Daniel's Blog
Emotional Intelligence
7 min read | Last Updated: September 11, 2020
The meeting was starting to go poorly, but he handled it so well! He took the initiative and managed to de-escalate a situation where two colleagues were going at each other. He remained calmed and collected, even if they lashed out at him, and worked to identify the root cause and come up with a good outcome. After the meeting, he gave constructive feedback privately to both of them.
It was a tough crowd, and yet she managed to inspire and get the audience to understand her message. It’s been weeks, and the company culture has transformed, that was amazing.
How do they do it? Sam is always on top of things and can handle every curve-ball that they throw at them. They seem to have a sixth sense to know what people want.
Emotional Intelligence is not a superpower (but can feel like one). The people in the examples above are still people, and they have emotions. I guarantee that Sam has the occasional rant, they may be just really good at not letting emotions affect others negatively, or using those emotions and feeling to guide their behaviours.
Don’t take it literally
Some people are put off by the whole “science” and “intelligence” bits. I get that, that’s not my goal here. EI is a group of abilities and traits that focus on “soft skills”. For example, rather than saying “I must work on my self-awareness”, I can say “I need to reflect a bit more” or “I need to understand that when I’m having a bad day, this may affect others”. By giving it a name, it’s easier to talk and focus. Someone could be very empathetic (high on social awareness) but have weak discipline (low on self-management), does that mean they have high or low EI? - It doesn’t matter.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence (EI), emotional leadership (EL), emotional quotient (EQ) and emotional intelligence quotient (EIQ), is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s)
Dictionary of Psychology by Andrew Coleman
Note that the definition above focuses on recognising and identifying emotions, not denying or hiding them.
Emotional Intelligence has been around since the 60s, but Daniel Goleman popularized it with his book Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ. There are currently three significant models - the trait model, the ability model, and the mixed one.
I’m going to focus on the mixed model, also by Daniel Goleman. The mixel model suggests that EI comes from a combination of traits or characteristics and abilities. The proposed model originally had five categories - self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills[1].
There’s also a slightly more simplified version which Goleman himself seems to favour[2], where motivation and self-regulation is now self-management, and there’s a slight rename/focus on some categories. Both are valid, but I like this one better because it’s a bit simpler and it feels more natural having motivation as part of self-regulation. They are both about the same, so use either.
The four categories of EI
Self-awareness is about consciously knowing your emotions, strengths and weaknesses, drives, values and goals and understanding the effect on yourself or others.
A healthy self-awareness keeps those feeling of self-doubt and the imposter syndrome away, but also keeps you grounded and humble. Self-awareness is what people talk about when they mention “recognising there’s a problem is the first step in fixing it” - you need to be consciously aware first before you start working on it.
Another important bit to remember is that our emotions and actions may affect others. While I’m not saying you should obsess over what other people think, be aware of your effect on others. For example, if as a leader, you show little regard to the team processes, your team will pick on it, and will soon start following your lead, perhaps not even consciously.
Self-management is about managing your emotions, resources and capabilities.
You know those times when you end up thinking I shouldn’t have said that or Why did I do…. Perhaps you are stressing out because things at work are not going well, not at all. If self-awareness let us understand our limits, self-management is to make efficient use of those. It’s also about having the resilience and motivation in front of setbacks and “situations” (i.e. fires).
Reflection is good, and I find it helpful to do it on situations like the I shouldn’t have said that, or just in general. It helps my awareness, and I will more easily identify problems or similar patterns in the future so that I can be more prepared. It can be painful to go through mistakes and bad decisions, but that’s the best way to learn. Remember to be kind to yourself.
Social awareness or Empathy refers to being able to understand other people’s feelings and motivations. Self-awareness taps into your emotions, and empathy and social awareness help you connect with others, understanding what they are going through. It can be subtle, like “spider-sense”, or obvious “The current uncertainty is making people a bit more tense than usual”. Other less subtle cases are such as reading the room - knowing when to say some things, and when to change your message.
For this, one of my managers always said to be curious, and that is great advice. Let’s discuss the example Sam was rude to everyone this morning during standup, . I could assume they are probably mad we didn’t go with their solution, or I could try to be curious , that’s odd. I will reach out to unpack what’s happening. I’ll try to understand and unpack what happened first, and hey, if it was because they were mad, I can still give feedback about it.
On the flip side, having too much empathy may not be a good thing. If you put yourself too much on other peoples shoes, you may feel their pain, and that might affect you negatively. This can increase your anxiety and stress levels too much, and also it could not allow you do to your job effectively - What happens when you don’t want to give constructive feedback because you feel bad about it? That’s not good either.
Relationship management is about using your social awareness to work with others and positively influence them.
Influence can be a tricky or over-indexed word, which is why I mentioned: “positively influence”. In this context, I mean nurturing and inspiring others, sometimes in a direct manner (let’s discuss career ladders) and sometimes using soft power (inspiring others to become more focused and impactful).
Other relevant skills are conflict solving, networking relationships and how you collaborate and work with others. You are an amazing individual contributor, but do you work well with others? Can you mentor less experienced colleagues? How do you manage upwards? We spend most of our time working with others, and spending time improving this skillset is an excellent use of our time. For some people, working on this might feel outside of the comfort zone, but it will be most rewarding.
You can learn this, and you should work on it
- Better mental health.
- Improve and be aware of your effect on others, for good and for bad.
- Create powerful messages that resonate with others.
- Get more stuff done, and better.
- Influence and nurture others, help them reach their potential.
Don’t think, oh well, I’ve never been any good at this. You can get better! Of course, some people might be better at reading non-verbal cues than others, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all improve on this. If you want a suggestion, a good self-awareness will be a great foundation on any path to awesomeness. Just pick something to work on and get started!
Written by Daniel Lopez Rovira who likes talking about engineering stuff.