Being intelligent about emotions
(About a 4-minute read)“Everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves.”
[Carl Jung]
Recently, I have observed a common surprise amongst clients: how much emotions in fact influence their own presence, their relationships at work, and the work environment in general.
Although my clients work in different professions, the belief that emotions ideally should be kept outside the workplace seems to be prevalent. While the reasons might differ — from not wanting to share something “personal” as the emotions relate to challenges in their personal life, to respecting a certain professional etiquette where the showing of emotions is not desired — the truth is all the same: emotions cannot be “left at the door”. They influence how we show up, how we relate to others, and the decisions we make.
That is why emotional intelligence, also known as EQ, has evolved into an essential professional skill.
Welcome back to Spiegelbild!
In this blog I’d like to add my personal perspectives to the knowledge base that’s been developed around emotional intelligence. Typically, EQ is broken down into four core competencies:
Self-awareness;
Self-management;
Social awareness; and
Relationship management.
The experiences I’ll share below build upon these competencies, and add a few insights about how growing your EQ can benefit relationships and performance at work.
Check in with yourself
Your self-awareness is at the core of everything. It describes your ability to recognize your emotions and the effect they have on you and those around you. Self-awareness also plays a key role in understanding the energy you are bringing to a situation — whether that is a project meeting, a keynote speech, or a personal conversation with one of your peers or reports.
Emotions are closely linked to different energy levels. For instance, imagine for a moment that you are angry or frustrated. I’m sure you can feel the heightened level of negative energy that forms in your body even from just imagining the emotions. Likewise, feeling excited and happy results in an upbeat positive energy, and a sense of confidence and security is accompanied by a calm, grounded energy. Horses can feel all of that and react instantly to the emotions and energy a person displays. If this is true for horses, could it be equally true for humans?
As a coach, the horse’s unique sensitivity provides me incredibly valuable insights about what is showing up with a client, and allows us to further explore how different levels of energy can influence performance and motivation in the workplace.
It’s important to understand that all emotions need to be addressed, the positive and negative ones. We tend to not “like”, or not allow negative emotions, but it’s just as important to recognize them as the positive ones. It won’t help you grow your EQ if you pick and choose which emotions to acknowledge and which ones to ignore.
Be intelligent about emotions in decision making
I dedicated one of my earlier blogs to the important role emotions play in our day-to-day decision making. Being curious and socially aware provides an important source of information allowing one to dial into another person’s emotions and understand why they make certain decisions or have difficulty making others.
Basically, your EQ allows you a peek behind the curtain. Let’s say you have a very talented, capable employee who is keen to advance their career and prove themselves. Yet, they tend to overthink and analyze absolutely every angle and perspective of an issue, and thus take a long time to move into action or make a decision. On the face of it this employee appears indecisive. Their true obstacle, however, might be their fear of not being perfect or disappointing you.
Being emotionally intelligent requires us to stay curious, reflect on the situation and look beyond the surface. Recognizing others’ emotions, and the dynamics at play within your team and organization will allow you to identify and confront the true issues.
Practice empathy
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes allows you to understand your colleagues’ feelings and perspectives. I’m sure you’ve read about practicing empathy and how it allows you to collaborate more effectively. But what does this mean in real life? Practicing empathy is a two-way street.
About a year ago I worked with a team of which one team member was afraid of horses. At the beginning of the horse session this team member stayed behind, and walked at a distance from the horse. However, the horse could sense the person’s discomfort. Whenever they would stay behind, the horse slowed down and stayed with the anxious person. As a result, a trusting relationship developed between the person and the horse. This connection allowed the person to communicate well with the horse, the two became very tuned in to each other. This was recognized by the other team members and about half way through the session the team asked the initially anxious person to become the team leader!
The team left the session enriched with many new perspectives about their respective talents and roles and responsibilities.
Emotional intelligence …
… requires skills that are increasingly important in today’s world. Coaching with the assistance from my horses allows me to make skills such as self-awareness, social awareness, empathy, adaptability, patience, resilience and active listening — amongst others — accessible to people in that they are able to physically experience them. We often think about intelligence in an academic way. Equine-assisted coaching taps into our natural intuition, into our connection to nature, and reconnects us to learning with our senses.
If you are keen to learn more about how you can grow your EQ, use this link [https://spiegelbild.as.me/discovery-call-zoom] to book a free 30-minute discovery call. I’d be delighted to tell you more about our programs and how they can support you — one human-horse partnership at a time.
I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you did, please sign up with your email though our website to never miss a blog and access more interesting insights and perspectives.
In case you are curious to read more about emotional intelligence:
Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence. Why it can matter more than IQ. 2005