Module 11 – Growing Your EQ

How did you get on thinking about emotional intelligence? Were you able to identify areas of strengths and possibly, weaknesses, as far as your emotional intelligence is concerned? Well, if you identified some weaknesses, the good thing is, is that emotional intelligence can be developed, and it’s important that we do that, because the more emotional intelligent we are, the easier it is to mix freely, be adaptable, and face a range of different challenges and to choose appropriate leadership styles according to a situation we find ourselves in.

How do you do it? Well there’s a range of different ways, and we talked about that in the text. One of the ways is the constantly asking yourself “How do I feel? How do I think? How are other people thinking?” And we’ve got some exercises for you to do to help you with that.

It’s also really quite important to get yourself a coach. Somebody who can help you to think, force you to address those issues, and to reflect on how you might be able to adapt to change and to think about a change plan for yourself in response to the situations that you’re finding yourself in. A good coach will be challenging, a good coach will help you to reflect, a good coach will get you committing to big changes, which will move you forward. Now, coaches do cost money. I coach people, and of course, I charge. And ideally, I would ask you to go to a professional coach, a well-trained coach, somebody who has the right standards, the right training, the right ethics to be a good coach for you.

Obviously, you don’t have to have a professional coach, although I would recommend one to you. If necessary, find a mentor for you, or somebody who can be challenging. But that person needs to be independent. That person needs to be not engaged in the emotions or the challenge or the work situations that you have. And that’s why it’s good to get a professional coach who ca look at you and ask those challenging questions, because you need that challenge, if you are to develop your emotional intelligence. You need to have it in order to become more self-aware.

On the one hand, do the exercises, on the other hand, get a coach and get coached through the challenges, and become more and more emotionally aware of yourself, of others, and develop the skills and the control that you need to be truly emotionally intelligent, and therefore, and adaptable, flexible leader.

It’s also well worthwhile doing some of the personality profile test to look for your blind spots. A good coach will hopefully, help you through some of those tests and be able to uncover your blind spots. So what do I mean by blind spot? Well it’s just that, it’s an area of your behavior or your thinking or your skills or your emotional range which is going to really let you down, but you’re completely unaware of it. It may be something that is really, really, well aware or fully in sight for your team members, but it’s not something you’re aware of at all. So it’s a blind spot for you. So a 360 degree evaluation may be one way of bringing up your blind spots. There’s a variety of ways that those can be achieved.

So, think about the tests that we’ve got in the text. Think about getting yourself a coach. Ask yourself the difficult questions, and think about getting a personality profile done, or 360 degree appraisal done. And listen out for your blind spots, and look at where you need to improve. And get a professional, probably your coach, to help device and develop a plan for you to develop that emotional intelligence.

So, have a think about those. Run through the tests, and that’s your homework, if you like. And then what we’re going to move on to, is talking about energy levels in the next segment.