Welcome to the second issue in our Emotional Intelligence (EI) series. You can read last week’s issue here which introduces what EI is.
Emotional Intelligence is made up of 5 domains – Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Motivation, Social Skills and Empathy.
In this issue we’ll consider “Self Awareness” and what you can do to develop your competency in this domain.
Self-Awareness
If you’re self-aware then you know how you feel. You will also know how these emotions and your resulting actions and behaviours can affect the people around you.
So, how can you develop your self-awareness?
1. Always favour curiosity over judgment. This is the foundation to all learning.
2. Consider the ABC model I shared in my archive Lunch N Learn issue here and shown in the image below. Your (B) Behaviours will have (C) Consequences. Favouring assertive behaviour over agressive or passive behaviour is key to ensuring more positive (C) Consequences of course.
3. Build up an impressive vocabulary of emotional labels. In it’s simplest form you can collate these emotional labels running through the alphabet. From Anger to Zeal, there’s a fantastic resource to get you started in an archive Lunch N Learn issue here. As emotive creatures, the sheer number of emotions we experience is pretty incredible – being able to acknowledge and label these emotions is a true EI competency in the Self Awareness domain.
3. Conduct a Personal SWOT – This is an effective exercise in ensuring you are constantly striving for high performance and achievement. In essence you are gaining a snapshot of “you” at a moment in time. The resulting information can be hugely insightful. After conducting a Personal SWOT you’ll have feedback on where you are, what you know, what you don’t know, where you want or need to go and what’s next in your career, learning and life journey. You can read more about Personal SWOT here.
4. Seek out feedback – not only from your supervisors (called “downwards feedback”) but also from your subordinates (called upwards feedback). Feedback is a much under-utilised tool and something that every single one of us can tap into.
