Last week we talked about teaching clients Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and how to increase this skill set. We defined emotional intelligence and discussed the four skills that can be developed to increase EQ and therefore improve the quality of experiences and relationships.
The four skill sets are:
1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-Management
3. Social Awareness
4. Relationship Management
Self-Awareness is the ability to accurately understand your own emotions and how you react across situations. Click Here for more on Self-Awareness.
Self-Management refers to your reaction, or lack of reaction, to an emotion.
Social Awareness is the ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is going on with them.
Relationship Management refers to your ability to use the three previous skill sets to interact successfully with others.
This week I will provide strategies for developing the last three skill sets. You can explain it to your clients any way that works for you – here is a guide.
Strategies for Developing Self-Management Skills
The purpose of this skill is to help you move from awareness of what you are feeling to a healthy way to manage that emotion. Awareness is key so that you can start to manage the emotion at a more mild level. For example, it is much easier to manage irritability than it is to manage rage.
Once you are aware of what you are feeling you can use the following strategies to manage your emotions in a healthy, proactive way.
1) Time out. Often when our emotions start to rise we can get into a cycle of negative thinking and reaction without taking time to slow down the nervous system and give yourself the opportunity for rational thinking and problem solving.
By taking a time out, removing yourself from whatever is triggering that emotion, and taking some deep breaths, you are able to get out of the emotional reaction state and into the rational responding state.
2) Write it out. When our emotions are high, we can sometimes have very rapid and scattered thinking. We will either think about many different things in a chaotic fashion or we may think about the one or two things that bother us the most and go over it again and again.
If you stop and take the time to write out what you are thinking, you are forcing your thought process to slow down. This can give you some time to get clear and dump some of your emotion before you respond to the situation.
3) Distraction. If you are feeling overwhelmed or consumed by emotion you may not be able to bring yourself down to a place of rational problem solving right away. In this case it can be helpful for you to completely distract your brain from ruminating. Distraction can take place many ways including:
a) Exercise
b) Counting backwards from 100 in sets of seven
c) Talking to someone about a completely unrelated topic
d) Video Game
e) Movie
f) Book
Strategies for Developing Social Awareness Skills
The third skill set is Social Awareness. This is your ability to recognize how other people are feeling and responding to you. I’m sure we’ve all encountered the person who gets way too close when talking (and maybe even feels the need to touch you while they talk), and even though you keep moving back, they keep moving forward. This person has a lower level of Emotional Intelligence and is not aware of how you are feeling or responding to them.
Strategies for Developing Social Awareness Skills:
1) People watching. Spend some time in a public place just observing. You can observe people all alone and see how they are behaving and responding to others. You can observe couples or families and watch for their interactions. Do they seem happy, sad, angry or uncomfortable?
2) Non-Verbal Communication. Start to notice how the people you are interacting with respond to you non-verbally. What is their body language and tone of voice? What are their facial expressions conveying.
3) Check in. This strategy is for someone you are close to. In any given situation, ask them how they feel about something. Their answer may completely surprise you.
Strategies for Developing Relationship Management Skills:
The final skill set is Relationship Management. We all know that the beginning of a relationship can be all rainbows and butterflies with both people on their best behaviors.
All good and healthy relationships take work. Relationships management refers to your ability to communicate your needs and to understand what the other person needs. The Gottman Institute has a boatload of information about creating healthy & happy relationships.
Strategies for Developing Relationship Management Skills:
1) Be assertive. When communicating a need, don’t beat around the bush. Tell them what your perspective is, what you would like to see happen and why.
Ask them if they understand your position and if there is any way to help make the situation a win-win for you both.
2) Welcome critical feedback. If someone feels safe enough to tell you that they are not happy with something in the relationship, this is a good thing – it means they feel safe.
Try to avoid taking it personally and instead move to a place of curiosity. How are they experiencing the situation? What do they want to see happen differently? Keep an open and safe dialogue going.
This will let the other person know that they can be open and honest instead of stuffing down emotions.
3) Appreciation and Gratitude. When you appreciate something the other person does, let them know it. The Gottman Institute says that we need a 5:1 ratio of good to bad interactions. For every negative interaction we need five positive ones to keep the relationship happy. Express your care for them.
By giving our clients a variety of different strategies to build up their Emotional Intelligence, we are giving them a skill set that will last them years beyond our work with us.
If you have any specific strategies for developing Emotional Intelligence and are willing to share, I’d love to hear about them. Let me know in the comments.
Much Love,
Charlene
oxox