How many times you have a terrible day at the office and you lose your temper. As a result, your HR gives you an ultimatum. If you lose your temper at an interview, then you might assure yourself that you have already lost the job before even joining.
Have you ever thought about someone who does not lose his control? You might have heard about someone who has the complete trust of the staff. The team listens to the person and follow orders. The person is easy to talk to, and always makes careful, informed decisions in very crucial and pressurized situations.
Maybe yes, or maybe not
But an emotionally intelligent person does not lose his control in difficult situations. Emotional intelligence is the new scale to more accurately show whether a person will be a successful working professional or not.
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is the rare ability to understand and manage your own emotions and all of those surrounding you. With emotional intelligence, you gain control over your emotional flow. People being emotionally intelligent to understand what their emotions mean to them. They also become very much careful about how these emotions can affect other people’s lives. They can manipulate their own emotions and others.
For a successful working professional, you must have a higher degree of emotional intelligence. Here I have shared some tips to develop emotional intelligence that will eventually help you in your career.
Observe & study people:
With each passing day, we are getting busier in our personal and professional lives that we lost touch with our emotions. To discover where our emotional intelligence lies, we need to reconnect to it. That’s why you must try to observe and study people around you at your office or your business place after finishing your daily work. You must have someone who is more mentally intelligent and developed than you. Try to study for every single person. After that, you need to distinguish the difference between you and that person.
Self-awareness:
Self-awareness is a crucial point for all those people who want to be more emotionally intelligent. An emotional intelligent person never gets manipulated by his own emotions. He knows how to overcome and control all that emotional flow within him.
To know oneself better, you need to have self-awareness.
1. Next time, when you feel to gain anger or emotional outburst, all you need is to take a step backward. You should maintain yourself calm then. Try to make yourself calm physically and mentally. Take a seat and take some deep breaths. If your state of mind is not relaxed enough to take any decision, then try to resist formulating any additional move on the existing crisis. When you are not mentally prepared to handle stress, every activity can make your crisis worse.
2. Also, always keep a notebook with you. Whenever this kind of situation you face, after calming yourself, write the incident. It will keep a history of all the incidents where you might feel to be less emotionally intelligent because of your reaction towards the incident.
For further self-assessment, it would be a valuable document for you.
Self-regulation:
This is all about to be in control. Especially when you become the boss or gain some allowed power at the workplace, in uneasy situations, you lose calm and try to attack your juniors or colleague verbally.
This could hamper your image as an employee and your organization’s reputation.
There are a few ways to be in control.
I) Value yourself
Sometimes, when we encounter a situation where our moral values or ethics are being challenged, we lose control as an individual. Know your values. You should know on which ground you will not compromise your ethics at all. Do you know what values are the most important points of your personality?
Have a heart to heart conversation with yourself and find your “code of ethics.”
When you know what you want most and what is important to you, then you probably won’t have to confuse when you face a moral or ethically challenging decision. You’ll make the right decision.
II) Personal accountability
Do not blame others for your mistakes. Being a boss or senior in the office does not make you 100% error-free. If something goes wrong, then it could happen because of your colleague’s negligence or your junior’s lack of experience. But do not ignore the point that it could also happen because of you. Before analyzing and examine the situation why the incident might take place, do not blame others.
Do not make yourself unnecessary difficult to approach for your coworkers.
III) Practice calmness
The next time, when you face some hardships or challenges at work, be very careful how you react. Shouting and blaming is not the right choice of an ideal employee. You may be a leader or just a new intern to the team. But when you shout at your coworkers, you show how much mentally weak you are. An emotional intelligent person shows his intelligence in calmness even in the most difficult situation.
Practice deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself. You can even send a mail of all the cussing words those you want to say. Express those emotions where it is not harmful will make you calm sometimes. Counting numbers is also a proven method to calm oneself.
Reality check:
A reality check is very much important. Sometimes, the situation becomes difficult not because of an individual’s or team’s fault. But sometimes, it is the time that is not right. In anger or an emotionally vulnerable state of mind, we do not understand all these points. And we react on impulse. Then, those reactions backfire when the time comes.
Here are some tips to avoid those mistakes.
It is easy to support your point of view and defend your perception. This is how we satisfy our pride. But next time, take some time to look at situations from other people’s perspectives. Place yourself in the place where the accused is then. Try to think on his behalf. You will get more clarity on the reality of the situation.
Your body language can make the situation more difficult for the opposite person to explain to you why and how the wrong happens. Your crossed arms or moving feet could make them uncomfortable and nervous facing you. If you require knowing the reality of the situation, then you should assure the speaker about his security. So he can speak to you the truth. Learn to read the body language of yours and others. It can be a real asset in a leadership role, because when you’ll be better able to determine how someone truly feels then you will better respond more accurately to the situation. This allows you to respond appropriately.
Cross-check your behavior:
In modern times, pieces of information and people's opinion spread faster than our thoughts. That's why it has become easier to create a generalized perception.
But have you ever cross-checked your opinion in any specific matter? If you think it is not important then you probably preventing yourself from accepting the fault in your thought process. Our mind palace is a state of a war zone of conflicting opinions on where your own opinions might get manipulated by what other people are thinking about. Think and rethink about the situation and your behavior towards that.
Apologize for your mistake:
Only an emotional fool can think about oneself that he never can make any mistake. But an emotionally intelligent person can realize his mistake and also understand the importance and positive impact of apologizing.
Sorry is a small word but powerful. It can bend any difficult situation in your favor. If you acknowledge that it is your mistake, then learn to say sorry no matter what position you hold in the office or your workplace. Apologizing does not make oneself weak but gives more strength to avoid similar mistakes.
Respond to feelings:
When you ask your assistant to work late because the deadline is tight, then you also should consider his state of affairs. There is a high probability that he agrees but you can hear the disappointment in his voice. Instead of explaining to him he has to finish the project, try to respond by addressing his feelings.
Tell him you appreciate his willingness to work extra hours. Make a light conversation about how much you are feeling frustrated about working late that night. It will make him feel more connected to you instead of the feeling of extra work burden. If it is possible, then you should try to figure out a way where the person does not feel helpless working that late. You can give him a little bribe. Ask him to enjoy by giving him the next morning off. This is how you can encourage him to work more and working late will become a more interesting incident for him.
Work on your social skills:
Good social skills are elements of emotional intelligence. A person with higher emotional intelligence can handle good news and bad news with equal maturity. Having good social skills is exceptional art. But it is worth to put all your efforts.
In building good social skills, the below tips can be helpful.
1.) Learn how to resolve conflicts in a team. Comprehending conflict resolution skills are vital if you want to work together as a squad.
2.) Improve your communication skills. How well you communicate with others will decide the fact that how much approachable you are at your working place.
3.) Learn to praise others, especially when you are a leader. You can inspire their loyalty and earn the trust of your team by giving praise when they already have achieved it.
Motivate yourself:
Self-motivation is a personal skill of emotional intelligence. Self-motivation is the virtue that pushes our inner soul to achieve goals and fulfill our commitments.
Personal goals can provide motivation better than any counseling. Dreams are something that never lets you sleep. If it can push you to cross your boundaries, then apply that thing positively to taking control of all your emotions that prevent you from evolving.
So think about where you want to see yourself in the next two or three years and set some targets for yourself. Ground them on your strengths and make them pertinent to you. If you can make them exciting and achievable, then this is enough to get you instantly motivated even in your most hardship days.
Conclusion:
To master the skill of emotional intelligence, you must have a solid understanding of how your coworkers’ emotions work. Also, study how their actions affect the surrounding people.
The better you can relate to them and works with others, the more successful you will be in your career. Take some time out to practice all the above skills and you will get overpowering control over your emotions.