Have you ever wondered what kinds of habits and behaviors might benefit your work life? Is there a quality common amongst inspiring and helpful team members and leaders? Enter emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a way of keeping yourself in check and cultivating mindfulness that you can apply to your work environment.
The following page will teach how to develop emotional intelligence and explain how it can help you in everyday situations.
Originally coined in 1990 by psychology professors John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, the term "emotional intelligence" has entered the public vocabulary in recent years. It is a concept we casually reference in everyday speech or discuss in popular culture. But what is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is awareness of both one's own emotions and those of other people. People with high emotional intelligence possess strong communication, listening, and conflict resolution skills.
Emotional intelligence is useful in everyday situations where emotional management and awareness are at play, such as helping a friend mourn personal loss, listening to your partner talk about a frustrating work conflict, or communicating your emotional needs to a family member.
Low emotional intelligence can create problems in your life and relationships with others. Some indicators that you may have low emotional intelligence might include:
Emotional intelligence can significantly influence many aspects of your work life, including your:
Cultivating emotional intelligence can have a positive impact on these aspects of your daily work life. In contrast, letting your emotional intelligence go by the wayside can negatively impact your work life.
Emotional intelligence is an essential element of self-fulfillment, both on and off the job.
Higher emotional intelligence can reap high returns in the workplace. The potential benefits of improving your emotional intelligence may include:
Conversely, low emotional intelligence skills can unnecessarily complicate your workplace life, causing you to miss out on opportunities or even get in trouble. Examples of negative consequences you may experience include:
The important thing about emotional intelligence skills is that they represent a constant process rather than attaining perfection. It is through practice in real life rather than detached understanding that you can refine your emotional intelligence skills.
The present moment is the best time to practice emotional intelligence skills because it constantly offers opportunities where you need to use emotional intelligence to troubleshoot certain situations or problems. And there are five main components to emotional intelligence skills:
Self-awareness is the ability to take ownership of your mental and emotional state. This is an important emotional intelligence skill because it allows you to:
In a way, self-awareness is the ultimate tool for living in the present because it allows you to understand what is happening internally. You will find it easier to communicate clearly and calmly what you are feeling when you are self-aware.
ZDNet to Divya Robin: What strategies and practices can you use to have greater self-awareness throughout your workday?
Self-regulation is the ability to regulate your emotional responses to things. This emotional intelligence skill is important because it allows us to:
To understand self-regulation's importance, think about how much we take it for granted. What if you flew off the handle whenever someone took your parking spot or gave you an odd look? Self-regulation keeps us grounded and therefore better equipped to handle workplace conflicts composedly.
ZDNet to Lisa Bahar: What strategies, and practices can you use to self-regulate your emotions and thoughts throughout your workday?
"Emotions are connected to thoughts, meanings, and interpretations of an event. Be aware of what you are thinking.
"Practice observing your thoughts as thoughts, rather than your thoughts as facts. Often, our thoughts aren't factual to what's actually happening in the moment. Check the facts of your thought to confirm they're accurate. Many times, one may find themselves reacting to a situation that's prompted by a thought that isn't a fact.
"If you are reacting to a situation in a disproportionate way, there is most likely more to the situation that is triggering you to react. Take a step back and observe what's going on inside yourself and outside yourself that's prompting the strong emotional reaction."
Intrinsic motivation is a crucial element of emotional intelligence that relates to how we set goals for ourselves. When you are extrinsically motivated to do something, you do it out of fear of the external consequences of not doing it, such as your boss becoming upset with you. In contrast, intrinsic motivation comes from within and our sense of needing to do things for ourselves rather than others.
Practicing intrinsic motivation essentially develops self-motivation. When you feel self-motivated, you find it easier to set goals and hold yourself accountable to them. Learning intrinsic motivation makes you a natural achiever.
ZDNet to Divya Robin: How can you tap into your intrinsic motivations for working?
Becoming more emotionally intelligent absolutely requires you to cultivate empathy. Empathy comes from a shared feeling of humanity.
To feel empathy for someone else, you must take a moment to not only sympathize with their perspective but to try to understand their emotional state as another person. It is easier to stop yourself before saying something unkind or inconsiderate when you feel empathy for someone.
Practicing empathy can make it easier to:
ZDNet to Divya Robin: What practices can you implement to become more empathetic toward coworkers and managers?
Social skills refer to our ability to follow social conventions and use tools such as levity, politeness, and friendliness when interacting with others. Good social skills allow us to remember what is off-limits or irrelevant in our interactions and what would instead help us get along with others effectively.
Good social skills can encompass some of the following positive acts you can practice in the workplace:
ZDNet to Lisa Bahar: What social skills can you practice in order to have more productive, thoughtful interactions at work?
It can feel difficult to discuss emotional intelligence. No one has perfect emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is and of itself a humbling concept. Practicing it well means recognizing that you are never truly "done". But remember: emotional intelligence is just as much the art of checking in on yourself as it is of showing consideration for others.
Divya Robin, MHC-LP, is a psychotherapist, media contributor, mental health advocate, and educator in New York City who holds two master's degrees from Columbia University. She specializes in working with adults who are feeling stuck — dealing with anxiety, depression, self-esteem, relationship issues, and life transitions. Her mission is to talk about mental health in an applicable and real way to encourage others to prioritize their mental well-being. She is the founder of @mindmatterswithdiv, an Instagram platform with 40k+ followers where she posts daily about emotions, relationships, and transitions in a real and digestible way.
Lisa Bahar is a licensed marriage and family therapist, licensed professional clinical counselor, and a student at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Education and Psychology, Ph.D. in Philosophy and Global Leadership and Change program, Cohort 2020. Lisa Bahar provides psychotherapy to individuals, couples, and families and specializes in treating addiction, mood, and personality disorders.