I recently took training on taming your EQ / Emotional Quotient at my workplace. This article is some of the notes/lessons learned from the training. It really was an insightful training.
Be self-aware:
Questions to ask yourself:
- Are you a pessimist or an optimist?
- Are you overly pessimistic/optimistic? If yes, find a balance.
- Are you being good to people.?
- Talk to people directly more than you IM / Facebook. (Otherwise, you will forget to feel others feelings and end up recognizing emoticons / only if the person tells you)
- Approach people with empathy/trust to connect/influence them.
Be aware of others:
Emotions in facial expressions only last for .5 seconds. Learn to read them. If you don’t react to other people’s emotions that doesn’t make you a good communicator!
Value others emotions, and how to transform them by using the below technique:
VET – Validate, Explore, Transform.
Ask questions to drive other emotions to positivity.
Validate:
- I sense you are feeling…
- I get the sense you are…
Explore:
- Hey, what’s really bothering you about?
- What is the underlying fear/anger/disappointment?
Transform:
- What are you going to do now?
- How are you going to tackle this?
For your family life – Bringing up kids:
- Let them express their emotions – don’t conceal them or ask them to not to show.
- If they are angry, let them be angry. – Use VET to transform
- If they are happy let them laugh/giggle out loud.
- If they are afraid of something, Use VET to transform
Validate, ask questions to drive them towards fearlessness rather than being blunt and saying (it’s just a cockroach) vs say (why are you afraid? …. Why do feel scared about that? … etc.)