Daniel Goleman writes an interesting book entitled Emotional Intelligence - Why it can matter more than IQ. This subject is just as important to finding and keeping a job as one's technical skills and IQ. Some of the posts I'll publish include:
1. Impulse control (the marshmallow example)
2. Conquering one's anxieties and worries & mood lifters to overcome depression
3. The Power of Positive Thinking
4. Getting into the Flow
5. The power of Empathy
6. Managing with the heart/organizational savvy
7. Overcoming timidity
8. Building Relationships with our LinkedIn connection
9. Coaching for Collaboration and Accountability in training, incentive and wellness programs
10. Other blogs on emotional intelligence and it's application to the job/career search may be interspersed with the above topics
Emotional Intelligence can be categorized into these 5 domains:
1. Knowing one's emotions: Self-awareness - recognizing a feeling as it happens is the keystone of emotional intelligence. People who are certain about their feelings are better pilots of their lives.
2. Managing emotions: Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness.
3. Motivating oneself: Marshalling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery and for creativity.
4. Recognizing emotions in others: Empathy is the fundamental "people skill". People who are empathetic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need.
5. Handling relationships: The art of relationship is a skill in managing emotions of others. These skills undergird popularity, leadership and interpersonal effectiveness.
While I will relate some examples, I'll provide applications and exercises for you to exercise your emotional intelligence muscles. I invite my readers to comment.
A blog I found on my EI group includes:
Find the Good in Others - A Leadership Lesson and Three Benefits
My mom passed away last year around Mother's Day. It has been a difficult year to say the
least. She was the matriarch and really the center of our family. My mom was a fighter and kind and generous beyond measure. I have saved so many kind notes that people wrote about her after her passing. I always knew my mom was very, very special, but the many stories and kind thoughts told me things about her that I never knew.
Unfortunately I have been to my share of funerals since then. And I have observed that people who pass on are really wonderful people. So I ask, why do we have to wait until people are gone to recognize how special they really are? The answer is we don't.
Everyone has good in them, we just have to look. And when we find it we ought to express it. There is a saying that you will get whatever you look for. If you want to see the bad in people, you will find it. If you want to find the positive, you will find that as well. What does this mean for leaders? Here are the benefits of finding the good in others:
1. People are attracted personally to others who see in them what others might not. I have always told my children that if you want to make lots of friends, find good things about others and express it.
2. People are attracted to others who find the good in general. Would you rather hang around positive or negative people? Your answer to that question might say a lot about what you usually find and search for in others.
3. In every person there is some variety of bud preparing to blossom. You can't develop what you don't search to find in others. It is to your advantage as a leader to find those buds, but it will require you to find the good first.
Another blog differentiating between goals and action:
least. She was the matriarch and really the center of our family. My mom was a fighter and kind and generous beyond measure. I have saved so many kind notes that people wrote about her after her passing. I always knew my mom was very, very special, but the many stories and kind thoughts told me things about her that I never knew.Unfortunately I have been to my share of funerals since then. And I have observed that people who pass on are really wonderful people. So I ask, why do we have to wait until people are gone to recognize how special they really are? The answer is we don't.
Everyone has good in them, we just have to look. And when we find it we ought to express it. There is a saying that you will get whatever you look for. If you want to see the bad in people, you will find it. If you want to find the positive, you will find that as well. What does this mean for leaders? Here are the benefits of finding the good in others:
1. People are attracted personally to others who see in them what others might not. I have always told my children that if you want to make lots of friends, find good things about others and express it.
2. People are attracted to others who find the good in general. Would you rather hang around positive or negative people? Your answer to that question might say a lot about what you usually find and search for in others.
3. In every person there is some variety of bud preparing to blossom. You can't develop what you don't search to find in others. It is to your advantage as a leader to find those buds, but it will require you to find the good first.
Another blog differentiating between goals and action:
Closing the Knowing Doing Gap
Collectively, we love to learn about how to improve and develop ourselves. We watch shows, read books, and take courses because we want to learn how to change our behavior. There has never been a time in society when we have had more information about what it takes to maintain a healthy body, have effective relationships and be an influential, effective leader. Yet as a society, we are more obese; divorce is more common than couples staying together, and our children have more learning and behavioral problems than ever before. And we still complain about our leader’s incompetence.
So why is this? These are all examples of the knowing doing gap in action. It takes so much more that insight and knowledge to affect behavioral change. As a colleague of mine always says, “Knowing is the booby prize.” Taking in information is a passive activity. Changing behavior is an experiential one. These two activities are governed by different areas of the brain and as much fun as an “aha” moment is, it doesn’t usually go anywhere else.
How often have you gotten excited by reading something or attending a training session only to continue along the same behavioral path that you were on before that great “aha” moment. We can vow to resolve to change our behavior but that doesn’t mean that we are going to do anything that makes us feel uncomfortable. Mark Twain once said “It is easy to quit smoking. I have done it many times.”
Changing behavior requires action and often behavioral change leading to new experiences. This is where the resistance in the brain occurs, because it often doesn’t feel good to act differently. In fact, it can cause feelings of anxiety, embarrassment and vulnerability, for example, which no one really wants to feel. Setting goals is a fantastic exercise and people get really good at doing this. Not understanding that behavioral change is an emotionally driven activity that takes emotional self-management and feelings of discomfort to achieve it derails many of our good intentions.
Setting goals doesn’t mean that we have the emotional buy in from ourselves to actually achieve them. As soon as we feel discomfort, we can rationalize why the change we are seeking isn’t that important, or things are really okay the way they are. Emotional self-indulgence takes the place of the development of emotional self-management.
We need to be able to tolerate our emotions and use them to drive us toward our true goals, rather than hijacking us and leaving us in a chronic state of disillusionment with ourselves. Of course we can always rationalize that we are really okay, even fabulous the way we are. But inside, we know better.
So why is this? These are all examples of the knowing doing gap in action. It takes so much more that insight and knowledge to affect behavioral change. As a colleague of mine always says, “Knowing is the booby prize.” Taking in information is a passive activity. Changing behavior is an experiential one. These two activities are governed by different areas of the brain and as much fun as an “aha” moment is, it doesn’t usually go anywhere else.
How often have you gotten excited by reading something or attending a training session only to continue along the same behavioral path that you were on before that great “aha” moment. We can vow to resolve to change our behavior but that doesn’t mean that we are going to do anything that makes us feel uncomfortable. Mark Twain once said “It is easy to quit smoking. I have done it many times.”
Changing behavior requires action and often behavioral change leading to new experiences. This is where the resistance in the brain occurs, because it often doesn’t feel good to act differently. In fact, it can cause feelings of anxiety, embarrassment and vulnerability, for example, which no one really wants to feel. Setting goals is a fantastic exercise and people get really good at doing this. Not understanding that behavioral change is an emotionally driven activity that takes emotional self-management and feelings of discomfort to achieve it derails many of our good intentions.
Setting goals doesn’t mean that we have the emotional buy in from ourselves to actually achieve them. As soon as we feel discomfort, we can rationalize why the change we are seeking isn’t that important, or things are really okay the way they are. Emotional self-indulgence takes the place of the development of emotional self-management.
We need to be able to tolerate our emotions and use them to drive us toward our true goals, rather than hijacking us and leaving us in a chronic state of disillusionment with ourselves. Of course we can always rationalize that we are really okay, even fabulous the way we are. But inside, we know better.
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