Emotional Intelligence Overview

Emotional intelligence is comprised of five main tenets: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social skills. Companies like Travis Bradbury's and Mental Health Systems offer resources and assessments to delve deeper into emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is seen as crucial, as it allows us to receive feedback, overcome challenges, and be honest with ourselves. However, studies show that only around 10 to 15% of people are truly self-aware, which can hinder effective teamwork and coaching. Self-regulation, the ability to control impulses, is also important. While empathy, motivation, and social skills are significant, each person has varying levels. Emotional intelligence is about understanding and utilizing our emotions, and low scores in certain areas simply mean those emotions are not being utilized. The speaker shares personal examples of practicing empathy and understanding motivation. These traits can be developed through coaching and lead to improvements Now, coaching to emotional intelligence, this is going to be very, very high level. So when you think about emotional intelligence, there are five major tenets of emotional intelligence. Self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social skills. There are also companies out there, there's a great author, Travis Bradbury, who has Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book, it is fantastic. There's also certifications out there by Travis's company, as well as a company called Mental Health Systems out of Canada that does the EQI 2.0 assessment. So there's a lot of companies who do a really deep dive. We're going to stay very topical. So when you think about emotional intelligence, typically it starts with two fundamental tenets of the five, self-awareness, the ability to truly look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. Now, this is an opinion, this is not fact, this is opinion. I think everything starts with self-awareness. Our ability to receive feedback, our ability to overcome change and challenge without being jaded and blaming others, our ability to truly look in the mirror and realize we weren't ready for that promotion. If we are not self-aware, we become tough to manage and we become tough to coach. Now, there's a great study out there by a great young lady, Tasha Yurick, who wrote a book called Insight. In her book, she surveyed across many industries and 95% of the people said they were highly self-aware in the survey. When she tested them and had them go through some progressions or protocols, she found out only about 10 to 15% were truly self-aware. Think about that. Out of 10 people, 8 people are fooling themselves. That creates a very tough environment for a team to work effectively together or have people that are approachable and coachable. Now, self-awareness also has somebody or something, I should say, right behind it called self-regulation. Now I typically humorously nickname this person, Yeah, but Bob. You know that person in your life who says, Yeah, but, before you even get done with your first or second sentence, they already know you're wrong? And that comes at the inability to self-regulate. Somebody in your meetings who's always interrupting, disrupting, talking over other people. Those two tenets start really everything. Now that does not mean to diffuse the value of empathy, motivation, and social skills. Everybody has varying degrees of where their levels occur. Here's the cool thing. Emotional intelligence is about becoming intelligent about your emotions. A low score, if you get assessed, is not a bad score. It just means you're not utilizing those emotions. Let me share this with you. One of my personal low scores is empathy. Now for the last two to three years, during and after the pandemic, we have given our employees off three to four weeks in December to enjoy the holidays with pay. All of my employees are part-time employees. I don't have to do that. Now I'm not saying it because I'm a nice guy, yet I was demonstrating empathy because we worked hard during that time. Now that's something I would never have considered doing years ago. Motivation. To understand someone's motivation, ask them what motivates you. Where do you want to end up? Motivation isn't just you trying to motivate, and we have a rule. Never, ever try to motivate somebody until you first understand what motivates them. Guess what? Some people have lost sight of their own motivation. Empathy, really understanding how other people feel, their emotional makeup. Social skills, being able to engage, put yourself out there to socially interact. Everybody has varying degrees. Here's the great thing again about emotional intelligence. These are not personality traits. These are traits of how you utilize your emotions. Now I happen to have a high degree of self-awareness, yet I scored low in empathy, so I practice empathy. I'm also maintaining my self-awareness as best I can. You get to utilize your emotions. It can take some practice. That is the great thing about coaching to emotional intelligence. Once you start to craft self-awareness and you start to help someone be more honest with themselves, guess what happens? It transitions. It translates into so many other areas where they have opportunities to improve.