Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage your own emotions and understand the emotions around you.
It’s all about self-awareness of understanding what you are feeling and why so that you can react in a thoughtful and intentional way. It’s also about awareness and understanding of other people’s emotions so you can identify why someone might be behaving a certain way and where they are coming from so that you can interact with them in a constructive and compassionate way.
We are most familiar with IQ when it comes to measuring intelligence. IQ measures intelligence as it relates to your ability to solve problems, use logic, and understand complex ideas. Folks with high IQ generally are able to solve complex problems, learn and understand things quickly.
EQ has a strong correlation with good interpersonal skills which are extremely important when you work in teams. It’s been shown that most leaders have strong EQ skills and these skills also correlate to the quality of those leaders - in another way, most leaders have above average EQ and the more well regarded leaders tend to have very high EQ.
So much of being competent at work and in your life depends on whether you are able to interact constructively with other people. Very few individuals can find jobs or lives where they can remain in a bubble away from other people. We depend on each other to live and achieve things in work and we must find ways to work together even if we don’t always get alone or agree. This is where EQ is extremely important. We all must learn how to regulate our emotions, understand what they are telling us about ourselves, and then be able to communicate that effectively and unemotionally to others so they can understand us and where we are coming from. Similarly, we need to be able to listen to others to better understand where they are coming from so that we can have empathy and come to a shared understanding. When we have this shared understanding, we can resolve complex issue and constructively move forward with others in life and at work. This EQ can deepen our relationships and make us all mentally healthier and happier people.
While I’m at bootcamp, I really want to make sure I work on improving my EQ. We’ve learned about neuroplasticity, which is the ability of neural networks to change through growth and
reorganisation even through adulthood. New concepts and thoughts coupled with practice can make these neural networks stronger. I would like to make sure I’m focussing on this area by
attending to a few things everyday. I plan to:
I’m hoping that I can form some positive lifelong habits by doing these two things everyday. I also hope this will help me become more self-aware and improve my EQ. I'll share updates with how it's going as I progress through dev academy.