EQ Every Day | Emotional Intelligence for Leadership

Welcome to Module 2! In this module our focus is on some general principles of emotional intelligence that affect our everyday lives. In this first lesson, we’ll take a quick overview of what we will cover in this Module.

As human beings we have evolved over time to communicate our emotions, feelings, and moods to others through our body language, and the words we speak. This communicates to others what state we are in, and from that, they will take cues on how to behave around us. This ‘emotional contagion’ is an important principle of emotional intelligence, as it affects almost every aspect of our social lives.

We all face situations in our daily lives when we have to summon up the courage to take an action, make a difficult decision, or speak out. Some people seem to do this effortlessly, while others can be somewhat avoidant.

Stress is just a normal part of everyday living – everyone experiences it. Some people even thrive on it! Our ability to maintain effective functioning in stressful situations is an important, and much sought after ability. We call this ability ‘resilience’, and we will explore resilience, and some of the things you can do to effectively increase your resilience in the next lesson.

Our brains have evolved over the last 200,000 years so that we can better understand, interpret, and act on emotional information. Even so, there are still some parts of our brain that operate on a very simple strategy – defend in the case of threat, at all costs. As important as this function is, it can also create problems if we are not careful, as it can lead to disproportionate reactions, and damaged relationships. We will explore this ‘emotional hijack’ process in the next lesson.

To continue our exploration, we’ll now turn our attention to five specific areas of emotional intelligence that impact our everyday lives. As we go through this module, I’ll be asking you to consider, as objectively as you can, your own emotional intelligence. In this, the first video of this module, we talk about the five areas briefly, and I will explain why we can’t simply expect other people to change their behaviour.

When you look at yourself, what do you see? Do you see yourself in a mostly positive way, or do you tend to be critical of your abilities, and your success (or lack of it). Everyone has a ‘self’ which has a significant impact on our daily experience. Digging into, and understanding that self, which we refer to as ‘Self-Regard’ is an important first step in exploring your emotional intelligence. In this lesson, we will do just that, and as well look at how you can effectively work with people who have high, or low levels of Self-Regard.

Do you prefer to be more of a follower, or more of a leader? Are you comfortable making decisions on your own, or do you often look to others for support and guidance? Your answers to these questions are a reflection on your Independence, the next subscale of Emotional Intelligence we will explore. As with the other areas of emotional intelligence, we will talk about what you can do to develop your own emotional intelligence, as well as how you can more effectively work with others.

Having a good level of emotional intelligence involves being able to relate well to others. And, in order to relate to them, you need to be able to understand why they may feel, act, or interact, the way they do. This understanding is the foundation of Empathy, the next area of emotional intelligence we are going to explore in this upcoming lesson.

As human beings, we have to accept the fact that we view the world through a very unique, and personal set of lenses or viewpoints. This explains why two different people can look at a situation and see that situation very differently. It’s perhaps the most interesting, and confounding thing about working alongside others. However, some people are able to take a step back and understand why they see things a certain way. And, they are able to take their biases and thinking patterns into account. We call this the emotional intelligence skill of Reality Testing, which we will explore in this lesson.

Do you consider yourself to be flexible? No, not in the yoga sense of the word. This is more about your willingness to change your mind, see things from new and different perspectives, and accept alternative viewpoints. Flexibility is an area of emotional intelligence where both high and low levels can be extremely challenging, as we will talk about in the upcoming lesson.

Welcome to Module 4 of EQ Every Day! In this module, we are going to shift our focus to look at how you can understand and develop your own emotional intelligence. This is important work that can truly make a positive difference in your life, and the lives of the people around you. Whether you want to make some small changes, or overhaul the way you show up in your life, this module will show the building blocks of how to do that. To get started, we’ll do some exploration of the Attributes and Behaviours you generally value in others.

One of the challenges I have found with emotional intelligence is that it tends to get talked about in very general terms. This makes it a somewhat vague concept, and results in people not really knowing how to go to work on it. What we need to move forward is a ‘language’ of emotional intelligence, which is exactly what we are provided with in the EQ-i 2.0 Model of Emotional Intelligence. In this lesson, I’ll introduce this model to you, and also ask you to make a preliminary assessment of your levels of emotional intelligence in each of the 5 EI areas introduced in this course.

Every action, interaction, and reaction, is a demonstration of emotional intelligence – either your own or someone else’s. By developing your skills of observation, you can start to learn about your own, and others emotional intelligence. This observation is the fuel to help you determine where and what, if anything, you would like to work on in your own emotional intelligence profile. It also helps you to better understand, and collaborate more effectively with others. Watch this next lesson to learn more about this incredibly valuable skill!

While we live in the moment, taking learning from those moments can be very hard. So many opportunities to learn more about how we behave, and how we interact with others pass before our eyes every day. But how much of that experience do we tap into to help us understand and develop? The answer is not very much. But the good news is that there is a free, easy, and surprisingly effective method of helping us to understand and make sense of our daily experiences – journaling! I’ll tell you all about it, and how I have used it to help me develop, in this next lesson.

Time to wrap things up! In this, the last lesson of the course, I will make some specific recommendations on how you can continue your learning.