Emotional intelligence is a skill that helps you comprehend and manage your emotions for self-motivation and social interaction purposes. However, the skill starts with recognizing your true potential.
Then what is emotional intelligence?
Travis Bradberry’s, four quadrants of emotional intelligence sums up the meaning of emotional intelligence (also called emotional quotient, EQ).
The four quadrants of EQ are:
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship management
In my view, the four quadrants combine sociology, public speaking, psychology and interpersonal skills, which are vital for personal development.
The four quadrants can be broadly classified into interpersonal (social awareness and relationship management) and intrapersonal (self-awareness and self-management) communication skills. The intrapersonal quadrant is like becoming a student of yourself.
You have to know everything about yourself: likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, the time you thrive when you are working; your peak performance time, your sleep time, your resting time, the beliefs you have about various aspects of life, and how they were formed. Are you aware of the answers to these areas of your life?
At the moment, I am facilitating a small group on Leadership and confidence-building skills Topics around belief systems often lead us to reflecting on the relationships between adults and parents. We look for patterns in strengths, limitations and explore similarities to strengthen self-awareness.
Emotional intelligence is an indispensable aspect of our life. It not only helps us develop a stronger bond in relationships (family, lover, colleagues) and facilitates success at school and work but it also enables us to accomplish our goals- personal and career. Individually, emotional intelligence helps you connect with your feelings and make informed decisions. Later in this blog, I am going to talk about each of the four quadrants personally.
A common question I encounter among individuals is:
How Do I Develop Emotional Intelligence?
Understand Your Beliefs
The initial step in developing emotional intelligence is reflecting and understanding your beliefs- how they were formed and how you live out those beliefs daily. Without this understanding, you are more inclined to compare yourself to others, have feelings of guilt, and feel as though you are not measuring up. Beliefs across different cultures influence our emotional management responses and approaches.
For instance, in some eastern cultures, questioning authority is termed disrespectful. However, in some western cultures, openly questioning authority is acceptable. The difference in these beliefs will influence how a person responds to a scenario where their manager expects a response that may be contrary to her employees’ beliefs. Additionally, it will influence how the employee responds and processes their ability to meet the manager’s expectations. Therefore, you need to reflect on your environment, culture, and the relationship you had with those who raised you considering their strengths and limitations while correlating your areas and identifying the similarities.
I get it; It is not an easy task to assess the beliefs and act contrary to it; these emotions are already ingrained in the subconscious mind. Reprogramming this part of the brain is not an overnight fix, but it can be done. According to Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist, we can reprogram our minds and beliefs.
It requires intention and a thorough evaluation. How do you normally respond and process certain situations and emotions? What about anger? Sadness? Love? What about love? Who taught you how to love yourself and make healthy decisions?
Be Gentle to Yourself
The second step is being gentle with yourself. Most of the time, we criticize ourselves and are afraid of taking certain actions or measures towards personal development, or we just say that’s not good enough, or I am not good enough. In other instances, it could be due to perfectionism tendencies, and a friend, acquaintance, or colleague could trigger a critical response of yourself.
For instance, I have watched verbal exchanges where everyone observing did not feel the encounter was negative, but the person receiving it did and made a big deal out of it.
However, a person who is strong in the self-awareness aspect of emotional intelligence will know they are being triggered before responding to the trigger. They will begin to pay attention to the feeling being raised within them. The idea here is in the presence of a stimulus; you have to pause before responding. However, in most cases, we react immediately after the stimulus.
Address Imposter Syndrome
The next step is addressing the imposter syndrome monster. Imposter syndrome is the body’s way of giving us information about our feelings. Instead of trying to “fight it”, ignore it or suppress it, we need to embrace it. Since imposter syndrome is a part of who we are and our response system, we need to ask scientific questions.
In most cases, imposter syndrome originates from a place where we feel we need to fight back. We feel it is something to “crush”, “overcome” and “fight”. Instead of trying to “fight it”, ignore it or suppress it, we need to embrace it. All of these fighting languages are just pushing your emotion away.
It’s pushing these emotions that hinder personal growth. An analogy of this scenario is if you go to use the bathroom, your body naturally functions that way and it is giving you information that you need to release. You’re not going to be like; I’m not going to go to the bathroom for two days, ten days, eight days because I need to fight this response. No, you will acknowledge it, and release it. If you don’t, you will get backed up, plugged up, and can have all kinds of problems.
Anyone who doesn’t experience these feelings is the real imposters because they are in denial or lack awareness of how they truly feel.
Components of Emotional Intelligence
Self Awareness
Self-awareness is basically how we get along with ourselves. Aldous Huxley stated, “there is only one corner of the universe that we can be certain of changing, and that is your self” Your current emotional experiences, in most cases, are influenced by early life experiences.
Therefore, people whose guardians understood and valued their emotions later become valuable individuals during adult life. Self- awareness component targets your goals (immediate and long-term), beliefs (about yourself and others), values, rules, drivers, and self-talk.
When you are more aware of yourself, you can better manage your responses and perceptions of other people, whether you label them good or bad. Self-awareness is about engaging in a daily practice of reflection in all your interactions, irrespective of the relationship type. For instance, I once had a talk with my son about blowing out his hair, and he said, “I’m going to school”, and I said, “I love it”.
The old me would have been like, “boy, you can’t put your hair like that. You want to make me look bad.” In that latter scenario, it was about me as a mom. In my mind, I was saying, “You are about you going out there to school, and make me look bad”. In this scenario, I am not aware of what I’m doing and my focus on how I would be perceived takes precedence over my son’s self-expression. However, if you are self-aware, you are also able to manage others’ perceptions- and it gives you an opportunity to allow others to express themselves.
Self Management
Emotional intelligence requires you to use your emotions and make constructive decisions about your behavior. For instance, when you are not self-aware you become overwhelmed by stressing aspects of life to the extent of losing control of emotions and the potential to act appropriately.
Understanding your historical patterns about how you show up for yourself and others, how you make decisions, and how you engage with others is the starting reflection point to develop a deeper understanding of yourself and the people around you.
After the reflection, you may not be able to have an honest assessment of yourself because some studies have shown most people rate themselves higher in the area of self-awareness than they really are.
Recognize that our awareness is an ongoing evolution, the same way that we eat daily for food; our emotions are like food. Generally, we need to nourish ourselves and pay attention.
Social awareness
The social awareness component facilitates recognizing and interpreting the non-verbal cues others are constantly displaying while communicating to you. The non-verbal cues indicate other people’s feelings, emotional states that vary from time to time, and what’s truly important to them. While interacting with other people, we are faced with numerous questions. What do I say? What, what words do I use? Do you know?
Are you aware of how to use language to gain buy-in, or to close off a topic? For example, if you are in a situation and you want to challenge something, there’s a way to challenge a person’s view without attacking them. You can say, “have you considered …?”. This is a phrase to point out that you don’t agree with the point that’s being made, but you are not focusing on that individual or what they have said. You’re just pointing out the gap in that thought process in their decision.
For instance, let’s say you are at work and have to pick a vendor. We have to pick a vendor for the intranet. Your leader has decided that this vendor is the best because they have worked with them for a long period of time. You know, they have a good relationship, but you also know that choosing this vendor will not allow, let’s just say, single sign-on to work with, say zoom or some other external features.
So you don’t say, I don’t think that’s a good vendor, or that vendor’s not going to work or, so what if they’ve been with us for a long time. Instead, you can say “have you considered what will happen when single sign-on with the third party doesn’t work?” Now you’re challenging that point. You’re not challenging the individual, you’re challenging the point, but you’re constructively challenging the point.
Relationship Management
Good associations and working well with other people starts with emotional awareness and your capability to realize and comprehend other people’s experiences. As an emotionally intelligent individual, you will have effective, fruitful, and fulfilling relationships.
How does life feel when we are struggling within the relationship management component?
We may feel lonely. We may feel like we can’t fit in anywhere. Our relationships with professional people, personal people, and family members are strained. That’s what it looks like when we’re struggling in the social skills area. We may say things that we don’t intend to create division or intend to harm or drive people away, but that’s what tends to happen when we are struggling in that area.
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence is a constant evolution, and it is so broad. The first thing is to identify where you want to develop or grow. The language and specifics of this are so important because once you get that piece clearer, now you have a clearer path to take.
Would you like to learn more about this topic? Visit the media page and listen to episodes that expand on strengthening self-awareness. Watch how emotional intelligence impacts decision-making. Or, if you’d like to book a consult for private coaching, contact me today.