Emotional Intelligence: What's the takeaway?

As we had a sold-out crowd for the emotional intelligence workshop, ran by Ann Logan from Vanguard, we wanted to share key takeaways, even if you missed it.

What even is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize our own feelings and those of others, motivate ourselves, and manage emotions in ourselves and in our interpersonal relationships. Research shows that one’s emotional intelligence has a clear impact on their performance and it’s something you can grow. Increasing your emotional intelligence will not only make you a more productive and self-aware individual, but it will also create a more inclusive environment that is beneficial to the workplace.
Emotional Intelligence is broken down into 5 categories:

1. Self-Awareness – the ability to know your strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and what your impact is on others. Everyone dreads the strengths and weaknesses interview question, but now you don’t have to. Being self-aware starts with the basic understanding of getting to know yourself. Take advantage of your strengths, use them to your advantage, and use them to help motivate others. When the opportunity arises for you to shine, take it. Show your worth and share with others. Whether it’s at a high-level meeting or just one on one with a co-worker, volunteer to help and shine! Sharing your expertise can go a long way. Triggers and weaknesses aren’t always a bad thing, especially if you can recognize them. Triggers can be a person, a word, the way something is said to you, everyone has different triggers. At some point, if you haven’t already, you’ll find yourself in a tough conversation and while sometimes you see it coming, and other times it can be blind-siding. Knowing what your triggers are and being aware of them, can prevent you from having an emotional reaction.​
2. Empathy – recognizing, understanding and appreciating how other people feel. Let’s go back to that tough/conflict conversation, whether you’re the one who initiated it or not, are you listening to understand or listening to respond? Genuinely, actively listening is the big one here. Everyone needs to be heard and be validated. You do not always need to respond or question what others are saying. Listening helps you to better understand others around you and allows you to build a better rapport with them, which we’ll learn more about on key ingredient #4. When you are an active and engaged listener, you make others feel appreciated and respected, you can stop assumptions while increasing your EQ. 
3. Self-Regulation – controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods. You’ve been blindsided by someone who has an issue, you’re actively listening and now they’ve set off a trigger, what’s next?  What’s your coping mechanism to stay calm? We all get in our own heads on a regular basis about anything and everything. We must stop the inner dialogue about things we cannot control and other people. Far too often, we make assumptions about other people that are generally false. This ties back to #1 and #2, stopping the inner dialogue and assumptions, continue to actively listen to understand and knowing yourself enough to know how to cope. Sometimes your self-regulation coping skill is to ask for time to digest or to think about it.
4. Social Skill/Awareness – building rapport with others to move them in desired directions. Steps 1, 2 and 3 funnels into the social side – you’ve been triggered, you’ve taken a few breaths and think you’ve handled the problem well, I guess. How do your actions effect the others around you or your team? If you’re upset about something, does everyone feel it? Building those empathetic relationships with your team opens the door to feedback, so ask for it. Stop assuming you know or that you’ll figure it out, have constructive conversations and ask, “What can I be doing better? Can you help me, help you?”
5. Motivation – personal drive to improve and achieve. This is the ultimate driver of anyone’s behavior. Finally, motivation for yourself and your team, putting all of these pieces together. Open communication with your team to learn what motivates them is extremely important but also think about the basics. Setting expectations and realistic goals is motivating for anyone. If you’re not working towards something, why are you doing it? Tell them where you’d like to see them grow and vice versa, where do they think you could be doing better?  Work together to set goals for them and for your business and keep asking for feedback.

What have we learned?
Emotional Intelligence can be grown and can boost your emotions and interpersonal relationships. Get to know yourself, ask others for help when you need it and realize you can’t control everything. Take a step back when you need to and learn to keep your cool. Not only will you feel better, but you will make everyone around you feel valued and respected.  Stop assuming, ask for feedback.

Other resources Ann shared:

• Free emotional intelligence assessment: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/ei-quiz.htm
• In-depth Emotional Intelligence assessment/book: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
• Podcast: The Career Channel: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 episode - this was a 20 minute podcast with the author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0