Why does emotional intelligence affects your career so much? Would you like to understand yourself or other people better during everyday activities or at work? Or maybe you are planning to change jobs soon and would like to be well assessed on the interview?

[bctt tweet=”Emotional intelligence – learning about it and developing it, making it a feature will favor you and act for your benefit in many situations.”]And maybe there are situations when you as a leader cannot understand the behavior of other people? This article is about emotional intelligence – learning about it and developing it, making it a feature will favor you and act for your benefit in many situations.

Emotional intelligence has been defined, by Peter Salovey and John Mayer, as “the ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior”. That is a definition you can find.

I’ll start here from the assumption that the topic of EI is unknown to you and that you just want to start using its possibilities. You must start by recognizing your emotions and the emotions of other people.

This means that your task is to pay attention to the fact that this topic exists at all and that there is a certain plane on which you want to focus your attention. This is the first step.

Start collecting insights

I am convinced that after some time first thoughts will appear in your head and then questions about your own and other people’s behavior. This will be the step number two. Start collecting these insights, and first try to analyze the specific situations you have experienced yourself.

You will also notice that seeing these signals begins to come to you more and more easily. After some time, your attention will certainly be drawn to the fact that you will involuntarily start to control and balance your reactions during your interactions with other people, with your employees, your boss. And this will be step number three.

The natural thing is that there will be situations and questions in your head that you won’t find the answer to. Especially at the beginning. However, I would not like them to discourage you from continuing to work. A great solution in such situations will be talking to another person or your team to better understand this situation.

Avoid potential conflicts

Understanding them thoroughly will help you avoid potential conflicts. An additional benefit of having a conversation will be that your interlocutors, i.e. your team, for example, will receive a clear signal from you that the topic of emotions and reactions is important to you. As a consequence, they will also start paying more attention to these matters. A double benefit. So that was number four.

The fifth point is extremely important from a practical point of view for both you and your team. After examining how you deal with your own emotions, you must take full responsibility for your reactions in stressful situations. I want you to know that you must keep your emotions under control when things go wrong already at this stage.

Why is this so important?

5 steps

Because by going through the steps, you practically develop all five elements of emotional intelligence that Daniel Goleman has defined: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. I want to show you that going through the five practical steps I have described will strengthen you as a leader in such a way that you will be able to read your and others’ reactions correctly.

Keeping emotions under control will be easier and easier for you, but it is crucial that you treat individual difficult situations along the way as a test and as an exercise that is meant to strengthen you.

Moreover, your ability to stay calm and in control in difficult situations is highly valued – inside and outside of your team. Remember that you do not function on a desert island. As a leader, you are constantly being watched by your employees.

Also, your work on the development of emotional intelligence will not escape their attention. Certainly, they will often ask themselves the question of whether this is your permanent change of behavior or just a minor episode.

The most important thing is your reaction to it

However, if you will make a mistake, the most important thing is your reaction to it. If you openly and quickly admit your mistake, apologize for your reaction, your image will not suffer as much as if you want to pass over it.

I want you to remember that with time errors will appear less frequently. You will become emotionally mature and thus more confident in yourself and your abilities and skills. The ability to listen to yourself and understand your reactions means that after some time they stop limiting you.

They will also stop surprising you in situations where you want to be well represented, such as during a job interview or a salary increase.

Consistent work on EI will pay off and the ability to control your emotions and reactions will become your asset to those who have not developed this skill.