Emotional intelligence (EQ for short) is our ability to analyse, interpret and predict the emotional state of other people as well as our own. For a number of years, it has been cited as an important business skill to have and one that all of us should be working harder to develop.
But what is EQ? Why do people think it is so important in a business environment? Can we actually improve our emotional intelligence and if so how?
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
This set of skills was not identified and studied by psychologists until the 1990s. It was pretty clear that just being clever was not enough to succeed in most spheres. The most successful people were not just clever (with a high IQ) they also had some other skill that made them able to control their emotions and the emotions of those around them. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is now understood by psychologists to be a genuine trait that can be measured and that is important in personal and professional success.
The EQ quotient is most likely to actually be a large subset of individual skills that we use concurrently, and because of that, it is difficult to pin down and can feel less tangible than something like IQ. That does not actually mean it is less real or less useful.
Psychologists such as Daniel Goleman have tried to develop models to help describe and define the skillset. Daniel suggested that the skillset was composed of 5 abilities which are to; know your emotions, manage your emotions, motivate yourself, recognize and understand other people’s emotions and manage relationships. Not everyone agrees with his model of emotional intelligence, however, it does help us to think about what EQ is and how it can come into play in many areas of our personal and professional lives.
Why Is EQ Important In Business?
How do we know how to present a change to working conditions to staff if we can’t anticipate how the changes will affect them and what their emotional response to that will be? How can we effectively negotiate with suppliers if we don’t think about what pressures are driving them? How can we improve our team’s performance if we can’t identify the benefits that will drive them to work harder? How can we be effective people managers if we can’t identify unusual behaviours that indicate a team member is under stress or failing to cope? How can we be good leaders if we can’t analyse our own stress levels and emotional states and manage them?
Are you still finding the EQ concept hard to pin down? Well, our EQ is the fundamental skill that underpins relationship management, conflict resolution, developing team cohesiveness, reframing stressful situations, collaboration, and persuasion.
Do you still need convincing EQ is real and important? Well, researchers measured (more than 75,000) peoples EQ and other measures of success. EQ was found to be the strongest predictor of success – check out the graph below. So even if you haven’t quite got your head around the concept there is no doubt that improving your EQ is a pretty good idea.
Some lucky people are born with or have developed high levels of EQ and use it well. However, not all of us have a good EQ to start with and some of us have it but fail to use it because we become too task-focused.
Is It Possible To Improve EQ?
Is it really possible to improve such a complicated skill? Surely we either have it or we don’t? Well, actually researchers are confident that this skill can be developed and improved so given how central it is to success we should prioritise EQ development.It is a complex skillset and it can involve some difficult self-reflection. In addition, the skills we are trying to improve are ‘soft’ so it can be hard to set benchmarks and assess improvement. That is why so many people use eq training courses (like these), counselling or mentoring to help them improve their EQ. An independent third party who can provide some structure and challenge can be incredibly helpful.
Freedman and Jensen set out a helpful model of EQ which is used to assess peoples base level and also as a framework for improvement.
1. Know Yourself: Be more aware of emotions and reactions
Simply becoming more aware of your own emotions and responses can help your EQ. Two or three times a day take a moment to think about how you feel and why. Reflect on your responses; have you felt out of control in a situation or blamed others for bad outcomes. Have you been able to be mentally flexible to overcome an issue? Do you tend to always react the same way despite situations being different? Are you generally negative, do you often feel like a victim, do you always feel other people are wrong or you haven’t been heard? Do you tend to beat yourself up and revisit negative experiences rather than spend the time and energy overcoming the issue? Its amazing what you can learn very quickly about yourself when you do this simple exercise. It isn’t always particularly nice to review your responses as they can often be impulsive and negative but without a critical analysis of our own behaviour, we can’t understand and therefore change it.
2. Choose Yourself: Be more intentional in responding
We are not destined to react in a gut way to situations and people. We can choose how to respond but it takes practice. Recognising we are having an emotional response is the first step which we covered in 1 above. Also, some reflection on what this response was and if it was reasonable or positive were also covered in 1. Now we understand our responses and can identify if they are helpful we can now start to choose to respond differently. We can use our will power to step back, take a breath and think. We can reduce our anger or upset if we assess our reaction to be over the top. We can choose to respond in a measured way and ask for more information rather than being instantly defensive or aggressive. Or we can choose to defend our position and not run from conflict.
3. Give Yourself: Be more purposeful as you move forward.
Now we can understand our responses and choose a more helpful response we can think ahead and create strategies to better manage our own emotions and those of others. If we know we always react with anger to someone we are pre-warned and we can have alternative responses prepared. In the same way as you worked on understanding your own emotional state in steps 1 and 2, you can now start to apply these steps to the people you work with. Analyse their responses so you can understand their frame of mind and anticipate how they will react. Try different strategies for overcoming any negative responses and changing them into positive ones.
