Emotional Intelligence or EQ is the capacity to recognize, use, comprehend, and control emotions in a productive and good manner. Since the revolution Daniel Goleman’s ‘Emotional Intelligence’ book one of the things should be clarified is the fact that being an open person, attentive to other people’s emotions doesn’t mean being weak. On the contrary, it empowers you giving you the ability to work with any kind of personality types, it constantly improves your communication skills, it even reduces social anxiety and tensions.
Let’s discuss being a fundamentally good, open person and how to increase your quality of work and be one step ahead of all through emotional intelligence.
First things first, let’s clarify the terms. Does being empathetic mean to help everyone in need? Or maybe offering your services for free for a cause? Well, it can range from giving help to giving attention to people, to listening actively and trying to imagine yourself in other people’s shoes.
People who actively focus on their emotional intelligence will in every encounter be more aware of all characteristics of empathy. Believing that emotional intelligence merely entails being ‘nice’ obscures what makes this approach so valuable.
In fact, four benefits can improve your quality of EQ and therefore be one step ahead:
Self Awareness
This ability is acquired through understanding our own thoughts and emotions and how they affect our ideas, behaviors, and decisions. Knowing how you can react to a specific moment or event in your life can put you in a different perspective if you are talking about a conflict that you may have, or a difference of opinion.
It’s important to understand behavioral patterns in ourselves before trying to identify them in others. Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow coined the idea of two different thinking systems on which our brains operate (which is rather a metaphor than a neural reality). There’s fast thinking, often meaning that our brain is on autopilot mode and will act on impulse, and there’s slow thinking – rational, intentional and more profound.
Most often, giving ourselves a few minutes (or even a few seconds) to process a piece of information will make all difference in the way we’ll react. We all have different emotional triggers that will compel us to have instant reactions that are not fundamentally in sync with who we are and how we usually position ourselves towards social situations, which is why paying attention to the degree of intentionality that we think and act with is imperative.
Emotional regulation refers to our ability to regulate powerful emotions by failing to act impulsively or destructively on raw sentiments. Emotional control also enables us to gain the freedom to discover several answers to a particular situation. Not reacting primarily from a state with an emotional burden leads to improved decision-making.
Empathy As A Skill
We establish deeper, more healthy relationships when we sympathize with others. By training your empathetic abilities we can improve our connections, and our overall sense of self, as well as a sense of alterity. Like any other skill, empathy takes time and dedication, and prioritizing it can only improve the connection we have with others.
In the end, having great social skill means providing a strong, clear, and respectful capacity to communicate. We at Jobful encourage you to be one step ahead of others by improving your EQ, and remember, learning remains a lifelong process that can never stop.
