Emotional Intelligence PDF

FOUR pillars of Emotional Intelligence:-

How to use them easily, yet effectively, in our day-to-day lives…

1. Self Awareness: —This is about knowing your emotions as they happen. What we are feeling and why we are feeling it? A brilliant, extremely effective, tried and tested way to develop Self Awareness is Mindfulness. Listening to guided mindfulness on Apps like Calm or YouTube videos is not a bad idea as a personal experience.

Guided mindfulness exercises teach you to observe the emotions, that are happening to you, at the moment. Picture, a mental model of yourself outdoors. It might either be nice and pleasant, or, it might be drizzling, or raining heavily, or there might be uncomfortably windy or cold or it might be unbearably hot. Now picture yourself indoors, in a nice and cosy air-conditioned room, watching the weather outdoors, through your big glass window, while relaxing on your comfy sofa and sipping your cappuccino.

Your emotions are like the weather. You can not stop it from happening. However, what you can do, is minimize how negatively affects your way. Mindfulness provides you with the luxury of observing your emotions through the window, from inside the well-protected cosy room.

When the weather is good, you have the option of going out for a walk ( which is what Goleman means by engaging more and more with positive emotions). And when the weather is bad, mindfulness gives you the option of staying indoors. Only when you know your emotions in the first place, would you, be able, to manage them effectively, which is the next step.

2. Managing Emotions: — This is about the ability to handle distressing emotions, failures and tough situatieffectively way, so that, they don’t come in the way of what you want to do or achieve in life. This also means strengthening the positive emotions, discouraging negative ones and aligning your actions more with what gives you joy.

Goleman, stresses that you can not avoid emotions from arising. However, once they do arise, being aware of them and being able to control them is very much within human capabilities.

How to Manage Anger: — One of the most striking examples over here is the Ventilation fallacy. The notion that venting out your anger can help soothe your mood is a fallacy. Rather — Anger breeds more Anger and prolongs and even amplifies your Angry mood, instead of ending it.

This, however, is easier said than done. So you have realized that you are getting angry, and you know that it is bad. But HOW do you control it?

Top Tip number ONE…Take a few deep breaths to calm down your heart rate.

Top Tip number TWO…Go out for a walk or at least excuse yourself from the situation. Observe the thoughts creating anger come and go like you observe the clouds. Don’t engage with them or judge. Just observe. Gently try to turn your mind to something else. If you don’t feed the anger, it will gradually starve and die off.

Top Tip number THREE…Try to reframe your thoughts. Try and think from different perspectives and from the other persons point of view. May be, you will be able to find a reason why they did or said whatever they did or said, which upset you.

How to Manage Sadness: — It is worth noting here, that, all the rules that apply to managing anger, might not apply to managing sadness. So here are a few Top Tips on HOW to manage sadness.

Top Tip number ONE…Unlike anger, venting out when you are sad, can be a great way to soothe you.

Top Tip number TWO…When you are sad, you can share your sadness with a trusted circle of friends and family, but do not ruminate too much. Rather, try to distract yourself with something else … work, hobby, you favorite TV program, your favorite sports, anything….

Top Tip number THREE…Crying does not help. It prolongs and amplifies the sadness.

Top Tip number FOUR…Exercise regularly. Physical exercise, a very good medicine for chronic depressives.

Top Tip number FIVE…Take up some small task that had been at the back of your mind, finish it and reap the rewards. It will give you the motivation and necessary kick to carry on further and do bigger tasks. It will help you bounce back from a failure by boosting your confidence.

Top Tip number SIX…Learn lessons from failures and move forwards, rather than ruminating about them to the point of digging your own grave.

Top Tip number SEVEN…Help others whom you think, are in a worse situation than you. Just try it. It is an instant mood changer, if you are sad. It is sure to make you feel good.

And by the way, if validation from celebrity athletes helps, then let me tell you, that they are all adept in the skill of knowing and managing emotions in a better way, than their less successful colleagues. And get it straight, Be it Nature or be it Nurture, you just can not lead a mentally healthy, happy and successful life without these two.

So, that was a bit about knowing and managing your emotions, in simple words.

3. Empathy: — Knowing what someone else is feeling. The most important one for any designer. As designers, we need to empathize not only with our users but also with our colleagues.

Colleagues: — In the product development process, there might be many situations where we might disagree with our colleagues or they might disagree with us. The Founder and ex-Chairman of the second biggest IT company in India — Infosys, suggests — “ Disagree with an idea, but not with the person”. When it comes to disagreeing or criticizing your colleagues at work ( be you in any profession), Goleman has a few Top Tips about the Art of Constructive Criticism…

Top Tip number ONE…Be Specific

Top Tip number TWO…Offer a Solution

Top Tip number THREE…Do it Face to Face

Top Tip number FOUR…Show Empathy

End Users: — In the case of customers or end users, designers are usually recommended to use tools like Journey Maps, Empathy Maps and Personas to analyze the emotional state of the end users during the usage of the product in a wholesome way.

4. Handling Relationships: — The last one is about putting all of the above into building relationships in a skilled way. Very important for management roles. This not only means relationships at work but also outside work. So, important is this pillar, that Daniel Goleman, chose to write a separate follow-up book to his existing best-seller, called, “Social Intelligence”. I am not in any leadership role, far from it, but I like to share as I learn. So important, I feel is this, that I would like to dedicate a separate blog to this altogether.

But for now, it should suffice to know that, while IQ is a “Threshold Ability” of getting into let us say a place like IDEO or Ford or Apple or Google, it is EQ which is the “Distinguishing Ability” which will take you into Leadership Roles.