A641.3.3.RB – Working with EI: Getting Results!
Daniel Goleman
(2012) identifies four key areas of Emotional Intelligence (EI) that when
valued and placed into practice can differential someone as being a subpar
leader from a leader that is exceptional. These four areas are self-awareness,
self-management, social awareness, and social skills. Goleman (2007)
also discusses compassion and cites a well-known study at Princeton Theological
Seminar that followed seminarians under some stress and time pressure as they
walked by a man in distress. It turns out that what distinguished those
who stopped and did not stop was how preoccupied they were with their task at
hand.
Self-awareness
is the skill of being conscious of one’s emotions and feelings and being able
to use them as a guide of how we interact and behave (Goldman, 2012). I
sometimes have issues with this skill because I am an introvert. For the
longest time I have kept a lot of my emotions to myself not sharing them with others
because of trust issues. When it comes to my profession, it is hard to
find people that you can trust completely without worry of them throwing your
name into the rumor mill. Although I am aware of how I am feeling, I
neglect to use them as a guide on managing them when dealing with others. A
negative result is that I often realize that I could have handled certain
situations in a better manner after the fact.
When
dealing with self-management, I allow my emotions to get the best of me
sometimes. Closely tied to self-awareness, I reflect of how I manage my
emotions and reactions and evaluate if there was a better way of dealing with a
situation or personal interaction. When I do this, I fail to recognize
these emotions as they emerge, and manage them prior to the interaction or
facing a challenge. Resulting in a reactionary position that creates an
emotion of disappointment because I realized, after the fact, I could have
performed better.
Self-awareness
and self-management are especially important with my profession because as a
future doctor and current medical assistant, I deal with a significant amount
of people; whether they patients, doctors, coworkers at any level, my reactions
and no reactions affect everyone that surrounds me. I need to be better
aware of and manage my emotions on a consistent basis, since high stress and confrontation
only creates more complication in the work environment. Handling situations in
nonproductive way will more often than not reflect poorly on my performance and
create a bad public reputation of myself.
The third
and fourth skills, social awareness and social skills—are highly driven with
empathy. Empathy is being compassionate and having the genuine care for
understanding emotions that others are feeling and addressing them in a
constructive manner. Oddly, I am better at interacting with others at this
level. As a leader, it is important for me to ensure my subordinates are
doing well, happy with the environment they are in, and have an outlet to deal
with the stress they encounter on a daily basis. I believe relationship building
really takes place with the third and fourth skill sets. At these levels
is when I think support, rapport, and trust and built are imminent. By
humanizing the interaction with those I work with, and not treating them as
expendable people, is the key to honest interpersonal relationship
building.
As
Goleman (2012) said, emotional intelligence is something that we continuously
learn, as long as we apply it and build upon our application of it. Slowly,
I am learning that to open up myself more, I need to demonstrate my empathy
towards others. Reciprocity is another key element to relationship
building. It is my opinion that building emotional intelligence happens
with "share and receive" interactions with others.
References
Goleman, D. (2007). Why aren’t we more compassionate? TED.
Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goleman_on_compassion
Daniel Goleman Introduces Emotional Intelligence. (2012).
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7m9eNoB3NU
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