Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence Skills

Emotional Intelligence is a important component of cooperative intelligence. Referred to as EI, often measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), it is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power of emotions to facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity. (Cooper & Sawaf 1998, Executive IQ, New York: Perigee)

According to Daniel Goleman, the father and author of Emotional Intelligence, there are 5 skills that enable EI:

1. Self awareness – knowing your moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others

2. Self regulation – the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and think before acting

3. Motivation – a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status and a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

4. Empathy – understanding other people’s emotional makeup and the skill to treat people according to their emotional reactions

5. Social skill – an ability to find common ground and build rapport. Skill in managing relationships and building networks

EQ Helps Us Deliver Bad News with Sensitivity

In my field of competitive intelligence a high EQ is helpful since we’re often delivering people bad news like, “Competitor A is getting ready to launch a disruptive technology,” or “We need to get this product to market before Competitor A or does else we’ll lose X% market share.”

Telling the Truth is Stressful

We are being paid to “tell the truth” and we cause stress since often “they” don’t want to hear bad news or threats to the business even if it is the truth. We have to stay strong to deliver bad news, and also be sensitive as to how “they” are going to take the news and not spring surprises, for example. I found one way not to be regarded as Darth Vader is to present management with opportunities as well.

What’s neat about EI versus IQ is that we can learn and be coached to improve our EI skills, whereas we’re born with a certain IQ.

 

Win/Loss Analysis book gives you a process to learn why you’re losing business and how to keep more of it!

Receive our 6-page Win/Loss Cheat Sheets

Connect on LinkedIn  Connect on Twitter

Share Button

4 thoughts on “Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence Skills”

  1. Nice post. I really like the point here you make about self regulation….

    2. Self regulation – the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and think before acting

    It’s vital that we control out moods that can lead to poor judgement.

    Awesome tips…

    Stuart Stirling

Leave a Comment