Dialling up our EQ
Welcome to Love Mondays, a weekly newsletter designed as a 3-minute hit to fire up the other 10,077 minutes of your week.
There are three sides to every story, what you believe, what someone else believes, and what those in power what you to believe. Emotional intelligence is the tool that enables us to listen to the space between our own thoughts and feelings, and the emotions of others. In order to lead change on a particular issue, we need to move away from ‘right and wrong’, and instead work with the notion of ‘right to be heard’. When people feel ‘heard’, they are more likely to listen.
What is an issue you find frustrating to understand?
Write it down.
Consider: how are your own cultural norms shaping the way you frame the issue?
Practice: seeking to understand the emotive frame of reference for different sides of the argument.
Decide to: dial up your EQ for other perspectives on the issue in order to be able to influence outcomes.
Tuning in to EQ
The concept of emotional intelligence was first popularised by Daniel Goleman in a book by the same title back in 1995. He argued it was as critical for success as IQ.[i] Emotional Intelligence sparked a new conversation around what it meant to be ‘smart’. By Goleman’s definition, ‘Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.’
Daniel gave structure to five critical components: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Emotional intelligence relies on you being able to understand and manage yourself, as well as to understand the emotions and feelings of others (empathy) and finally to influence them (social skills).
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