Working on Emotional Intelligence Can Make Life More Rewarding

Boosting your ability to understand what others are feeling is one of the best ways to have better interactions with your fellow humans. You may need to improve your EQ, or emotional intelligence, to gain a better grasp on what others are feeling, experiencing and responding to. Building emotional intelligence takes time and may require you to think about the tools that you use in life, particularly at work, to communicate your needs and goals.

It is easy to think that emotions have no place at work, but emotions are part of the human package and they are there whether you plan to pay attention to them or not. Improving your EQ can be the difference between employees who dive in whole-heartedly and those who just do what is necessary to keep their job.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of other people's (and your own) emotions without judgement. When working with a child or a loved one who is dealing with an uncomfortable emotion, it's important to separate feelings from behaviors.

An unhappy child or teen may feel upset or angry, and allowing them to express their feelings on those levels is helpful in teaching them how to think, express and explore their emotions. However, lashing out physically or responding in sullenness, screaming and yelling, or even being impolite is unacceptable behavior.

Types/Characteristics of Emotional Intelligence

Empathy is a key function of emotional intelligence. To truly function from a place of empathy, we must:

• Listen for the pain, not for a problem we can fix
• Allow space for expression of the emotion
• Stand up for yourself should the situation become abusive

People with high EQ are not doormats. If you have a friend who always has a complaint about a difficult relationship and you have listened many times before, you may need to step away from the next conversation if you are feeling drained.

Being an empathetic listener means that those around you can:

• Can pop off and just burn steam, which can help their blood pressure
• Can tell you a hard thing about yourself without fearing retaliation
• Can dig down through their own anger to find the core of pain and work on that

Improving Emotional Intelligence

The first step to improving your emotional intelligence is to spend a bit of time alone. Review the last time you and your spouse or partner had a big blow up. What was your spouse so upset about?

Often, we review such battles and realize that we have no idea what was making our loved one so angry, hostile or upset. Why not? Because we weren't listening to understand. We were listening to find a spot where we could use what they said as a counter argument and turn it back on them.

Anger is often a trigger response caused by fear and pain. If someone in your sphere is showing signs of anger, letting them burn through it without judgement is a great way to help them heal.