Hi, everybody and welcome.
My name is Jen and I'm a career coach
at Indeed, with over 10 years of experience in career services.
Over the years, I've personally worked
with hundreds of job seekers from a variety
of different industries.
And today, I want to share some advice
that I've refined over the years for how
to improve emotional intelligence,
and explain why it's essential for long-term success.
Now, emotional intelligence is sometimes called EQ for short.
And it's essentially the ability to identify and manage
both your emotions and the emotions of the people
that you interact with.
It encompasses several skills, including interpersonal
and communication skills.
Having emotional intelligence means
you're aware of your feelings and how your interactions
affect others.
When you develop your ability to be aware of your emotions
and react accordingly, you can have better chances
of success, both in your professional
and personal relationships.
Having a high EQ is going to benefit you
if you're interested in management,
if you work in client or customer-facing roles,
or even if you just work in a team environment.
I'll discuss the four fundamentals
of emotional intelligence and how
to improve them in a way that will positively impact yourself
and others.
And at the end of the video, I'll
show you how to perform an EQ self-evaluation.
So be sure to stick around.
Let's jump into the four fundamentals
of emotional intelligence.
Number one, self-awareness.
Self-awareness is the ability to identify your emotions
and emotional triggers.
Being aware of your feelings helps
you understand how others might perceive your emotions.
Self-awareness is a valuable attribute
to have to understand how you are
viewed by your coworkers, clients, or managers.
To improve self-awareness, start by trying
to gain a better understanding of how your emotions affect
your thoughts and your actions.
Determining what brings you joy, sadness, anger,
and fear is the first step towards understanding
these emotions and not letting them affect your judgment.
Start by observing your emotions.
Whenever you have a strong emotion
like fear, joy, or frustration, take some time to explore it
and look for what's driving this feeling for you.
Get in the habit of reflecting on your actions
and emotions every day, or at least every other day.
Writing in a diary or journal daily
is a great way to self reflect.
Sometimes it could be hard to see
what is driving our emotions.
But when you write it all down in a journal,
you'll be more likely to find trends
in what's triggering your positive and negative feelings.
And with this awareness, you'll be
able to avoid certain triggers or even just
be better prepared when an unavoidable one presents
itself.
And this leads us to our second fundamental
of emotional intelligence-- self-regulation.
Having emotions and feeling things deeply is a good thing.
It's part of being human.
Self-regulation is the ability to adjust your emotions
to create a desired effect.
And the ability to do this will positively
impact your relationships, because your feelings
can sometimes have a strong and undesired effect
on other people.
For example, if you're feeling stressed at work,
and a co-worker stops you to ask a question,
you might quickly answer and might even
have an unfriendly tone.
In this situation, you likely aren't
frustrated with the co-worker, but it
could come across that way.
Self-regulation is about training your mind
to be more positive.
And when we talk about self-regulation,
we often use terms like manage and control.
And I know these are strong words,
but they are inherently negative when
we're talking about emotions.
It's actually very self-empowering
to understand how you're feeling,
and take steps to adjust your feelings to remain in control
of them and stay professional.
So here are three strategies that
will help you improve your self-regulation.
Rewarding yourself for a job well done,
practicing meditation, and holding yourself
accountable when necessary.
Now, implementing a personal reward system
that allows you to celebrate when you achieve a goal,
can help to create more positivity at work.
Rewards can be equal to how big or small your achievement is,
like taking a brief break after spending a long time working
on a task, or treating yourself to a nice dinner
after you've completed an important project.
With this strategy, you can build a positive self-image
over time, which can help to develop a more
positive attitude in general.
And this improves your ability to self-regulate,
because instead of becoming overwhelmed by a larger task
at hand, you're able to break up your work into smaller pieces
and celebrate the milestones.
Meditation allows you to quietly reflect and gain more control
over your thoughts.
Making an effort to practice any amount of meditation,
even a daily five-minute session,
can have a positive impact on your self-regulation abilities.
Schedule time each day to sit in a quiet space, clear your mind,
and focus on your breathing.
This practice can help you develop a sense of calm
when difficult thoughts arise, which
can help you to regulate your emotions and behaviors when
needed.
If you find yourself strapped for time,
taking a moment to close your eyes and slowly count to 10,
focusing on each number and your breath,
can help you stay present in the moment.
And you can better regulate your emotions
when you break down a stressful task
and hold yourself accountable.
If you schedule complex task to be completed
by the end of the week, you can make a strategy
for separating this larger task into smaller
and more manageable assignments to complete
throughout the week.
You can also ask a co-worker to be your accountability
buddy, somebody who will check your progress each day.
Holding yourself accountable and taking steps to help others
do the same can improve your ability
to self-regulate how you act and react
when given a task at work.
And be sure to celebrate once you complete those milestones.
For more information on self-regulation,
be sure to check out this career guide article right here.
Now, before I move on, please let me
know if this video is helpful by liking and subscribing
for more career and job search advice.
Moving on to the next fundamental of EQ,
social awareness.
You might remember from earlier that I mentioned
that self-awareness is the ability
to recognize your own emotions.
Well, social awareness is understanding
the emotional needs of the people around you
and then customizing your message
to meet others where they are in order to connect, inspire,
and influence behavior.
And showing empathy and noticing various emotional cues
from others can lead to better social outcomes.
You can start to improve your social awareness
by paying close attention to the subtle actions and reactions
of those around you.
Over time, you can improve your ability
to perceive and understand other people's emotional responses,
which will enable you to better empathize with their feelings.
It can help to try to understand why
someone feels the way they do.
If someone comes to you upset about a problem,
acknowledge their feelings and find
ways to understand their reasons for feeling
the way that they do.
You might find that people are not always
vocal about how they're feeling.
So it can help to try to stay in tune with the feelings
of others, also.
Being aware of the feelings of others
is just as important as being aware of your own
because it can help you develop empathy.
Now, empathy is the ability to understand and share
the feelings of another person.
Understanding the feelings of others
allows you to handle workplace situations more effectively.
You don't need to agree with the person to empathize with them.
For example, when a co-worker is showing signs of dismay,
you may not agree with why they're upset,
but you can react with empathy to alleviate a situation
before it escalates.
It can also help to embrace the differences you
see in your co-workers and learn about different cultures.
Increasing your awareness of the differences in people,
cultures, and worldviews can improve
your emotional awareness and intelligence
because it helps you see the perspective of others.
For more information about why empathy
is so important in the workplace,
be sure to check out this Career Guide article right here.
And if you'd like to see a more in-depth video about ways
to increase empathy, be sure to let me know in the comments.
All right, moving on to the last fundamental
of emotional intelligence, relationship management.
Creating healthy, amicable, and productive relationships
with others is usually based on your ability
to clearly communicates your thoughts,
influence others with your words and actions,
and successfully work within a team.
Your relationship management skills
generally improve when other components
of emotional intelligence do.
For example, a person who is able to successfully
self-regulate, has high self-awareness,
they can likely understand the emotions of those around them
too.
This person has a higher chance of developing
long-lasting and healthy relationships.
Strengthening your relationship management skills
can begin by improving your active listening.
Active listening is the ability to focus completely
on a speaker, understand their message,
comprehend the information, and respond thoughtfully.
Your ability to truly hear what a person is saying
and respond thoughtfully can help
others to perceive you as someone who cares and is also
a team player.
It can also help to surround yourself
with like-minded individuals.
Try to meet and engage with people who energize you
and find understanding with you, just as you do with them.
If you find that you're not able to make
these kinds of connections at work,
make efforts to build this network in your personal life.
Having someone who you can share frustrations with
and who will give you an unbiased opinion
can help you see the perspective of others when it's not
immediately clear to you.
And now for our bonus tip-- how to perform
an emotional intelligence self-evaluation.
An emotional intelligence self-evaluation
can take several different forms,
but it will usually involve you examining your own feelings,
habits, responses, and past actions
to assess your level of emotional intelligence.
These quizzes are useful way for you
to become more aware of your natural tendencies
when it comes to emotional intelligence.
For this quiz, you'll read statements categorized
by EQ fundamentals, and decide if you agree or disagree
as the statements relate to you.
These quizzes may ask you to rate the truthfulness
of a statement on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10
being the most accurate description of your feelings
and behaviors.
For example, the quiz might state,
I tend to avoid talking about my emotions with my friends.
If this is extremely relatable for you, you would answer 10.
If it's not relatable at all, you would answer 1.
Simple statements to ask yourself to assess your EQ
include, my mood impacts the people around me;
I find it easy to put words to my feelings;
even when I'm upset, I'm aware of what's happening to me;
I accept responsibility for my reactions;
if an issue does not affect me directly,
I don't let it bother me; I can accept critical comments
from others without becoming angry;
I'm generally able to understand the way other people feel;
I sense it when a person's mood changes; it is easy for me
to make friends; I find it easy to share
my deep feelings with others.
Generally, the lower your total score
is, the more opportunity you have to enhance
your emotional intelligence.
To find out if taking an EQ quiz would be beneficial for you,
be sure to check out this Career Guide article right here.
So there you have it.
As a recap, to improve emotional intelligence,
focus on strengthening the fundamentals of EQ
by writing in a journal daily to self-reflect
and improve self-awareness; training your mind
to be more positive by rewarding yourself for a job well done;
practicing meditation and holding yourself accountable;
being aware of the feelings of others, just as much
as you're aware of your own; using active listening
to completely focus on others to improve relationship
management; and finally, consider
taking an emotional intelligence quiz to help you identify
the areas of EQ you can strengthen
to help you become more aware of,
understand, and manage your emotions.
For more information on why emotional intelligence is
important, be sure to check out this Career Guide article.
I hope that you find that these tips help
as you start to assess and improve
your emotional intelligence skills.
I think that you'll find by taking the time
to try to assess what emotions you're feeling
and what's driving those emotions,
the ability to self-regulate and maintain a positive attitude
will become easier over time.
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Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.