3 Steps to Identify and Practice Emotional Intelligence at Work
Emotional intelligence is often thought of as a soft skill but it may be the most critical one for business success. Like almost all other types of intelligence, emotional intelligence is something you can build and develop over time and may take you far further than skills like coding, math or administration skills. Here are three steps to identifying and practicing emotional intelligence at work.
- Learn to understand and recognize what emotional intelligence is
Offices/Zooms are a melting pot of all different types of personalities. However, you will most likely find at least one person that never seems to be involved in major office drama, yet also doesn’t shrink away from confrontation. Not only do they never have any juicy gossip to offer but they also don’t seem to provide much of a willing ear for it either. They operate above the fray, -these are emotionally intelligent people. Once you identify who they are, you can generally start to learn how they accomplish what they do.
2. Watch and learn
Listening and paying attention may be the biggest superpowers of emotionally intelligent people. Emotionally intelligent people are savvy students of human behaviors. They have keen situational awareness and understand the importance of timing and validation and know when to build consensus and know when to be decisive. They got this way through observation.
3. Start applying what you learn to all interactions
Once you start to recognize the many small clues people are constantly dropping about themselves, you may find yourself starting to pick up on them more quickly. The best salespeople and customer service agents are those that genuinely to the customer or client to really hear and understand what their needs are. When you can meet needs they may not even be aware they have, then the sky is the limit for your success. Being emotionally intelligent is, above all else, about knowing things about people that they may not even know about themselves. Use this knowledge to help others in ways they didn’t even know they needed help.
Originally published at http://roburbach.net.
