What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence is the common sense that we forget about when we’re in “work mode”. It’s about understanding what we’re feeling and what those around us are feeling. When we learn to connect with our emotions we can find ways to manage them in the workplace and in the rest of our lives. Actually EQ or Emotional Intelligence is really important at work.
How is Emotional Intelligence Important At Work?
Emotional intelligence is crucial to success in the workplace. In fact, IQ alone leaves between 75% and 96% of workplace success unexplained. In fact, a study of Harvard graduates in law, medicine, teaching and business found a negative or zero correlation with their eventual career success.
“What you learned in school distinguishes high performers in a handful of the 600 jobs where competence studies have been completed”, according to research carried out by Lyle Spencer Jnr, Hay/McBer Consulting.
The five key competencies in emotional intelligence are:
- Self-Awareness
- Self-Regulation
- Motivation
- Social Competencies
- Social Skills
Sometimes, for so many different reasons, we allow ourselves to ignore our emotions. We know we’re not totally satisfied, sometimes we feel flat, sometimes, lost, sometimes angry and we suppress those feelings and put them in the “just the way things are” box. When this happens, we ignore the possibility that we can actually do something about it. What’s more, when we’re busy ignoring our emotions we risk extreme reactions. Perhaps we allow ourselves to believe that the only solution is to leave our job or we pray for our manager to leave. We assume that the problem will go away if we move to a new environment, and yet we ignore the fact that we’re the common denominator everywhere we go. We get in the way of ourselves.
So, what can we do about it?
We learn how to become consciously aware of what we’re feeling, all the time and then learn to actively manage our emotions in the workplace and elsewhere. Negative emotions such as feelings of anger, jealousy, feeling slighted, feeling misunderstood, feeling under-appreciated, resentment, hopelessness, insecurity, fear, anxiety, feeling isolated, or feeling powerless all contribute to underlying feelings of dissatisfaction at work. Even worse, they contribute to procrastination, poor performance and challenging working relationships.
It’s impossible to give a full answer in one article, so here are some suggestions as to how you can improve your emotional literacy and your emotional intelligence.
Be Aware Of Your Focus
If you find yourself in a position where you’ve not been happy for a long time – you’ll have a ‘focus habit’ of noticing everything that you don’t like about your job. Whether it’s a colleague that you find infuriating or a manager that you find challenging. Be aware that whatever you focus on you get more of in your world. Let me give you an example. Have you ever bought a car and then suddenly you notice so many more people driving the same brand of car on the road? Once the new car is fully in side your focus and awareness, you see more of them. Does it mean that there were less of those cars before you bought them or does that mean that you’re just noticing them? It’s the latter.
So, get into the habit of noticing what’s good about your role, your job and your colleagues. It takes practice and yet once you form the habit of focussing on what’s good rather than what’s bad it will deliver you a dramatic improvement in the way you feel about your role.
Know There Is Always Choice
Resist the urge to pretend that you don’t have power in your own life. If you do, you feel powerless and this is a very challenging emotion to manage. We always have a choice. Even when we’re faced with one, two or several choices that are equally unattractive, it’s always important to know that we do have a choice. We choose to stay in our job rather than to leave and go to another one.
You gain nothing from feeling as if you’re a victim of your circumstances. Just making this small acknowledgement can allow you to release feelings of powerlessness. If you feel trapped or powerless your ability to see solutions vanishes. As soon as you can notice that everything that is going on in your life is your choice, you can use that control to get yourself into a better situation, either in your current position or in a new one.
Make Time For Chit Chat
Often when we’re feeling dissatisfied with work, one of the first things that happens is we stop talking to people about anything other than work. We forget that it’s also important to build personal relationships with our colleagues. People like them so if you’ve allowed yourself to slip into the role of being an outsider, your team is less likely to collaborate with you and less likely to accept you. This only serves to increase feelings of frustration and unhappiness.
One of the most important things you can do – something that can shape your entire work experience and career – is to start to build a strong support network from the first day you begin a job. Slowly, over time, these work alliances will be there to help you move ahead, and also when you need support accomplishing everyday assignments.
So, make sure you’re taking an interest in the people around you. The more you take an interest in them, the more they’ll take an interest in you. Focus on those relationships you can build by being helpful and supportive as you get chances to work together. Most importantly, base the relationships on positive actions and not office gossip or complaints. Over time the reputation and relationships you build help you. And you never know which of those people might get you jobs in the future. What’s more, it makes your working environment so much more pleasant.
Notice What Attitude You’re Working
Ask yourself this “am I happy when other people achieve success?” If you come into work with a negative attitude, perhaps you see everyone else as ‘wrong’ and you as ‘right’ then you are the one who suffers. Your attitude shows in the way you walk, the way you talk, and the way you converse with colleagues. So even if you think you’re doing a good acting job, your mannerisms, tone of voice and other non-verbal communication will give you away. If your attitude is negative, other people won’t want to work with you. So, change your attitude on the inside and it will show on the outside. People will naturally gravitate towards people with a good attitude.
Notice Your Emotions
When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself how you feel. If you find that the first thing that comes into your head is not an emotion, then ask yourself what actual emotion you’re feeling. If you know how you’re feeling every morning then you know what your emotional threshold is. This gives you an insight into how you’re going to react to things during the day.
This level of awareness will also give you a much better benchmark on how you feel generally. Because our brain generalises everything we do, if we have just three bad days in a row we generalise the experience and begin to think that we’re always having a bad time. This process allows us to see what’s really going on and, most importantly, notice when we feel good.
Be a “Can Do” Person
When we get our heads out of seeing the anger and hurt and all that is missing in our work lives, we open up to seeing what might turn into real opportunity. Opportunity is all around us if we just learn how to look for it. Get yourself into the mindset of being a ‘can do’ person rather than a ‘crusher or ideas’ both in your own mind and with others. Your colleagues will react more positively to you and you’ll feel good.
Resist The Blame Game
The blame game is when you point your finger at everyone and everything except yourself, blaming the world for your misfortunes. This is simply a waste of time. If you get caught up in negative emotions or pointless behaviours where you choose not to be at cause in your world, you lose precious time and perspective that could be helping you create a more enjoyable experience for yourself in your career.
If you blame others, people will react to who they see and not who you really might be – or what you could offer them. So, be the person you want others to see.
Resist The Urge To Always Be Right
One of the key challenges we face as we gain more experience is knowing what works and what doesn’t. And yet, this level of confidence in our role means we may not see new solutions or different options. Even worse, we may resist suggestions made by others and convey a message of “I know and I’m always right.” Awareness is the first step to releasing this and then practise. Nobody likes someone who’s always right!
Find Out More
To find out more about coaching with me, or if you’d like to arrange a call to see if we’re a good fit for one another, please send me an email to sarah@sarahmerron.com.
You can book coaching online here.
Find out about NLP Training here.
If you’re interested in group training and coaching, you can check out my Farcical Life Programmes here.
You may also be interested to watch this video about the 5 Emotional Cancers by Stephen Covey: http://youtu.be/f4uuZYAdbes
