others, will help you to limit wrongful decisions and self-assess yourself as well.
5. Engage with others
It’s very important to be easily approachable and open yourself to others in your workplace. To respond to others’ experiences, you need to resonate with them first.
- Listen carefully to what other people have to say.
- Don’t be sceptical. Don’t question or doubt other people’s stories or experiences. Let them talk without interruption. Don’t be cynical in your workplace.
- Don’t distrust and disparage others. Be respectful to your colleagues.
Be confident and show empathy. It’ll help you to accelerate success in all areas of your life.
6. Conflict management
Leadership and conflict exist together in any workplace. Almost every workplace is beset with devious people who try to manipulate and shift blames on others and use emotional deceit to benefit themselves. A good leader must recognize and resolve any conflict arising. Otherwise, loss of productivity and revenue, resentment, and misunderstanding are some major problems that can escalate.
7. Dealing with change
Changes are crucial for any business or organization to grow, expand, and to reach any certain goal. Whether the change is in your favour or not, you need to know how to better handle any new situation and stop dwelling on your fear of change. This will ultimately help you to improve your emotional intelligence. Because emotionally intelligent people always maintain a positive attitude towards any odds and adapt themselves to maximize their roles.
8. Regulate your emotions
The primary emotions that construct human nature always tend to predominate our actions. Therefore, it’s important to know how to approach others and what to say or do when you face any negative emotions. Some common negative emotions that we all face in every walk of life are anxiety, fear, guilt, disgust, shame, contempt, despair, and sadness. And it’s quite normal that you’ll experience them in your workplace too which might affect your workplace. Here’s what you can do to govern your emotions:
- Be acquainted with the environments that provoke you.
- If any situation causes you to stress, try to avoid it or learn how to deal with it.
- Think positively and calibrate your emotions for ongoing tasks.
- Prioritize your work and don't get deviated from your guidelines.
- Don’t bottle up your emotions so that you don’t get burned in the long-term.
- Instead, talk to your colleagues or leader if you feel uneasy about any situation.
- Remember to always respond in a friendly way and never react to negative emotions.
Do you know how to hone these skills? The only way to strengthen your emotional intelligence competencies is to work them.
9. Practice is the key
Daniel Goleman, a world-renowned behavioural scientist said that “the part of the brain which supports emotional and social intelligence is the last circuitry of the brain to become anatomically mature and because of neuroplasticity, the brain shapes itself according to repeated experience”. It takes a lot of time and experience in improving emotional intelligence. Knowing what to do and how to do it, will certainly put you one step ahead in your career.
Traits you need to avoid
Fitting in with the employees and working as a team is not an easy task, nor it’s a daunting one. The following are 8 personality traits that you need to steer clear of to improve your emotional intelligence in the workplace.
1. Talking behind someone’s back
We all gossip and cut each other out as a means to feel better about ourselves or entertainment. However, we don’t realize that we might be complaining about them which is more than just venting. When you express your feelings with someone to better understand any situation it’s called venting. But when you try to demean someone by trash-talking or dissing, you’re clearly taking away someone else’s dignity. Therefore, you must hold yourself accountable to make sure your actions reflect your values.
2. Spreading rumours
Do you know when an innocuous conversation turns into a potentially harmful one? Well, it’s certainly a problem caused by negative gossiping about others. It can not only break the trust but also start harassment. Decline in productivity growth, increased anxiety, tensions, divisiveness, even the loss of good talent can be the results of the toxic work environment.
3. Blaming others
Whenever things go south in your workplace, stop constantly shifting responsibilities away from you and onto others. Accept the fact that problems will arise and begin stacking up uncontrollably at some point.
4. Seeking attention
You should not exaggerate to maintain any relationship. Stop talking too much just because you are feeling exuberant. Emotionally Intelligent people shouldn’t brag about their accomplishments.
5. Being control freak
Accept the fact that you can’t always control the outcome of everything around you. It’s encouraged to become open-minded in your workplace instead of being a perfectionist or expecting highly of others.
6. The hushed!
Don’t be aloof in your workplace. Spending most of the time at your desk and shutting yourself off from the rest of the teammates will deteriorate your emotional intelligence.
7. Covert aggression
Don’t cloak your aggressive intentions and behaviours underneath any charming or amiable personality. You’ll gain nothing from taking advantage of or manipulating others but disrespect or hatred.
8. Sense of superiority
One of the most difficult workplace personalities to deal with is the egomaniacs or narcissists. If you are self-absorbed and prone to grandiosity, it’s very likely that you have a pretentious appearance, and you want admiration regardless of your efforts.
Ensuring the Emotional Intelligence in your workplace
Once you have learned the basics of emotional intelligence, it’s time to share those skills with your teammates or employees. Be mindful of the fact that emotional intelligence is not an innate quality. It can be acquired and mastered through practice. If you are the boss or leader of your team or organization, make sure your employees understand your motives and the logic behind your goals. Your good nature and quality will ensure a better working environment.
Instead of being a manipulative leader to get things done, show your teammates that you really care about them and their performance and opinions matter for the overall welfare of the company. Therefore, it’s important to build your team’s emotional intelligence too.
How to improve the Emotional Intelligence of teams
- Once you’ve set goals and shared your visions with your co-workers, it’s time to discuss what triggers your and your teammates’ emotions.
- Build a sense of purpose that your company and teammates should work toward to achieve those goals.
- You should also ask them for continuous feedback for each project and how to better communicate with each other.
- After all, it’s the team effort that’ll take you to success.
- Make sure your teammates understand the rules of your company and always abide by them.
- Don’t just focus on the skills and experience of the team, passion is also crucial that you should spark from time to time.
- If a conflict arises in your workplace, make certain that your employees know the techniques to handle it by cooperating with each other.
- Inaugurate new methods to manage work stress.
- It’s better not to rush or extend any project. Or else, it’ll impact badly on the time management skills of your team.
- Ensure that your team members get enough break time to re-energize themselves to focus more on their activities.
- Demoralize multitasking as it’ll take more time to complete any task.
If anyone on your team is facing any problem that is causing the loss of production, you must find it out as soon as possible and resolve the matter in a friendly way. Don’t wait till you hear about it.
Utilizing and developing the emotional intelligence of your teams can improve both job performance and social capabilities of individuals within the workplace.
Self-assessment of Emotional Intelligence
The first step towards improving your emotional intelligence is to self-assess yourself as a leader or as a teammate. The following questions will help you guide yourself through the process:
- When you engage in any conversation, can you recognize your feelings as you encounter them?
- Do you lose your temper with your teammates?
- Do you feel frustrated when you can’t come up with any solution to a problem?
- Can you control yourself when you feel worried or agitated?
- Is it hard for you to establish a good rapport with your colleagues?
- Do you lose passion for work?
- Do you know your strengths and weaknesses?
- Can you resolve a conflict?
Continuous assessment of the improvement of your emotional intelligence will benefit you in numerous ways whether you are a leader or part of a team.
Remember, everyone has different levels of emotional intelligence based on their individual experiences. Your emotional intelligence level can often be seen through your actions.
Emotional Intelligence assessment for leaders
Leaders are no doubt the pioneers in any company. They have to continuously monitor and motivate their employees to build strong communication skills within their teammates. Therefore, the leaders need to assess their emotional intelligence themselves to achieve a better leadership framework.
You can evaluate your emotional intelligence based on the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test that measures four primary aspects of emotional intelligence-recognizing emotions, using emotions to resolve problems, discerning the causes of emotions, and controlling emotions.
Moreover, you should also assess how your personal characteristics affect your relationships in the workplace. This specific activity is known as temperament and is based on the following parameters:
- Reactivity
- Task orientation
- Vulnerability to stress
- Life experiences
- Adaptability
Based on the aforementioned criteria, you should make a list explaining which temperament factor affects you the most. If you can build and maintain strong relationships, then you can work happily and productively with the surrounding people. It’s also one of the key attributes of being an effective leader.
Emotional Intelligence Assessment for team
In order to make an effective team and to boost their performance, you need constant assessment of your team. You can make a questionnaire to evaluate your team’s emotional intelligence. You can include the following questions in the questionnaire.
- Can you collaborate well with your team?
- Do you have communication issues?
- Are you struggling to motivate yourself to keep pace with your teammates?
- Do you find it difficult to make decisions or follow them?
- Do you or anyone on your team hold any grudge against anyone?
Based upon the answers to these questions you should make an emotional intelligence report for each individual on the team. The report should help you to better the team relationship and team intelligence.
Conclusion
Embracing any positive change by means of improving emotional intelligence will benefit you pragmatically. In the same vein, having greater control over your behaviour and the skills to manage yourself more effectively will empower your overall prosperity. But embracing any change is not an overnight task, that’s where so many of us go astray. And with practice and diligence, you can master your emotional intelligence.
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