Member Article

The What, How and Why of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is a hot topic right now and whist many people know what it is, they don’t always know how to use it or why.

A friend once said “I don’t really get emotional intelligence; I’m not very intelligent when I’m being all emotional” she had just articulated one of our everyday challenges of being smart with feelings. What if you could find life changing skills that could help you be smart with feelings, even when the going gets tough?

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to use a set of everyday skills to understand ourselves and others better, think, feel and act intentionally and thrive with purpose.

How do we achieve that? There’s often a gap between thinking and doing, we know what we should do, but don’t. We know what we would have liked to achieve but didn’t. The practice of emotional intelligence involves being responsible for what we choose to do; in that moment when we’re “being all emotional” what other options do we have for different feelings, thoughts and actions? When we’re being emotionally intelligent we are motivated to intentionally choose our reaction and action. I’ve heard many busy managers and leaders say “that’s fine in theory but I don’t have the time to stop and think”. I’ve also seen leaders actively pause before responding and the results are interesting. Their decision to take time, consider and navigate their thoughts, feelings and actions resulted in saved time in the long run. The intentional leaders are more resilient and better performers; they have greater rapport with themselves and others and grow trust in their team.

Recent studies from the global non profit organization, 6 seconds, have found that you are 43 times more likely be a top performer if you are emotionally intelligent. A case study about the impact of emotional intelligence measurement and learning is available to download here https://www.6seconds.org/2018/01/17/case-study-connected-leadership-engaging-performance/

The life changing skills of emotional intelligence are proven to add value to effectiveness, quality of life, wellbeing and relationships. One of the fundamental factors for success using emotional intelligence is self direction; the power of purpose adds meaning, motivation and focus to enable people to achieve.

Anyone can learn to be more insightful, more intentional and more impactful. Emotional intelligence is a learnable, measurable skill. What emotional intelligence skills do you recognise in yourself? How do you apply these skills? Do you know where you are going and why? These are key questions in the model of emotional intelligence we use; their answers become a pivotal axis for change.

We are now hearing from many forward thinking organisations in the North East who want to explore emotional intelligence , support their leaders to develop it and ultimately become companies who recruit, retain and serve staff and customers using emotional intelligence.

It’s time to seriously consider the value that these competencies bring to competitive and high growth industries. Interested? We have learning programmes, research and case studies to share. Perhaps you’d like to be the organisation that takes part in research?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Act Positive .