Oct
16
2015
How to develop your Emotional Intelligence in 3 easy steps
1. Identify and practice techniques to reduce your stress
You find yourself in a tricky situation. Your boss/client/colleague is angry and they are making sure that you know it. You can feel your heart racing, it’s hard to breath and your stomach is knotting up. We are all familiar with this scenario.
What happens if we allow our stress response to dictate our reaction to the situation? We either attack back, dissolve or run away. The better able we become to manage our stress in the moment, the more able we are to choose how best to respond to the situation as opposed to simply reacting to it out of fear, anger or panic.
This means that we need to adopt and practice techniques that will enable us to bring an element of calm to our reactions. The first of these is to breathe. Next time you feel yourself getting anxious or nervous, focus on your breathing. Allow yourself to breathe in to the count of ten and breathe out to the count of ten. Do this five times. If you practice this in stressful situations, you WILL find that your become calmer.
2. Learn to recognise and manage your emotions
The idea that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions is misleading. In the above example it’s tempting to wish that we could stamp out and stamp on what we see as negative feelings – “I should not be feeling like this.” Yet the feelings are not the issue, it’s how we respond to them that matters. In other words, it’s ok to feel angry or sad or anxious.
Next time, instead of trying to deny your feelings or suppress them, why not simply acknowledge what you are feeling to yourself. Practice ‘compassionate curiosity’ with yourself - “That’s interesting, I am feeling uneasy/anxious/cross just at this moment, what are my feelings telling me?”
3. Use humour to deal with challenges
Learn to lighten up. We can take ourselves very seriously sometimes. Learning to laugh when things are hard can be very helpful. The light touch can make all the difference for people and teams coping in challenging situations. Learning to laugh at yourself is a great help when coming to terms with your mistakes. It’s ok to make mistakes. It’s not ok to keep making the same mistake again and again. You will prevent this by staying open to learning from your mistakes. Practising your compassionate curiosity with a light touch makes staying open to learning a whole lot easier.
You can learn more about Emotional Intelligence (EI) and how to develop your EI to improve not only your own productivity but that of your teams with our one-day training course. Read our full course outline or book your place.
