Raising Your Emotional Intelligence
Before we start with sharing all the benefits to raising your emotional intelligence it’s important to understand a little bit more about EQ and we begin with a simple question:
Who would you rather do business with?
A) Someone who is miserable and rude ….or
B) Someone who is joyous and considerate ….
Business and leadership success is changing and Harvard’s research team have now proven business and leadership success is, now more than ever before, about who you are being rather than what you know. A study they completed showed that customers come back to work with people they like and 80% of client retention is personality or the person, and 20% is the skill. This proves that your mood at work really does matter, especially, if you are the boss, as they also recorded that the mood of the leader will determine the mood of the organisation and its people.
Which takes us onto what is Emotional Intelligence? Emotional Intelligence is your ability to know how to handle your emotions (e.g. your mood), and the emotions of others around you, both empathetically and effectively. It’s about taking responsibility for your emotions, words and actions, responding rather than reacting, thinking before you speak and sometimes letting go of the need to be right.
Through years of practice and facilitating in the field of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence HSG believe there are four keys to understanding and raising your emotional intelligence. These are PURE transformational leadership skills and when embedded into your businesses culture can create enhanced client retention and positive business performance and potential for growth.
The Four Keys to Emotional Intelligence
Key One: Perceive Emotions accurately within yourself and others. This involves the capacity to be able to observe and discern in the moment the unseen or what is really going on within you, and the other people involved.
Key Two: Understand Emotional Triggers. This involves dealing with emotions and delving deeply into what the emotional triggers are telling you and what action you need to take to acknowledge, respond, discuss and/or resolve what is arising.
Key Three: Regulate Emotions. Managing or regulating our own emotions, and those of your team, clients or colleagues, promotes a healthier work environment and creates more positive and productive experiences for everyone involved.
Key Four: Evolve Emotions. You will challenge yourself, and your team, to develop and create effective, harmonious and productive relationships using emotional intelligence strategies fuelled by positive emotional drivers and desires.
And here are some positive Emotional Intelligence tangibles to give you even more reason to raise your teams, or your own, emotional intelligence profile and training.
“Offices with “engaged” employees were as much as 43 percent more productive.”
Hay Group Inc., Engage Employees and Boost Performance Working Paper, 2001.
“85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. 15 percent is due to technical knowledge.”
Carnegie Institute of Technology, as reported in Forbes Magazine
“71 percent of hiring managers value emotional intelligence in an employee more than IQ and 34 percent place greater emphasis on EQ when hiring and promoting employees.”
“EI such as empathy, self-confidence, and self-awareness are the core underpinnings of visionary or transformational leadership.”
Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002, as reported at Harvard Business School
