Emotional Skills at work

How do these competencies affect successful leadership, teamwork and productivity?

 

“Emotional intelligence skills are synergistic with cognitive ones; top performers have both” – Daniel Goldman, Working with Emotional Intelligence.

 

Last week, we began to talk about Emotional Intelligence (EI) and its importance in terms of performance, productivity and development.

Today, we will explore a little bit about Emotional Skills- which can be learnt and improved (this is good news, right?)

What will we be covering here?

How Emotional Skills can be a game changer for your business

Corporate areas that directly benefit from improving EI

The Four main areas of EI

Identifying Competencies (or skills) and how they affect our work

 

But first, let’s take a look at how Emotional Intelligence and more specifically, Emotional Competencies can be a game changer for your business:

👉 Improving communications leads to better team management, better understanding of your audience and better content creation

👉 Learning how to respond as opposed to react leads to improved business relations, project building with valuable team members – who we might previously have thought we couldn’t work with – and creates an atmosphere of collaboration and growth

👉 Empathy helps us to understand the needs of our clients and customers, so we can develop products/offer services that genuinely meet the needs of our targeted audience

👉 Managing stress contributes to a better ambience, satisfaction and productivity

👉 Knowing how and when to adapt ourselves gives rise to better Leadership.

“Decades of leadership research suggest that these skills are crucial for leader effectiveness. ” – Ronald E.Riggio and Joanne Lee

They all contribute to better performance, productivity and development.

Applying this to the corporate environment, in particular, the following areas can directly benefit from improving EI:

💪 Team Management and Development: EI can help you to keep the stress at bay in any team, encourage good communication and maintain the skills to solve any conflict that might arise

💪 Staff selection and development: EI is key in identifying the right candidate and helping to develop the mission and vision of the company throughout the hiring and training process

But let’s not forget, on a more personal note, that Emotional Intelligence is a pillar for personal development, helping you to healthily respond to the environment, to have better interpersonal relationships and to develop traits that can be of value to any future endeavour.

In the last post, we also talked about the four main areas of EI:

📍 Self-Awareness: recognising our emotions is the first step. If we acknowledge them, we can choose how to control them.

📍 Self Management: this is the aspect that allows us to master our emotions, to be in control of them and give them better use when necessary

📍 Social Awareness: recognising emotions in others can help us relate to them better. Happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and surprise are the 6 universal emotions that we can identify in any human being.

📍 Relationship Management: this area is the one that allows us to have an impact on our company, neighbourhood or community, our daily work with others and any social sphere. It relates to the emotions and behaviours of others and how we can be of benefit to them.

So today, we will explore further in order to identify some of the competencies -the skills- that are required in each area.

One important thing to understand is that a person might need to develop different competencies depending on the context.

If we are talking about work, for example, a content writer might need a high level of empathy, much like a nurse; but the nurse might also need a good sense of humour (whereas the copywriter’s performance would not be compromised even if lacking a good sense of humour).

So, here we go with some of the most relevant emotional competencies

Self-awareness

Emotional Self-Awareness
The importance of recognising our own emotions is crucial and can really make the difference, transforming any situation from a potential disaster to one with a good outcome. Our feelings exist, they can’t be denied (even if we try to), so they are undoubtedly going to affect our performance. To be aware of them, knowing our own strengths as well as our limits, leads to an accurate sense of self-confidence and, at the same time, to a path of authenticity.

Self-Management

Emotional Self-Control
After identifying your emotion, the next step is to take control of it. If you can manage your emotions, you can stay calm and focused amid the most stressful situation and be of help to your co-workers and team in addition to yourself. Keeping disruptive emotions at bay is fundamental for leaders.

Adaptability
The ability to be flexible and change the course of action according to the circumstances without losing sight of the end goal can be daunting. Learning how to develop adaptability enables you to be flexible without stress. Life is unpredictable at the best of times, so uncertainty is expected and to be comfortable with it, is a great accomplishment.

Achievement Drive. Initiative and Innovation.
This competence is key and entails striving towards goals whilst maintaining a standard of excellence, accepting the challenges you might encounter en route but, at the same time, improving performance and being ready to welcome opportunities. Being open to innovation is crucial in an era where everything around us changes at lightning speed.

Positive Outlook
The way you see the world changes it. You can build your whole universe and turn each and every situation into an opportunity. The future can always hold improvement and positive outcomes.

Social Awareness

Empathy
Learning to understand others’ feelings, needs and perspectives is at the base of any business. Understanding audiences, clients, customers and teams leads to success. This entails taking a real interest, actively listening, being open and explaining ideas in a simple way whilst leveraging diversity and cultivating opportunities with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Organizational Awareness and Service Orientation
It is an undisputable fact that understanding all the levels within an organization (power, norms and conflicts) as well as the dynamics inside a team gives opportunities for improvement. To be able to recognise and even anticipate those dynamics is crucial and can be the key factor to meeting your audiences’ needs.

Relationship Management. Influence and Communication
This part includes engagement, clear communication and persuasion, in terms of being able to motivate others towards achieving a common goal, in a constructive and respectful way.

Conflict Management (Negotiation)
The ability to recognise different perspectives and help the parties involved to find common ground, not censoring or ostracizing opinions but instead, encouraging them to find a positive resolution.

Leadership
Inspiring and guiding the leader (manager, coach, mentor, business owner) to take real interest in assisting others, giving feedback and focusing on opportunities.

Nurturing collaboration, cooperation, building bonds
The ability to nurture and foster instrumental relationships, work towards a common goal, be able to listen, communicate and act accordingly.

Teamwork
These leaders build an atmosphere of cooperation, helpfulness, and respect. They help others commit to the group’s effort. They help a team develop an identity, positive relationships, and spirit.

 

By now, you might be wondering, how can I improve my emotional competencies and my own EIQ?

Well, developing soft skills will certainly help to improve social and emotional intelligence quotients.

 

 

Emotional Intelligence can be learnt and improved.

I’m sure you’ve already heard a great deal about Emotional Intelligence, mainly because even though it is not a new term, it has been the focus of a lot of scientific research in recent years, specifically looking into how it can be applied to areas such as business and sport.

The words Emotional Intelligence were coined by the researchers Peter Salovey and John Mayer, and were later popularised by Dr. Daniel Goleman in, his 1995 New York Times bestseller, Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ.

Since then, the exploration of Emotional Intelligence has not stopped within the fields of psychology and neuroscience.

The result is that we now know that Emotional Intelligence can help boost any business and lead to its success. Any business.

You can learn how to improve and effectively apply your Emotional Intelligence whether you are the CEO of a big company or a small business owner, a freelancer or an employee, sell a product or provide a service.

Emotional intelligence leverages the game for you.

What will be covering here?

What is Emotional Intelligence?

The Geneva Emotional Competence test

The four main areas of Emotional Intelligence

Self Awareness

Self Management

Social Awareness

Relationship Management

What is emotional intelligence?

Dr. Daniel Goldman defines Emotional Intelligence as
“the ability to recognise, understand and manage our own emotions as well as others’“

By now, you might be thinking: ok, fair enough, I understand how this can help to improve my life and my relationships, but what does this have to do with my business?
Well, I would dare to say … everything.

Understanding your own emotions and learning how to train your brain to be able to manage them in the best way possible, is something that can help us all on a daily basis, as they touch all the spheres of our lives.

Research has proved that Emotional Intelligence plays the central role in the success and happiness of any person and is fundamental for any interpersonal exchange.

From growth in sales to gaining clients, happy workers and happy teams, improving rapport among co-workers and successfully achieving goals, from better engagement to better conversion, Emotional Intelligence can help at every step of the pipeline (sorry for the marketing reference; but it is pretty clear, right?)

Even though EI has been studied for decades, it was not until recently that research proved and tested its importance and efficacy.

In fact, the Geneva Emotional Competence test (GECo) is a new test created by Marcelo Mortillaro PhD – Head of the Applied Affective Sciences research unit at Université de Genève – which measures

👉 emotion recognition

👉 emotion understanding

👉 emotion regulation in oneself

👉 emotion management in others

Therefore, scientific research has proved and validated the importance of Emotional Intelligence so now, our homework is to get to know its benefits and learn the techniques to use in order to help it flourish.

Which are the four main areas of Emotional Intelligence?

Self Awareness: recognising our emotions is the first step. If we acknowledge them, we can choose how to control them. 

Here’s a practical exercise: get a pen and paper (the old fashion way) and write down the answer to the following questions:

📝 Is it easy for me to recognise my emotions?

📝 If I am under stress, which emotion, feeling or sensation emerges first?

📝 Is this emotion located in a specific part of my body?

📝 Is it a good sensation or not?

📝 Is it motivating or, on the contrary, impeding my work?

📝 If it is not a positive sensation, do I know how to transform it into something positive or productive?

Self Management: this is the aspect that allows us to master our emotions, to be in control and give them better use when necessary.
Emotions can be manageable, and even the ones that we feel are negative can be a real asset depending on the situation and the use we make of them.

For instance, the questions that can help us here are:

📝 Is this emotion strong or mild?

📝 Is it a productive emotion?

📝 Is this particular emotion present every time I encounter the same situation?

📝 Can I control this emotion even if I am under pressure?

📝 Do I know how to adapt this emotion?

Social Awareness: recognising emotions in others can help us relate to them better. Happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and surprise are the 6 universal emotions that we can identify in any human being.
Some of the questions that can help us here are:

📝Can I easily recognise emotions in others?

📝Can I change my approach to better understand the other person’s feelings?

📝is there anything I can do to help modify a particularly negative experience that a co-worker or a client is going through? (And yes, you are right if the word that immediately comes to your mind is empathy).

Relationship Management: this area is the one that allows us to have an impact on our company, neighbourhood or community, our daily work with others and any social sphere.
It relates to the emotions and behaviours of others and how we can be of benefit.

Therefore, some of the questions we might ask ourselves here are connected to the emotions that others show in certain circumstances:

📝 Are those emotions positive and constructive?

📝 Am I able to respond appropriately to other people’s emotions?

📝 How do they affect me?

📝 Do I know how to collaborate to change a problematic situation?

📝 And how to gain clarity and work towards a common objective?

📝 Are respect and validation the two strong points in the interaction? What about communication?

By now, you might be wondering, how can I improve my own EIQ?

Developing Emotional Competences (like soft skills, for example) will certainly help to improve social and emotional intelligence quotients.