Four Simple Ways to Work on your EQ

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Self-awareness, the healthy management of our emotions and empathy, or how we relate to and perceive others’ emotions, have a positive impact on every part of our life, and underpin a successful career. Refining and deepening our emotional resilience and intelligence is a long-term commitment, but there are some simple ways to start to develop your EQ every day and allow it to signpost you to success…

 

Lean into your feelings

Your emotions are powerful pieces of information about your life; signposts to your needs, boundaries, ambitions and wants. Emotional intelligence means not shying away from them or jumping in to edit them too quickly – all emotions have a natural wave that rises, crests and then fades naturally, so don’t try to bypass this. Studies have also cited that greater awareness of emotions and the information they are conveying to us (high emotional literacy) is something that can strongly enhance the process and impact of critical reflection (i). If you downplay or dismiss your emotions before you have a chance to feel them fully and think them through you lose clarity on what you are actually feeling and the intelligence this offers. Research, such as the landmark study by Harvard professor Daniel Wegner (ii) also shows that attempting to minimize or suppress emotions only amplifies them – here participants told to avoid thinking about white bears found it difficult to do so; later, when the ban was lifted, they thought about white bears much more than the control group did. 

Label your feelings correctly

Naming our emotions properly, or what psychologists call ‘labelling’ is a crucial part of helping you to understand what you are feeling and why. This kind of signposting is the first part of a psychological chain that leads to decision making, so the more refined you can be in understanding your emotional state the better your response choices will be and the more aligned with your real needs. Avoid broad brushstrokes in your inner talk: instead of feeling uncomfortable and calling it ‘unhappy’ or ‘annoyed’ try to go further into the emotion and be more specific. You might be frustrated, disappointed or perhaps even envious. Effectively managing and directing your emotions is a fundamental pillar of EQ and the first step to this is to know what they are.

Empathise with yourself as well as your colleagues

Empathy is about recognising emotions in others and being able to understand why someone might feel or behave in a certain way. If you can ‘put yourself in another person’s shoes’ and appreciate their perspective, then your EQ is high, giving you an approachable and open manner – and a valuable ability to see the world from a variety of perspectives. To be empathetic you have to be able to think beyond the things that concern you, connect with someone else’s reality – and communicate that to them. Start by putting aside your own viewpoint and try to appreciate that people only react to a situation with the knowledge they have. Acknowledging their perspective is important, as is checking in with your own attitude – what is the priority in the interaction for you? Building relationships, finding a solution or getting your own way? Listen carefully to the other person and if in doubt, ask them to explain their position. Most importantly, include yourself in your empathetic communication every day. Adapting and practicing these abilities with yourself will improve your EQ as well as helping you to feel supported by yourself on all levels.

Learn from criticism, let go of perfection

Criticism is not an easy thing for anyone to hear and accept, but with an emotionally intelligent approach you can often take useful information from it – even if it’s delivered less constructively than you might like. You have two choices in the way you can deal with negative feedback when it arises – get upset and ‘react’, or make a decision to ‘act’ and try to learn from the situation. In the face of criticism, try to focus less on the delivery and more on how the feedback can help you or your team improve – employing a ‘growth mindset’ to evaluate the information you have been given, rather than getting mired down in emotional reactions such as frustration, anger or a sense of unfairness. Changing your inner talk from one of criticism to growth is also important and part of that is to understand that perfection is an illusion, and aiming for it can in fact be a de-motivating force. If you make a mistake on the way to a goal then acknowledge it, but then let go of your misstep and focus instead on how you’ll grow and improve next time. Everyone makes mistakes. What will increase your EQ is how you rebound from a setback.

 

Footnotes

(i) https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/conf/olkc/archive/olkc6/papers/id_252.pdf

(ii) http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/10/unwanted-thoughts.aspx

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