4 Ways To Boost Your Emotional Intelligence
#2: Identify emotional triggers.
For many years, IQ was the panacea that many recruiters fantasized about. Then, in the mid-90s, the concept of emotional quotient appeared. It was popularized in particular by Daniel Goleman. Tests were then developed to study and validate this concept, which usefully complements the notion of human intelligence, which is defined mainly by cognitive skills and a psychometric approach.
Numerous studies have since suggested that scores on emotional intelligence tests are correlated with certain social performances that are essential for success in the workplace.
It is therefore in your best interest to boost your emotional quotient to be more successful in the workplace. In what follows, I will detail 4 ways to do so.
Develop the art of nuance
Unlike IQ, emotional intelligence is developed throughout our lives. To achieve it, you must start by getting to know your emotions. Some physical symptoms are there to help you identify what you are feeling: a lump in your stomach, nausea, or a tight throat.
These symptoms help you expand your emotional vocabulary beyond the basic signals of joy, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust.
The first step to boosting your emotional quotient is to better understand how you feel so that you can use these emotions to your advantage. This is called developing the art of nuance.
Identify emotional triggers
Your reactions to a situation are determined by your thoughts, beliefs, and values. To understand your reactions, you will need to ask yourself what need, for example, for support or recognition, is involved in a particular emotion.
To reach this level of awareness, you need to get into the habit of replaying in your mind the emotionally difficult moments you have experienced. Do this once a week for example. Review the events and ask yourself what emotions you felt, and more importantly, why.
Learning to recognize your emotions when they arise is the best way to deal with them later.
Put yourself in the shoes of others
To increase your sense of empathy, you should try to put yourself in the shoes of those around you as often as possible. A good exercise is to describe a situation as you experienced it, then retell it from the point of view of the other person, and finally from that of an outside observer.
Mastering the art of active listening and getting others to express themselves is difficult, but necessary. You will progress faster if you set yourself weekly challenges. For example, try talking to a co-worker without talking about yourself. Ask him or her harmless questions: what he or she is doing right now, what he or she went to see at the movies recently, ...
Then listen and try to get a feel for what's behind the other person's words. Then adopt the culture of positive feedback: ask your feelings, ask the feelings of others, and rephrase out loud to make sure you have understood what the other person said. This is a good way to learn to put yourself in the shoes of others and avoid misunderstandings.
Tame your emotions
There are five main families of emotional regulation. We can act on the situation itself (leave a room when the anger is too strong), modify our intention (focus on another person than the one who makes us angry), or proceed to a cognitive re-evaluation by asking ourselves if the stakes of the situation are so important...
Another idea is to play on the manifestations of the emotion or to call upon external support, able to calm us down. Finally, to better regulate your emotions, it is essential to adopt a healthy lifestyle and cultivate your social ties.