Emotional Intelligence – Core Skills
3 April 2008 12 Comments
How do you manage your emotional energy? How do you use your emotions to motivate yourself and others?
You develop your core emotional intelligence skills.
In his book Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Inspiring Others to Achieve Results 
Core skills
- Knowing yourself
- Recognize your emotions
- Differentiation between emotions
- Knowing the reason behind the emotions
- Maintaining control
- Resisting or delaying an impulse
- Controlling aggression, hostility, and irresponsible behavior
- Managing emotions in a flexible and adaptable way
- Reading others
- Being aware of the emotions of others
- Appreciation emotions of others
- Understanding how and why people feel and act as they do
- Perceiving accurately
- Accurately assessing a situation
- Having clear vision
- Keeping a broad perspective and being objective
- Communication with flexibility
- Having a full range of emotional expression
- Being authentic
- Addressing your needs as well as the need of others
Developing the core skills
- “Park”
- Pause
- Reflect on “what” and “why”
- Choose action.
- Core connecting
- 3 deep breaths
- Become aware of the next thought in my mind
- Say “I am having the thought about ….”
- 3 deep breaths
- Syncing-In
- Have a beginner’s mind
- Focus on immediate experience
- Re-engage in what I am doing, what’s in hand
- Focused listening
- Expand my reception
- Step into other’s shoes
- Dig deeper into the message
- Re-framing
- Identify current frame [my current situation]
- Look into the future [what I want it to be]
- Explore new frames [What are opportunities? Positive sides, Other's view on it]
- Process communication
- Body language
- What’s happening? Not what’s being discussed.
- Make a clear, non-attacking process comment
Well, to some this is easier than it is to others. I find it interesting, and encouraging, that things like emotional intelligence are now perceived as skills that can be acquired, rather than something that you are either born with, or must live without.
I found “pause” extremely valuable skill to develop. It gives us depth of thinking by starting from ground zero and building reasoning based on answers derived from “why” and “what”.
Shilpan
@Vered
For me it is crucial skill. I found it *extremely* powerful when managing my energy. I focus on positive emotions when I am emotionally drained to seize back on emotional power level. I switch the “radio wave” off negative emotions to avoid emotional power loss.
Take a look at 4 dimensions of personal power here, tell me what you think
http://practicethis.com/2008/03/06/4-dimensions-of-personal-power/
I am software engineer – in software, exception handling (unstable conditions) is resource consuming process that degrades software performance. Same with people, when handling exceptions (mostly caused by negative emotions) your personal performance bogs down, is not it so?
Have a look at my guest post on steve-olson’s about another comparison between software and humans
http://www.steve-olson.com/how-to-engineer-yourself-for-peak-performance
@Shilpan
Agreed, I was sort of impulsive kind of guy (I am still like that but much less and even lesser on surface but internally). It was hurting my performance and social connections badly. Pausing was the life saver for me. I think about glass of water and imagine I am drinking it when under impulse. Simple, practical, effective. I cannot remember when last time I was acting impulsively, honestly!
One thing I’ve tried to remember is to not get angry in public and to keep my cool. Note that this is different from being confrontational. I don’t mind being confrontational and a pain in the ass. But loosing one’s cool is usually bad. The few times ever in my life I’ve done it, I’ve regretted it. I should add I work in an extremely confrontational environment. People swear, curse, yell, raise their voice all the time. I’m struggling to avoid to becoming ‘one of them’.
To be honest sometime ago I let my emotions drag me into something I regret till now, the damage is done. To “fix” the problem I started to invest my time in learning EI. Emotions are one of the 4 core personal power sources that I am eager to master. EI seems to be the path to go.
blogrdoc, “Park” seems to be your (and my) friend AND “taking responsibilities” which is higher EI skill to be published next
Another technique I found extremely powerful is separationg the person and actoins. Most obvious example is kids. Sometimes they drive me simply nuts. I separate the person (my kids, actually one of the main reasons of my existance) and the actions. I calm down and get on track. I even explain them that I love them more than anything in this world but what they did is unacceptable. That way they know they are beloved and do not lose confidence and simultaniously they understand they crossed the line and that they need to improve.
“I focus on positive emotions when I am emotionally drained”. Interesting, and inspiring. I am still learning to do this… not always successful though.
Vered, I adopted “radio dial” metaphor. It really works for me. I encourage you reading this
http://thebookshare.blogspot.com/2007/08/your-thoughts-create-your-feelings.html
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