How to increase your emotional intelligence
It is increasingly more demanding to be a good manager. You should have deep knowledge of your business field, and have good organizational and presentation skills. Another essential skill that you should not lack is emotional intelligence (EQ).
Emotional Intelligence is defined as the ability to understand, manage and express your own emotions, as well as emotions of the others. EQ is essential in the formation and maintenance of interpersonal relations; hence it is necessary for every successful manager or team leader. Psychology Today came up with several recommendations on how you can increase your EQ.
Reduce negative emotions
One of the most important attributes of EQ is the ability to reduce negative emotions, so they can’t have any influence over your judgements and decisions. If you want to change the way you feel about a situation, you must learn how to change the way you think about it.
Tip: If someone’s behavior produces a negative reaction from you, pause for a second and consider more options before jumping into conclusions. If a person doesn’t pick up or return your calls, it doesn’t necessarily mean he is ignoring you. He might be very busy.
Keep your cool
Most of us experience stressful situations while at work. The way you handle the stress predicts the way you react to the situation; be it assertive or reactive. If you find yourself under a lot of pressure, it is crucial to remain calm.
Tip: If you are nervous, wash your face with cold water, and breathe fresh air. Avoid coffee and other caffeinated beverages. Cold temperatures help to reduce your nervousness, while caffeine can stimulate it.
Be assertive
There are moments in your life when you have to stand your ground and set your boundaries. They might include situations when you express your displeasure or when you finally say NO without feeling guilty.
Tip: When voicing your objection, try not to start your sentence with YOU and follow up with accusations. You would only put the other person into a defensive position. Instead, use the XYZ technique to express what you feel. The structure of the sentence would be: I feel X when you do Y in situation Z.
Example: I feel demotivated when you reject my ideas without any discussion.
Be proactive, not reactive
Quite often you are forced to deal with a difficult person whose attitude just ruins your day. The key to success it to constantly remind yourself that the person in front of you is probably not obnoxious because of something you did, but due to his own issues. How can you be proactive in such a situation?
Tip: Don’t let anger get the best of you. You might say things that you will regret later. Take a deep breath instead and count to ten to calm yourself down. If this doesn’t work, put the problem aside for the time being and focus on it after you let go of the anger. Useful tool is to imagine yourself in the other person’s shoes and consider what he is dealing with. For example: he just came from a meeting where they discussed poor economic results. The boss surely gave him a hard time.
As you can see, these recommendations are not difficult to follow!