Improving your emotional intelligence

- [Jim] You may be book-smart, but are you people-smart? You've heard those phrases before. In business, it's great to be book-smart, but it's essential to be people-smart or to use more syllables, to have emotional intelligence. - [Gemma] Time and time again, we hear senior leaders in organizations say they hire and promote based on emotional intelligence rather than particular skills or IQ, and there's a very good reason for this. - [Jim] And the reason is that business involves, well, people. - [Britt] Every organization achieves its goals through a series of daily conversations, interactions, and decisions. Each of these involves humans and the more emotionally intelligent they are, the more effective they will be on every level. - [Jim] And a big part of emotional intelligence is empathy, working to understand another person's perspective. - [Sharon] Empathy at work is crucial to company-wide success. When you and your coworkers feel comfortable and confident speaking openly to each other, you're able to develop better relationships. - [Jim] Improving your emotional intelligence, that's the subject of this LinkedIn Learning highlight, your collection of learning insights from the LinkedIn Learning library. Hi everybody, Jim Hyde here from LinkedIn Learning. Let's begin our exploration of emotional intelligence with a look at what it is. - [Britt] Dr. Daniel Goleman coined the term emotional intelligence or EQ and he likened it to traditional intelligence or IQ, except EQ is about how smart we are with the human connection. - [Jim] That's Dr. Britt Andreatta, an author, leadership coach, and consultant, and the instructor of a LinkedIn Learning course called Leading With Emotional Intelligence. - [Britt] Emotional intelligence has four main components. The first area is self-awareness, which focuses on how well you know yourself, including your values, strengths, and weaknesses, in comparison to how others perceive you. The next area is self-control, which is about managing your emotions and actions in productive and healthy ways. - [Jim] So the first two components of emotional intelligence deal with the person you see in the mirror. The second two components deal with everyone else. - [Britt] The third area is our awareness of others, knowing their emotions and needs as well as their skills, preferences, and other aspects of diversity. It's also about extending empathy. Finally, the fourth area is building relationships and how we utilize our awareness of others to maximize their potential and our relationship. - [Jim] Emotional intelligence or EQ as it's often called is different from personality and intellectual intelligence or IQ. Both of those things are pretty much baked into us as adults but EQ is a skill that can be learned. - [Gemma] I'm Gemma Leigh Roberts. I'm a chartered organizational psychologist, experienced leadership and coaching psychologist, and career coach. - [Jim] Gemma is also the instructor of a course called Developing Your Emotional Intelligence. - [Gemma] Personality and IQ are fairly fixed. They don't move a great deal throughout your adult life. This is not the case with emotional intelligence, however. Everyone has the ability to develop and enhance their emotional intelligence, which means you can take control of how you experience and express your emotions, and you can control how empathetic you are with others. It's just a case of learning and practicing the skills. - [Jim] So let's start with the person you see in the mirror. In her course, Gemma Leigh Roberts talks about managing your emotions and presents a scenario that we've all experienced, the driver who pulls out in front of you. - [Gemma] Have you ever been in a situation where someone else's behavior has made you react strongly? Maybe you've been driving and a car pulls out dangerously in front of you, making you angry and possibly a little too free-and-easy with the car horn. (car revving) (car horn blasts) - [Female Voice] Come on! - [Gemma] I think we can all recount numerous situations where someone else has behaved in a way that makes us react passionately to the situation. But the truth of it is, it actually isn't always the other person's behavior that makes us react, although it certainly feels that way in the heat of the moment. We often associate behavior as being a response to an event or something happening to us. We tend to think of our own behavior and the behavior of others as a reaction quite often to an event that's outside of our control. - [Jim] But that way of thinking, she says, misses an important step. - [Gemma] The actual chain reaction is more like this. An event takes place, you experience thoughts, feelings, and emotions related to this event, and then you behave in a specific way to reflect your thoughts and emotions. The key here is to understand it's not events themselves that cause you to act. It's how you think and feel about these events, which will lead you to respond. - [Jim] Gemma's first piece of advice then is to learn to recognize your emotions. - [Gemma] Recognizing your emotions is the first step in building your emotional intelligence. Your emotions will drive how you think about and react within the world. To dive deeper and gain an overview of your emotional intelligence, it's useful to consider past challenging scenarios that you've experienced and analyze the parts you played in a scenario and the outcomes. - [Jim] Gemma's course, again, it's called Developing Your Emotional Intelligence, includes a downloadable worksheet that you can use to break down those previous challenging scenarios to gain insights into how you reacted. Gemma then provides advice on what she calls managing yourself. For example, controlling your reaction time to give yourself a chance to challenge your thoughts and think about a situation objectively instead of emotionally. For now, though, let's step away from the mirror and look at the other half of the emotional intelligence equation, the ability to understand others or what's often called social awareness. - [Gemma] How does social awareness fit into the model of emotional intelligence? Well, let's just take a step back. Self-awareness is about understanding your own emotions and character, which is essential if you want to enhance your emotional intelligence. But equally as important is building your social awareness, which is the ability to understand others and to respond to their needs. It's about being aware of what's going on around you and understanding other people's feelings. - [Jim] Understanding other people's feelings is also known as empathy. And building empathy is a huge part of increasing emotional intelligence. - [Gemma] Empathy is the ability to sense other people's emotions, whilst also being able to imagine what someone else may be thinking or feeling. When empathizing, you're imagining what a situation must feel like for an individual. You're basically putting yourself in their shoes and looking at the situation from their perspective. - [Jim] But looking at a situation from someone else's perspective doesn't mean acting like you know exactly what's going on in his or her head. - [Gemma] Another tip when displaying your empathy is not to agree with everything the other person says, constantly finding examples when you faced the exact same challenges or situations. It can actually be irritating for the other person if we always have an example that brings the conversation back to us. - [Jim] I love that tip. We've all been in situations where we've described a problem to someone and they come back with, "I know exactly how you feel. "I had the same thing happen to me once." Blah, blah, blah, me, me, me. You aren't showing empathy when you're talking about yourself. Communicating with empathy is such an important part of emotional intelligence that we've devoted an entire course to the subject. In a course called Communicating With Empathy, author and consultant Sharon Steed discusses the importance of empathy in business communication. - [Sharon] When most people think of empathy, they think about not hurting people's feelings or being forced to like someone that's very different from them. Well, that's just not the case, especially when it comes to being empathetic at work. So let's talk about three big things that empathy can help you achieve in the office. First, peer-to-peer collaboration will improve because we're attempting to feel what the other person feels in order to understand and engage with them. Second, when there's an emphasis on building solid professional relationships, team members are happier and empathy thrives. And lastly, when those at the top of the pyramid make empathy a core value, managers are better leaders. - [Jim] We're going to end our look at emotional intelligence at the top of that management pyramid. Let's go back to Dr. Britt Andreatta's course, Leading With Emotional Intelligence, to hear her advice for managers and other leaders. - [Britt] In addition to developing your own EQ, you're also responsible for helping your organization develop its emotional intelligence. An organization's EQ is always a function of the emotional intelligence of the people holding key leadership positions. If your top leadership is not emotionally intelligent, you will need to begin with raising their consciousness about the value of EQ. This is a process of education and persuasion. Don't do this process alone. Work with other emotionally intelligent people to carry this message forward together. - [Jim] Britt's course includes a downloadable worksheet that you can use to evaluate your organization's emotional intelligence and identify areas that need attention. - [Britt] Perhaps your organization struggles with conflict or could enhance its ability to create a culture of inclusion. Maybe a few key leaders need to develop their confidence or leadership skills. The goal is to have a frank and honest look at what's not working for the purpose of finding ways to improve. - [Jim] Next, Britt recommends proposing a plan for raising your organization's emotional intelligence. - [Britt] Focus on the areas you identified and design some action steps for addressing the issues. Consider how training and coaching can help increase personal and relational competence. Your proposal will be strongest if you can find clear data that supports your analysis and can calculate concrete ROI on implementing your ideas. Also, you'll want to partner with other high-EQ leaders to create momentum for the proposal. Some well-placed advocates can do wonders for creating needed change. - [Jim] Britt concludes by recommending that you focus on one area at a time. This not only makes it easier to implement change, it also enables you to document how each specific change brought improvements. Let's wrap up this look at emotional intelligence with a few takeaways. Number one. - [Gemma] Recognizing your emotions is the first step in building your emotional intelligence. Your emotions will drive how you think about and react within the world. - [Jim] And as Gemma Leigh Roberts recommends, learn to control your reaction time to give yourself a chance to think about a situation objectively rather than emotionally. Number two. Put yourself in the other person's shoes, but don't pretend that you know exactly how their shoes fit. - [Gemma] Another tip when displaying your empathy is not to agree with everything the other person says, constantly finding examples when you faced the exact same challenges or situations. - [Jim] And number three. If you're a manager or other leader, remember that your emotional intelligence contributes to your organization's EQ. As Dr. Britt Andreatta says... - [Britt] An organization's EQ is always a function of the emotional intelligence of the people holding key leadership positions. - [Jim] We've heard highlights from three LinkedIn Learning courses here, Leading With Emotional Intelligence, Developing Your Emotional Intelligence, and Communicating With Empathy. To learn more about emotional intelligence, empathy, and related topics, explore these courses and do a search for those terms on LinkedIn Learning.