Getting to know yourself

- At the core of emotional intelligence is knowing yourself. Everything else flows from there. Let's look at some of the main areas you should explore using the handout in the exercise files. Self-reflection is one of your most valuable tools as a leader. Along with being willing to learn and grow, which you're already doing by watching this course. The obvious place to start is your emotions. A key aspect of emotional intelligence is knowing what you're feeling, and when. We're going to delve more deeply into emotion, so for now, I'll focus on the other aspects.

Next, it's important to understand your values, which are the attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and experiences that govern how you behave. They shape the choices you make every day, and you're either in or out of alignment with them. Your values are always a function of your life experiences. Use the worksheet to reflect on what shaped who you are, professionally and personally. Jot down the events and people who've influenced you. These can be positive or negative experiences, but they shaped how you see and experience the world now.

Reflect on your childhood, family, education, cultural heritage, traumatic events, major successes and failures, and your hopes and aspirations. You can do this as a simple journaling exercise, or you might even create a timeline. The third key component is knowing your purpose. According to research by Aaron Hurst and Arthur Woods, we all have purpose drivers that influence the type of work we want to do, and the impact we seek to have.

I encourage you to take their Purpose Profile assessment at imperative.com. As a leader, your purpose is central to how you influence your people and organization. Assessing your skills is the fourth component. One great tool to use is the StrengthsFinder assessment by Gallup. Your professional life requires you to use a wide variety of functional and technical skills. Some are foundational, such as time management, building relationships, and communicating effectively.

And many skills are specific to your job or industry, like finance, or graphic design, or teaching. The fifth is knowing your work style. Knowing how you approach work is really valuable information. One common assessment is called DiSC, and you may have also heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. But my favorite is the 5 Dynamics assessment, because it's based on brain science. The last major component is your leadership style. There are lots of models out there, but my two favorites are the Leadership Practices Inventory, LPI, from the book The Leadership Challenge, and the Situational Leadership Model, from the book Leading at a Higher Level.

There are other aspects of yourself to explore, but I consider these the core six, as they relate to your role as a leader. Another part of developing your self-awareness is perceiving yourself accurately, and aligning how you see yourself with how others perceive you. Now, this is not about trying to please everyone or make everyone happy. But you do want to have an accurate sense of how others perceive or experience your strengths and areas for improvement. I'm sure we can all think of people who are out of touch with how others view them.

This actually indicates a lack of emotional intelligence, because they're ignoring cues, or even direct feedback, that would help them align their perspective. That's why I recommend the assessments I've mentioned. They'll give you valuable data that can help you improve your self-perception, and as a result, your EQ.