There are five key elements of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Awareness and practice of each element combined will make our daily lives in and out of the workplace much more enjoyable. We go through many emotions throughout our day. Being mindful of these emotions and turning the negative ones positive will keep us motivated. We do our best work and is most approachable and enjoyable when we are comfortable.
Self-Awareness
The first element of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. This is the ability to recognize and understand both the positive and negative feelings you encounter. Being able to recognize your emotions will allow you to analyze how you feel in certain situations and later allow you to control those emotions in certain situations. This is especially important in negative situations when hot emotions will cause you to make rushed decisions and say things you do not fully mean and cannot take back.
You go through many emotions on a day to day basis. Take a regular work day for example. You wake up feeling like you are ready for the day or ready to go back to sleep. This can be the determining factor of how you may feel the rest of the day. For the next couple of days, notice how you feel when you first wake up in the morning for work. Are you excited to see what challenges you will resolve today or are you dreading the thought of stepping into the office? If you are excited, congratulations! This means that you are enjoying your work and feel a sense of pride about what you are doing. If you are dreading going to work, pause for a second. Why are you not looking forward to your day? Is it because of your coworkers? Managers? Or is it because you do not enjoy the work you are doing? Evaluate why you are not looking forward to your work day. Figure out if it is something you can change, how you can change the situation, and go from here.
Self-regulation
After being self-aware of your emotions, you can begin self-regulating them. Self-regulation of your emotions is the ability to control the emotions, especially in high-stress situations. This will help with lashing out impulsively when in stressful situations.
An example that ties in with self-awareness at work is how you respond to certain people. Are you responding to certain people in a more negative way than others? This is an important thing to recognize. The person you are responding to negatively is picking up your negative energy much faster than you are recognizing it yourself. Take a moment to notice when you feel more worked up when talking to a specific person. Figure out why that is the case. It may be something they said once that is stuck in the back of your brain. Figure out what it is and determine if it is worth holding a grudge. In most cases, nothing is worth holding a grudge. The only person it is affecting is yourself. After you have determined why you speak to this person in a negative way, let yourself know it is not worth having tense at work and let it go. You are with your coworkers more than you are with your friends so why not be happy when you are at work.
Motivation
There will always be days when we feel unmotivated to crawl out of bed let alone do anything productive. Sometimes the lack of motivation comes from something as simple as lack of sleep or as complicated as lack of passion. Go to bed earlier! More sleep cannot hurt. Lack of passion can be fixed. Often time, many life elements plays a role into whether we can change what we are doing out of necessity into doing what we want to do out of passion. Being self-aware of why we are lacking the motivation is the first step in getting motivated, however, we do not always have to do it alone.
We interact with many different people in our daily lives – family, close friends, coworkers, random person on the same train as us every day. Every one of those people could use a boost of motivation from time to time. In the workplace, whether you are a manager or team member, it is undoubtedly recognizable when someone is lacking the motivation. They are your work family. You see your coworkers more than you see your actual family so a shift in behavior or attitude is easy to pick up. When you notice these shifts, if it is a negative shift, consider what might be the cause. If it is something work related? How can you support or work with them to help? As a manager, are you listening to your team? Is someone feeling burnt out? Is there something in the business process that can be improved? Improving all of these things will improve the morale of your team and motivate them produce more high quality products.
Empathy
The other elements that we have discussed so far were about recognizing and understanding our own emotions. Empathy is different. Empathy is being able to recognize and understand the emotions of others. It is often time easier to recognize the emotions of someone else, especially if it is a negative emotions. You just have to pay attention. This ties in with self-regulation when we talked about others being able to pick up on the energy we give them. Although it is easy to pick up the emotions of others, it is important to consider why they are feeling that way.
When others are feeling positively, it is something to enjoy. If they are feeling extra enthusiastic or high in energy, maybe something exciting is going on in their lives. Maybe they’re about to go on a dream trip and is looking forward to it. Feeling the positive emotions of another person will feed our emotions positively. Ask that person what is making them so excited today. You might have just discovered something fun to talk and bond about.
Now for the not so fun emotions. Negative emotions are more difficult to control. We feel our blood boiling, the looks in our eyes changes and our body language may become aggressive. Most people will stay far away from people they see are showing signs of negative emotions. Why? Simple. Because we ourselves do not like to feel negatively and do not want others negative emotions rubbing off on us. However, stop and consider how you feel when you are upset. At first you may not want to be disturbed by anyone but you should know that holding in negative feelings for a long time is not healthy for yourself or anyone around you. Sometimes, people just needs one caring person to take them aside and ask if they are okay.
The answer could be simple. They may have just had a bad start to their day. Spilled coffee for example. Other times, they may be going through a difficult situation in their personal lives that is spilling into how they feel at work. These situations are more difficult to help with but knowing that will allow you to be more empathetic when they respond harshly to a question you ask or seem spaced out.
The situations we have just talked about were seeing a higher level of energy – positive or negative – different than their everyday level. Another thing to consider is culture or personality traits. Someone’s culture is a big factor in how they preserve a situations and how they will handle it. Personality traits such as introverts vs extroverts will also react differently to the same situation. Do a quick search for personality tests online and see what you are. Most people are close to the middle. Someone who is introverted, may preserve an extroverted reaction as extreme. Understanding and educating ourselves about our personality traits and what others are will help the us understand how to react in certain situations and with certain people so that everyone feels comfortable.
Social Skills
Understanding all of the above elements, recognizing when we feel certain ways, controlling those emotions in negative situations, motivating ourselves and others to be in a positive mind set and understanding the emotions of those around us, will improve our social skills. Another way of improving our social skills is being able to read the situation, social cues and body language. But keep in mind, body language and cues could mean different things in different cultures. Take eye contact for exam. In one culture, strong eye contact shows confidence and respect while in another culture, it is seen as trying to intimidate.
