Back in 2016, the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicted that emotional intelligence would be one of the top ten skills necessary for surviving in the workforce of 2020. But with the arrival of the pandemic, many companies are now prioritising their employee’s mental health as COVID-19 has brought stress and anxiety all over the world.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) measures our ability to perceive our own emotions, as well as the emotions of others, and to manage them in a productive way in the work environment. EQ still continues to be a popular skill-set to have in the corporate world in order to thrive. Therefore, it becomes important for us to work towards improving our emotional intelligence to remain compassionate and empathetic in our work environment.
Here are a few ways to make yourself emotionally intelligent when you are at your workplace:
1. Practice assertive communication style
Assertiveness means expressing your views in a way that is clear and direct while respecting others. Communicating in an assertive manner can help you to deal with things in a friendly tone. Emotionally Intelligent people know how to put their opinion and firmly advocate for their rights. Therefore, this style of conveying your message is considered to be the most effective form of communication.
2. Recognise your emotions to understand others
To understand others better we need to understand ourselves first. We should have a proper insight into our emotions as it’s important to learn to understand them through introspection. IT is really necessary to notice others after conveying our views to become in order to be more self-aware of our impact on others.
Getting to know your weaknesses through such experiments is a step towards working on your own emotional intelligence. When we pay attention to how we’re feeling, we learn to trust our emotions.
3. Respond rather than react
There is a fine line between responding and reacting and it needs to be taken into consideration while developing EQ.
Reacting is an unconscious process where we experience an emotional trigger, and behave in an unconscious way that expresses or relieves that emotion. While responding is a conscious process that involves noticing how you feel and then deciding how you want to behave on a particular matter. We must differentiate between reacting and responding in order to be more compassionate towards others.
4. Be the change you want to see in the world
When you are holding a leadership position, you can not choose to have a negative personality. People or employees tend to look up to their seniors and try to adapt the similar character traits. As a leader, you should inspire people in terms of being empathetic and humble. Leaders need to develop a resilient mindset and capable of withstanding failures.
5. Build social bonds
Building bonds with co-workers has always been an important part of the public relations department of organisations. We should be good at developing these bonds to sell our product and to turn a large number of people towards our product. This is an important behavioral aspect, companies look at people while hiring them. Maintain trust within your team while working remotely. Make the time and effort to steer conversations and interactions other than task-oriented things and focus on building friendlier bonds and connections.
6. Learn to take criticism
A crucial part of increasing your emotional intelligence is to be able to take criticism in a positive manner. Instead of getting offended or defensive, high EQ people take a few moments to understand what could be the reason for criticism and how they can constructively resolve any issues.
7. EQ is a lifetime process
Building emotional intelligence is not a one-time thing, we need to constantly evolve with time. Working upon your EQ is a useful practice, it will go a long way in the corporate world. Even when you feel like you’ve mastered these steps and become emotionally intelligent, don’t forget to revise them timely.