Master your Emotional Intelligence

You could be a well-liked manager in your organization, but you are starting to feel stuck in your career. There is so much emotional intelligence to consider! How can you turn the table? Let’s explore.

By Emile Fakhoury
We usually define emotional intelligence too narrowly because we could miss critical elements that make us effective leaders. You could be a strong, positive manager but might lack another aspect of emotional intelligence essential for your growth, such as the ability to deliver difficult feedback to your team, the courage to drive change, or the creativity to think outside the box.

These gaps are simply evidence that your emotional intelligence skills are uneven. A well-balanced array of specific emotional intelligence capabilities prepares you to be a strong leader for tough challenges.

In this article, I will explore the 12 domains of emotional intelligence that could allow outstanding performance at work or as a leader. These skills require as much engagement with emotions as the first set and should be just as much a part of any aspiring leader’s development priorities.

These 12 domains of emotional intelligence fall under four main pillars: self-awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management, which is the process of managing relationships within your organization.

Self-Awareness

Emotional Self-Awareness is understanding your emotional responses to different situations. For example, you might feel jealous when your colleagues share their success. Instead of sweeping this feeling off, try acknowledging it. Understanding this emotion can help you recognize insecurities you may need to address.

Self-Management

Emotional Self-Control is identifying your triggers and controlling your impulses. If you have an abrasive peer, for example, rather than smoothing over every interaction, you could bring up the issue to your colleague directly, drawing on emotional self-control to tell him what does not work in his style.

Adaptability is taking on different tasks or responsibilities depending on the situation and the team's goals. For instance, you might have to step up as a leader or support a colleague.

Achievement Orientation is likely to be very concerned with how well the person achieved academically and professionally. In your career, you must realize whether you are motivated mainly by relationships or achievement.

Positive Outlook is the tendency to see the cup's field side and think optimistically.

Relationship Management

• Influence and Conflict Management: For example, if you have strength in conflict management, you would be skilled in giving people unpleasant feedback. And if you were more inclined to influence, you would provide that problematic feedback to lead your direct reports and help them grow.
• Coach and Mentor: Coaching is guiding but not giving advice or instructions; instead, it is letting the coachee learn and walk the way. Mentoring is providing guidelines and advice to help navigate the corporate environment.
• Teamwork: you don’t become a team unless you build trust that binds and connects you.
• Inspirational Leadership: As you develop your inspirational leadership competence, you will successfully drive change. Leaders with this strength can articulate a vision that resonates emotionally with themselves and those they lead.

Social Awareness

Empathy: It is the understanding of others' feelings and supporting them with care.

Organizational Awareness: it is to develop a clear strategy for getting things done as you would know the rules of the game at your organization. You would make informed decisions based on data and understand who needs to be influenced, why, and how.

Reviewing the 12 competencies in your mind can give you a sense of where you might need some development.

Even people with many apparent leadership strengths can improve their understanding of the areas of emotional intelligence where they have room to grow.

Don’t shortchange your leadership development by assuming that emotional intelligence can’t help you excel in your career.

Emile Fakhoury

Corporate Expert Writer, Business Professional in Energy/Water/Oil/Gas, Specialist in Coaching/Training, Association of Project Management UK Fellow Member. The professional who believes that adaptation to various social or corporate environments is the only way to survive and strive. Master the rules of the game in order to reach the top and change the rules.

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