Emotional Intelligence Part 1 – Wherever people meet and relate to each other, emotional intelligence (also known as EQ) plays an important role. It is therefore also absolutely relevant for professional systems, even though for years this was all too readily overlooked in companies.
Current studies speak of the fact that a high EQ significantly promotes professional success and that the relevance of emotional intelligence in companies is increasing worldwide. For example, EQ is now seen by managers as a very relevant future competence.*
Contrary to what is often propagated, emotional intelligence is not synonymous with empathy. Rather, empathy is a part of EQ, because it is not only about emotional perception, but also about the appropriate handling of these emotions in oneself and towards others.
Emotional intelligence essentially encompasses five areas:
The ability to,
1. to recognize and understand one\’s own emotions.
2. to regulate one\’s own feelings.
3. to verbalize one\’s own feelings appropriately.
4. to recognize the feelings of others and
5. to influence the feelings of others.
In this first part of our EQ post series, we present mindfulness as a possible key to noticing your own feelings as well as those of your counterpart.
Mindfulness teaches us to pay attention to signals from our bodies as well as to consciously perceive sensations. There are a variety of exercises and methods to increase self-awareness and thereby get closer to yourself and the world around you.
Example: Keep a diary of your feelings!
📌 Start already in bed after waking up. Take a few minutes, breathe consciously and perform a short body scan. Listen inside yourself to find out with which body sensations, feelings and thoughts you start the day. If you like, write down your status quo.
📌 Collect your feelings throughout the day. Whenever you notice an emotion in yourself, make a note of the following:
– the specific situation,
– the thoughts you had during it,
– your physical sensations, and
– how you dealt with it.
📌 Take stock in the evening:
How are you feeling now? With what feelings and thoughts do you go to sleep? Which situations during the day have particularly contributed to changing your status quo from the morning?
Let this mindfulness check become an everyday routine to gain more access to your emotional world and to recognize the interactions between physical reactions, emotions and thoughts. This is essential to be able to change and control emotions.
We will deal with controlling emotions in part 2. Stay tuned!
Author: Johanna van Staa
#EQ #emotionalintelligence #emotions #regulate emotions #mindfulness
#wisdomofthefrog #bluefroggmbh #leadership
