A Guide to Improving Emotional Intelligence

Advancing your career requires more than just hard work—you need to demonstrate growth, leadership skills, ambition, and emotional intelligence. Also known as your emotional quotient, or EQ, emotional intelligence refers to the ability to understand and manage feelings in healthy, positive ways. The following guide below explains the importance of emotional intelligence and how an executive coach can help.

Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important for Career Success?How you manage, use, and respond to your emotions affects every aspect of your life. Having high emotional intelligence leaves you better equipped to deal with stressful life situations, complex tasks, and conflicts with other people. 

These skills are critical for a successful career. Whether you need to navigate a major project or figure out how to communicate effectively with a new client, turning your emotions into a positive motivating force will help you excel.

Taking the time to identify and understand your emotions gives you the control you need to express them properly and recognize how other people are feeling. This can help you form stronger relationships with coworkers and clients.

How Can You Develop Emotional Intelligence?

Manage Emotions
Recognizing how you feel is a step in the right direction, but overcoming negative impulses is the biggest challenge. Anxiety can reduce the ability to think clearly and critically, causing people to make poor decisions in high-stress situations. Addressing emotions head-on to prevent them from overwhelming your thoughts gives you more control over your reactions.

Be Mindful of Others
Emotional intelligence is not just about knowing yourself; it's also about the ability to empathize. People are constantly sending out verbal and nonverbal cues. To fully understand them and their needs, social awareness is necessary. 

It’s common to have a mind full of deadlines, previous conversations, and tasks you want to accomplish while at work. When having a conversation, it really helps to pay attention to what the person is saying and how they’re saying it. Picking up on subtle emotional cues and remembering important details can help you improve communication skills, understand the dynamics of any group, and build positive relationships.

Don’t Dwell on Mistakes
Everyone faces challenges they can’t always overcome. However, those with high emotional intelligence will use these opportunities to learn and grow rather than dwelling on them. Overthinking will only lead to self-doubt. Instead, consider what can be learned from the situation and move forward.  Other opportunities await you!