Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognise, understand, manage and utilise your emotions and those of others effectively. It involves key components and concepts in navigating social complexities and making informed decisions that affect you and others around you. Emotional intelligence is fundamental in both personal and professional settings because it drives how you are perceived, how your interactions are viewed and how your relationship dynamics are enhanced. This article is aimed at helping you understand the role of emotional intelligence in your communication and how you can maximise this essential for productive relationships.
Self-awareness is one key component identified by a pioneer in the field of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman, in understanding your communication effectively. Self-awareness is your ability to identify and understand your limitations, strengths, values, and emotions in different situations and contexts. Self-awareness helps you express yourself in a way that your worth is clearly and authentically understood and fostered. This component is an effective aspect of your personality that helps you build transparency and trust with those whom you relate with. Before a team meeting or an applicable scenario, practise this by reflecting on your stress level and ensure you are calm enough to lead an effective discussion.
Self-regulation is your ability to manage your impulses or emotions; it can only be possible after an accurate self-assessment has been made. Self-regulation involves keeping yourself from flippantly disruptive emotions and impulses, creating a standard of honesty and integrity for yourself, balancing a sense of responsibility with your performance, finding areas of change ands accepting new approaches in constructively and respectfully handling difficult situations. No doubt, self-regulation is far from easy. Whenever people want to express how they feel at the instant they feel it, things often do not go as planned. Self-regulation allows you to hold back where necessary and seek other avenues in effectively conveying a message. During a heated argument, pause before responding to maintain a constructive atmosphere and reduce escalating tensions.
Another component is motivation. Motivation refers to a drive to achieve certain passions or goals for personal reasons rather than external rewards. Oftentimes, the readiness to act on certain opportunities and to meet a standard of excellence is disparagingly evident. While you may assume that each individual in a team should be enthusiastic about aligning their goals with their organisation, you may be shocked when others feel relatively different. Emotional intelligence involves balancing this realisation with optimism in pursuing goals and being persistent in inspiring others despite these obstacles and setbacks. Set a goal to share positive feedback to team members at least once a day to boost their morale.
Empathy and social skills can be said to be closely knitted. Empathy is a core aspect of emotional intelligence that involves the ability to sense, understand, and leverage the feelings of others for their active interest, service, and bridging of diversity. Social skills allow you to manage these relationships and to move people towards a desired direction. Together, you can wield these tactics by communicating openly and convincingly to negotiate, resolve disagreements, inspire, guide, nurture, and produce synergy with others through your words. Fully concentrate, understand and respond without interruption and with a genuine interest to engage them in a conversation.
Imagine you noticed yourself feeling anxious about the outcome before making a presentation to a client. How can you apply emotional intelligence to your communication? Take some time to acknowledge your anxiety, breathe deeply to calm yourself, and remind yourself of your hard work and preparations to gain confidence. How about if a team member gets frustrated and begins to vent more than the usual? Recognise the signs of frustration in facial expression, body language, and tone, and with active listening, ask them empathetically about their areas of concern. If someone is overwhelmed by a project and a pressing deadline, demonstrate understanding and support by assisting to lighten their load. In all, to apply the five components of emotional intelligence, there is a need to recognise and manage your emotional state by mindful practices such as meditations, pause and breath exercises before responses, and positive self-talk; understand others’ emotions by active listening, reflective listening, validating responses, open-ended questions; and build strong relationships through empathy by showing genuine interests in others and their experiences in your speeches, being supportive, respecting differences, and expressing appreciation.
For a fact, emotional intelligence has often been sidelined by many with a fixation on other types of intelligence. As people strive to display logical or other kinds of intelligence in their communication, appropriateness is often lost as a result of the decline in emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence helps to determine where, when, and to whom other kinds of intelligence are needed or necessary. It provides an adequate balance that allows everyone to flourish within different settings and spheres where other kinds of intelligence may be needed or prevalent.
Emotional intelligence also enhances interpersonal relationships. High emotional intelligence allows you to understand each mental and physical state of the individuals you interact with, create a deep connection with them, show effective communication, and build a stronger sense of trust in relationships. As emotional intelligence helps you understand the sensitivity and intricacies of concerns and matters, people are drawn to their relationship with you and your understanding of them.
Conflict resolution and team cohesion are made a reality as your emotional intelligence improves. As you learn the skills to manage and solve conflicts effectively by understanding people’s emotions and approaches, the use of empathy and self-regulation to find mutually beneficial solutions is made more effective. With a step higher, a greater exhibit of support, collaboration, and cohesiveness where each fosters a supported environment and feels valued and understood is achieved.
In conclusion, emotional intelligence is significant in professional and personal relationships. By cultivating self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills, you can make informed decisions and produce harmonious relationships despite social complexities. Recognise and manage your emotions, understand the emotions of others, and empathetically build strong relationships by optimising emotional intelligence for conflict resolution, team cohesion, and displaying appropriateness necessary for a balance of intelligence.