Back in January, I had the pleasure of attending the regional YoPro workshop in Washington D.C.
When I was approached to present, I got to thinking about my career trajectory in public media. I've spent my whole professional career within the system and was thinking what - if anything - could my fellow YoPros learn from my experience.
My first job at TPT was an entry level support role...and six months in, I was applying to other jobs. I applied to grad school. I was having a really hard time connecting to people on my tam and was struggling to work with them in a way that made me feel confident and content. And well, I was looking for a way out.
My situation is not uncommon. We've all had a "hard time" working with a colleague or two. Turns out, it's normal. And it's okay.
What I didn't know at that time was that there were many ways to overcome these interpersonal challenges.
It just so happened that when I was in the height of my "I-need-to-get-out-of-here," phase, my department did a team building exercise around our Myers Briggs personality types. (I'm an ENFT-ENTP cusper, btw.)
This exercise helped me realize that in order to make any progress in my relationships with my colleagues, I needed to better understand myself first. My workstyle, communication style, my natural tendencies, preferences, motivations, behaviors - and then I could go on to better understand others. In other words, I needed to build my self-awareness - "the conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motivations and desires" - a fundamental piece of emotional intelligence.
I'm not saying strengthening emotional intelligence is going to fix everything, but it can help. It has certainly helped me and has given me a chance to learn about myself and recognize the different qualities in others and use that to effectively grow my relationships and simultaneously advance in my career.
To be clear, I'm not an expert in emotional intelligence by any stretch, I'm only an expert through my own lived experience. And I'm just very interested in this topic. So, what I shared at the YoPro convening in January and now in this here blog post, is what I've learned through my own experience and through reading up on this topic.
What is emotional intelligence?
Most simply put, emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions and recognize and understand the emotions of others. The term was coined by Peter Salavoy and John Mayer and popularized by Daniel Goleman in his 1996 book: Emotional Intelligence.
At YoPro, we started by gaining a fundamental understanding of the five domains of emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness: being cognizant of what you feel, why you feel it and how it may impact your relationships.
- Self-management/regulation: handling your emotions in an effective manner.
- Empathy/social awareness: knowing what someone else is feeling and being able to read their emotions and moods.
- Relationship management: using all domains to foster teamwork and collaboration.
- Motivation: your continued interest learning, growing and self-improvement and doing things that are knowingly hard and setting out to accomplish them.
So, why does emotional intelligence matter?
In prepping for my YoPro presentation, I was brushing up on my knowledge of EQ. I found that the Harvard Business Review reports that EQ counts twice as much as IQ and technical skills in determining who will be successful in the workplace.
Other reports have found that EQ is a required competency for leading effectively and is the number one predictor of professional success and personal excellence.
Emotional intelligence correlates highly with individual performance and in turn, can impact organization profitability and performance.
So, there you have it. It matters.
When emotional intelligence comes into play at work
Developing and strengthening your emotional intelligence is essential to leading and being a good colleague. Having strong EQ allows your to identify and recognize your own challenges and motivations, as well as those of others and use that awareness to address employee concerns, connect and identify with them and motivate them.
I'm sure we've all found ourselves in one or many of these situations...
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Meeting tight deadlines
- Dealing with challenging relationships
- Not having enough resources
- Dealing with change
- Dealing with setbacks and failure
Each of those scenarios have the possibility of heightening emotions and it's important to remember: our emotions precede thought. So when our emotions run high, it can change how our brains operate, diminishing things like our ability to make decisions and our interpersonal skills. Building self-awareness and understanding that our emotions can drive our individual behavior and impact others, and learning how to manage those emotions - especially under pressure - is key to an effective, productive and healthy team.
And the good news is EQ can be taught, learned and improved with practice.
Activity: Compass Points
At YoPro D.C. we took what we learned about EQ and then, put some of it into practice through - you guessed it - and activity! Known as Compass Points, this activity aims to strengthen emotional intelligence, specifically self-awareness.
If you'd like to try this activity with your team, this post from our friends at KQED MindShift can walk you through it.
The purpose behind the activity is to first and foremost, better understand yourself - grow your self-awareness by understanding your own natural tendencies in terms of your workstyle.
The Compass Points activity can also help you understand the workstyles of those you work closely with, be more in tune with their styles and in turn, can really bond a team. It's a great activity to try out with those you work with and can be useful at any stage of a project.
"Gifted leadership occurs where heart and head - feeling and thought - meet." - Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
