From the course: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers (Blinkist Summary)
Social awareness
From the course: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers (Blinkist Summary)
Social awareness
- [Narrator] Linked number four. Understand the people around you through social awareness. The next key part of emotional intelligence is building strong relationships with other people, and that requires social awareness. Social awareness is about understanding the emotions of others. It's made up of four parts: empathy, organizational awareness, seeing others clearly and setting emotional boundaries. Empathy, the first component, refers to your ability to understand how other people feel. You're able to recognize another person's emotions, whether positive or negative, and engage accordingly. As a project manager, that means you need to listen to your team members using empathetic listening. Don't just listen to their words alone. Try to figure out what they're really feeling. You also have to master the ability to see others clearly. That means understanding people and accurately assessing their strengths and weaknesses. It's more challenging than it seems. Even if you don't like the person, strive to think of objectively. Otherwise, you might impose your own bias. Take the time to really look and think. Organizational awareness is closely linked with seeing others clearly. Organizational awareness is the ability to understand the emotional context of your particular company, project, team, or other organization. What's the power structure? Which emotions does it generate? The last step is setting emotional boundaries that protect you from the emotions of others. It's important to relate to other people's emotions, but you shouldn't allow them to control you. Altering your language is a good way to help with this. So if you're angry with someone, for example, say you feel angry, not that they made you angry. Taking responsibility for your feelings is always better than blaming them on someone else.