All of us, throughout our life, have to undergo situations, where we feel our heart in the throat ,ears listen to own heartbeats, the head sweats like its 45-degree scorching summer and at same time legs shivers as if its -5-degree freezing winter, the hand’s muscles losses to hold even a 5-gram pen and mouth shutter to speak a word!!
We get a snapshot of all of these when we try to recollect memories of what happened when:
- We were about to tell our parents of very low grades.
- We were about to recite our poem in the school assembly.
- We were about to start our presentation in college.
- We came to know about the loss or accident of our close one.
But not all people lose their mind that way, as we all have seen many people confessing in front of authorities, we have heard the flawless poem of the first prize winner and we have witnessed the impressive presentations in our college.
So don’t you wonder how some people around us are so cool even in the worst conditions?
I believe that it’s not only the technical knowledge and expertise that make them different from the ordinary, but it is also the ability to not get torn out in extreme stress. They don’t lose their temper easily, think calmly and then come to a wise decision. This is the most basic skill in the corporate world also and is called “emotional intelligence”.
I was introduced to the concept of “emotional intelligence” by my friend when I failed to get marks above the bars in the JEE practice exams. He made me aware of how emotional intelligence comes into the picture by influencing the psychological state of mind and body when we are under situations where stakes are high. This has motivated me to discuss with you a criterion that significantly determines the probability of your success when stakes are high.
We have heard about many monks and saints who had incredible control over their emotions and sentiments. They’re excellent decision makers, and they know when to trust their intuition. Regardless of their strengths, however, they’re usually willing to look at themselves honestly. They take criticism well, and they know when to use it to improve their performance.
We live in a world where each of us sees the world in a different way, interpret it in a different way. So it is very essential in the corporate world to understand each other and accept their views. Most of the big leaders have this ability.
We will talk about different aspects of emotional intelligence and we’ll discuss how we can achieve it. Deep down you all know everything about this blog. But many of us don’t apply these things in our lives. This blog intends to make you realize the necessity of these pieces of stuff using the most effective way of learning i.e. learning by questioning. So I will answer three path-defining questions of this concept of EI:
1. What makes a leader?
I have found, however, that the most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but mainly as “threshold capabilities”; that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But my research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the necessary condition of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a great leader.
It isn’t IQ or technical skills, says Daniel Goleman. It’s emotional intelligence: a group of five skills that enable the best leaders to maximize their own and their follower’s performance. When senior managers at one company had a critical mass of EI capabilities, their divisions outperformed yearly earnings goals by 20%.
Big companies are now introducing “competency model” for their employees to aid them in identifying, training, and promoting likely stars in the leadership firmament.
According to the Harvard Business Review, there are 5 components of EI.
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Motivation
- Empathy
- Social skills
Self-awareness:-
In the book “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”, Robin Sharma said that you can’t love others unless you love and completely understand yourself. If you know who you are and what are your desires, then and then only you can understand other people’s point of view. Self-awareness is all about recognizing emotions, strengths, limitations, actions and understand how these affect others around you. By analysing yourself you can increases the likelihood of you handling and using constructive feedback effectively. You can also improve your organization’s performance. For example, you can hire an appropriate person for the post in which you struggled. Now, how can we achieve self-awareness?
The simple answer is keeping a diary. In which you’ll write about the situations that have triggered disruptive emotions in you, such as anger, and your thoughts and behaviours during those situations.
People who have a high degree of self-awareness recognize how their feelings affect them, other people, and their job performance. Thus, a self-aware person who knows that tight deadlines bring out the worst in him plans his time carefully and gets his work done well in advance. Another person with high self-awareness will be able to work with a demanding client. She will understand the client’s impact on her moods and the deeper reasons for her frustration. “Their trivial demands take us away from the real work that needs to be done,” she might explain. And she will go one step further and turn her anger into something constructive. There is a self-awareness model which is called the Johari window. Check it out. click here
Self-regulation:-
Imagine a situation, you are a leader of a group which has to give a presentation on the new product of your company to the CEO and board members of your company. The members made many mistakes and the show went flopped. What will your reaction to your colleagues after this mess? You might find yourself tempted to pound on the table in anger or kick over a chair. You could leap up and scream at the group. Or you might maintain a grim silence, glaring at everyone before stalking off.
But if you have a gift for self-regulation, you will choose a different approach. You will pick your words carefully, acknowledging the team’s poor performance without rushing to any hasty judgment. You will then step back to consider the reasons for the failure.
Are they personal—a lack of effort?
Are there any mitigating factors?
What was your role in the debacle?
After considering these questions, you will call the team together, lay out the incident’s consequences, and express your feelings about it. You will then present your analysis of the problem and a well-considered solution.
See, this ability can make you work so patiently even in the worst conditions.
So, what are the ways to develop this regulation in yourself?
First of all, try to understand the situation. Don’t take the action immediately. Hold yourself. Figure out what was the mistake by your side. Admit them and make a commitment to face the consequences. Your ability to self-regulate as an adult has roots in your development during childhood. Learning how to self-regulate is an important skill that children learn both for emotional maturity and later social connections.
The best way to regulate yourself is by writing what’s on your mind in a paper and then tore it up and throw it. It might seem a bit crazy. But it’s a really nice way to be calm. Deep breathing exercises will also help you to gain self-regulation.
Motivation:-
If there is one trait that virtually all effective leaders have, it is motivation. They are driven to achieve beyond expectations—their own and everyone else’s. The key word here is “achieve”. Plenty of people are motivated by external factors, such as a big salary or the status that comes from having an impressive title or being part of a prestigious company. By contrast, those with leadership potential are motivated by a deeply embedded desire to achieve for the sake of achievement.
In the Harry Potter series by J.K.Rowling, there’s a lesson of how to beat your fear. It was to think about the best memories of your life. Likewise, whenever you feel low, you should think about the victories that you had in the past. Motivation with the self-regulation makes the perfect state of mind. Another way to keep yourself motivated is to take short breaks during your work hours.
We all might find it very boring. But if we want to keep growing and motivated, we should keep a diary in which we write our abilities and disabilities. We should read it daily. I used to have a diary in my high school to keep the record of my mistakes. I read them daily and it eventually made me better and better in studies. I think it’s the best way to keep yourself on track.
The thing is we don’t spend time on ourselves. That is what pulls us back. Whenever we are free, instead of wasting that time on the phone and other silly things, we should think about ourselves. Imagine yourself what you want to be, whatever it be. Think about what will be the outcomes of your activities. By doing this you will find yourself more concentrated and satisfied.
Thoughts are vital, living things, little bundles of energy. Most people don’t give any thought to the nature of their thoughts and yet, the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. Thoughts are as much part of the material world as the lake you swim in or the street you walk on. Weak minds lead to weak actions.
Empathy:-
Of all the dimensions of emotional intelligence, empathy is the most easily recognized. We have all felt the empathy of a sensitive teacher or friend; we have all been struck by its absence in an unfeeling coach or boss. But when it comes to business, we rarely hear people praised, let alone rewarded, for their empathy. The very word seems unbusinesslike, out of place amid the tough realities of the marketplace.
But empathy doesn’t mean a kind of “I’m OK, you’re OK” mushiness. For a leader, that is, it doesn’t mean adopting other people’s emotions as one’s own and trying to please everybody. That would be a nightmare—it would make action impossible. Rather, empathy means thoughtfully considering employees’ feelings—along with other factors—in the process of making intelligent decisions.
Empathy is particularly important today as a component of leadership for at least three reasons: the increasing use of teams; the rapid pace of globalization; and the growing need to retain talent.
Social skills:-
The first three components of emotional intelligence are self-management skills. The last two, empathy and social skill, concern a person’s ability to manage relationships with others. As a component of emotional intelligence, social skill is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not just a matter of friendliness, although people with high levels of social skill are rarely mean-spirited. Social skill, rather, is friendliness with a purpose: moving people in the direction you desire, whether that’s agreement on a new marketing strategy or enthusiasm about a new product.
Socially skilled people tend to have a wide circle of acquaintances, and they have a knack for finding common ground with people of all kinds—a knack for building rapport. That doesn’t mean they socialize continually; it means they work according to the assumption that nothing important gets done alone. Such people have a network in place when the time for action comes.
Is social skill considered a key leadership capability in most companies? The answer is yes, especially when compared with the other components of emotional intelligence. People seem to know intuitively that leaders need to manage relationships effectively; no leader is an island. After all, the leader’s task is to get work done through other people, and social skill makes that possible. A leader who cannot express her empathy may as well not have it at all. And a leader’s motivation will be useless if he cannot communicate his passion for the organization. Social skill allows leaders to put their emotional intelligence to work.
Go through this video. It will briefly tell you the above stuff. click here
2. Why it is too hard to be fair?
When people feel hurt by their companies, they tend to retaliate. And when they do, it can have grave consequences. A study of nearly 1,000 people in the mid-1990s, led by Duke’s Allan Lind and Ohio State’s Jerald Greenberg, found that a major determinant of whether employees sue for wrongful termination is their perception of how fairly the termination process was carried out. Only 1% of ex-employees who felt that they were treated with a high degree of process fairness filed a wrongful termination lawsuit versus 17% of those who believed they were treated with a low degree of process fairness. To put that in monetary terms, the expected cost savings of practicing process fairness is $1.28 million for every 100 employees dismissed. That figure—which was calculated using the 1988 rate of $80,000 as the cost of a legal defence—is a conservative estimate, since inflation alone has caused legal fees to swell to more than $120,000 today. So, although we can’t calculate the precise financial cost of practicing fair process, it’s safe to say that expressing genuine concern and treating dismissed employees with dignity is a good deal more affordable than not doing so.
Many executives turn to money first to solve problems. But according to HBR research shows that companies can reduce expenses by routinely practicing process fairness. Think about it: Asking employees for their opinions on a new initiative or explaining to someone why you’re giving a choice assignment to his colleague doesn’t cost much money. Of course, companies should continue to offer tangible assistance to employees as well. Using process fairness, however, companies could spend a lot less money and still have more satisfied employees.
3. How to build the emotional intelligence of groups?
Indeed, the concept of emotional intelligence had a real impact. The only problem is that so far emotional intelligence has been viewed only as an individual competency, whereas the reality is that most work in organizations is done by teams. And if managers have one pressing need today, it’s to find ways to make teams work better.
No one would dispute the importance of making teams work more effectively. But most research about how to do so has focused on identifying the task processes that distinguish the most successful teams—that is, specifying the need for cooperation, participation, commitment to goals, and so forth. The assumption seems to be that, once identified, these processes can simply be imitated by other teams, with similar effect. It’s not true. By analogy, think of it this way: a piano student can be taught to play Minuet in G, but he won’t become a modern-day Bach without knowing music theory and being able to play with heart. Similarly, the real source of a great team’s success lies in the fundamental conditions that allow effective task processes to emerge—and that cause member to engage in them whole-heartedly.
I hope we all would become more emotionally intelligent after continuous implementation of these measures in our daily life.
Thanks for reading, and will feel appreciated if followed by questions?
By Rushiraj Gohil
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TEAM CEV!!!!