Utilize this 6-step Guide to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence in business

Elon Musk can show us a powerful principle of actions speaking louder than words: in an email to his workers, he wrote: “No words can express how much I care about your safety and wellbeing. It breaks my heart when someone is injured building cars and trying their best to make Tesla successful.” Afterwards, Elon reported that for every injury his workers report, he will visit the production line and perform the same task that they perform. This is a great example of emotional intelligence – showing understanding, empathy and putting yourself into someone else’s shoes.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage and identify emotions of yourself and others – empathy, ability to harness emotions, and ability to manage emotions. Once you are aware of your incompetence in this field, you can practise this skill until it becomes automatic behaviour. The workplace can sometimes be a volatile environment, filled with stress, pressure anxiety and even drama. Having emotional intelligence can help you deal with these conflicts and motivate the staff around you.  Emotional intelligence can seem even more important than IQ. A study from UC Berkeley found that emotional intelligence was four times better at predicting a person’s success than measuring IQ.

Of course, the best way to become a master at emotional intelligence is by practice: a study in 2011 found that participants who were trained in key emotional competencies showed lasting improvements in emotional intelligence- this also led to improvements in their physical and mental wellbeing, better social relationships, and lower stress levels. – what can you take from this? Emotional intelligence is not fixed. With enough effort and practice, you can improve how you handle and manage emotions effectively. Why is emotional intelligence so important in the workplace?

Learning to handle criticism will make you progress

When you receive constructive criticism in the workplace, do you tend to get stuck into feeling negative emotions? You must learn the difference between being proactive and reactive. Learn more about the proactive and reactive mindset here. An emotionally intelligent person would reflect on this situation and turn it into a positive outcome. You need to get to a stage where you have a thirst for constructive criticism.

High emotional intelligence increases productivity at work

Having high emotional intelligence can help you motivate other people. By becoming more emotionally intelligent, you will soon learn to value intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is doing something because you enjoy it, rather than doing it for external purposes such as money or status.

 The 6-step guide to becoming more emotionally intelligent

Step 1-acknowledge your emotions

Your emotions are valuable. Ask people with genuine interest how they are feeling. Talk about these emotions and erase the taboo of talking about emotions. Talking allows you to make the next step:

Step 2 -differentiate and analyse your emotions

Different emotions need to be handled differently – for example, when you feel angry towards a colleague due to feeling unappreciated, it would be more appropriate to talk to someone and say, ‘I feel x because I feel unappreciated at work’, rather than ‘person x makes me feel x because they make me feel appreciated at work.’ When handling your emotions, it is useful to diffuse them calmly, rather than put the blame on someone else for how you are feeling.

Step 3 – accept and appreciate all these emotions – emotions are not good or bad

Jillian Michaels Quote: “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

As Julian Michaels once said, ‘get comfortable with being uncomfortable.’ Experiencing negative emotions from time to time is completely normal, it is part of being human.

You may think that happiness is always good, and anger is always bad. But this is not the case: part of emotional intelligence is understanding what purpose a particular emotion is serving you. For example:

  • Being angry is good if you are in an unsafe or abusive situation. Being angry gets you out and gives you the strength you need to move on.

  • Happiness is bad if you are using it to ignore your grief. It can be bad if you are pretending you are happy in a life that isn’t fulfilling your purpose.

Step 4 – reflect on emotions and their origin: write them down

This gives you the time to actively think about them. There are numerous benefits of writing your emotions down on paper. Writing down your emotions will help you do solidify them, thus preparing you to take action. You can break this emotion down into achievable steps to help you deal with this emotion. If you want to find out more about writing your emotions to paper, read this article.

Step 5 – handle your emotions

This can be accomplished through reflecting on past behaviour reactions to emotions and reading books on the topic – ‘the language of emotions’ by Karla McLaren is a great starter. Also, feel free to ask others’ how they have approached a similar situation. For example, how would you deal with a difficult colleague? One could implement different strategies to deal with this situation, for example, getting to know your colleague better so you can understand their perspective. In addition, you could take the time to understand the colleague’s personality – different personalities behave differently, and it’s important to understand their different characteristics and how you can accommodate them accordingly.

Step 6 – handle the emotions of others

Once you have developed your skill of emotional intelligence, you will be able to develop the emotional intelligence of those around you. For example, you can become a great role model for how to respond to conflict effectively and show empathy/sympathy for those around you.

Being emotionally intelligent leads to improving others, making better decisions and improving interpersonal relationships.

If you would like a free coaching session to discover what is stopping you from increasing your emotional intelligence and of your employees, email the phrase ‘FREE COACHING SESSION’ to stevegaskell@actioncoach.com and I would be more than happy to aid in your success.