If there is anything that the Coronavirus pandemic and months of quarantine can teach us, it’s that our thoughts and emotions are our most powerful tools that either “make or break” our survival through these difficult and unprecedented times.
While we cannot control the pandemic or the fear or the uncertainty it brings, we can control how we face it. This is why practicing and developing emotional intelligence is more important now than ever.
Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ) is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions—both your own and those of other people around you. Emotional Intelligence is much more than “soft skills”; it contains essential skills which are vital in any profession. According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, (whom I call the “Father” of Emotional Intelligence), the 4 main domains of emotional intelligence leadership include:
(GolemanEI, 2020)
Our emotional intelligence dictates how we manage ourselves, how we deal with people, how effectively or ineffectively we communicate, how well we handle feedback and setbacks, and much more. In the field of youth work, developing emotional intelligence is critical not only for our own benefit, but it is key to effectively support the youth with whom we work.
Golemanei, Daniel Goleman’s affiliative organization, states that “Proficiency in Emotional Intelligence is the single greatest differentiator in leadership today… Even if you aren’t familiar with the specifics of EI, you have undoubtedly experienced the difference between someone who is consistently aware of how their emotions impact others and someone who is not.” (2020). This explains why the World Economic Forum has identified 2 of the top 10 essential skills for the 2020 workplace in the field of emotional intelligence (namely, emotional intelligence and coordinating with others) (2016).
I first began practicing and educating in the field of EI over 4 years ago. As a youth worker for the greater part of the past decade, I’ve been empowering young people to utilize their passions, interests, talents, and hobbies to affect positive change in their communities. Yet, I quickly realized that I couldn’t expect them to see themselves as community leaders until they had developed their own self awareness, learned how to work effectively with others, and honed tools to overcome challenges. In other words, they needed emotional intelligence training. In order to support my youth groups, I ventured down my own path of EI and created experiential EI workshops to share my findings. My conviction that this approach to leadership is transformative and effective led me to later teach an independent study course at Brown University on Emotional Intelligence based Leadership.
As we face COVID19, it is normal that youth are turning towards youth workers and leaders for support and guidance. In a similar token, as youth workers, we are also looking towards the directors and managers of our NGOS for advice and direction. Now more than ever, we need leaders to act not just with strength and direction – but we need them to act with compassion and emotional intelligence. Whether we are youth workers, trainers, managers or directors of NGOs, it is our moral responsibility to lead with emotional intelligence. There is a great strength in embracing our emotions, and empowering others to do the same.
Until recently, emotional intelligence, and the discourse around emotions, was largely reserved for outside of the office environment. Many people falsely believe that expressing emotions should be compartmentalized for our personal lives only. This myth that bringing our emotions into the workplace is unprofessional, is not only dangerous for our mental and emotional health, it is detrimental to our work efficiency as well. As humans, we are inherently emotional beings, and it is practically impossible to completely divorce ourselves from our emotions while “clocked in” at work; even more so during the uncertain times of Corona.
Anxiety, sadness, fear, frustration, distractedness – these emotions are not only normal aspects of the human experience, but they’re expected during a pandemic. If we’re all having these thoughts and emotions anyway, then the interactions we have must reflect that, in a productive manner.
Luckily for us, emotional intelligence is not an innate trait, but something that can be developed. We can all grow and develop our emotional intelligence and leverage the skills to support those around us to do the same. All we need to do is understand the tools in each category and find ways to put them into practice on a daily basis.
SET YOUR INTENTION
It is important to set your own specific intentions. Don’t try to develop all these areas at one time, otherwise it is more likely that in the end you won’t develop any of them. Instead, select one or two tools you want to be more mindful about and truly start developing now. You can always work up to cross more off the list, but slow and steady wins the race. Patience and self-compassion are key to developing your EI.
Write down your personal intentions and keep them with you. I often tell participants at my training courses to put their challenges to paper and post them in a visible area of their room or home to keep as a constant reminder.
Each person is different – some might like to work on their challenge for one week and then try another one. Others might like to stick with their challenge for a whole month or longer. I know people who set different daily challenges. Really decide for yourself how long you want to focus on your intention before you pick another one. Ask yourself what will be the most helpful and feasible plan for you? In addition to using these tools for yourself, try and see where and how you can share them with others. After all, we can ALL benefit when we make the effort to enhance our emotional intelligence skills.
SELF-AWARENESS
Your ability to recognize how your feelings impact your behavior, and your interactions with others.
Self-Awareness is actually the foundation of emotional intelligence, so it’s the best place to start! Tools to develop your own self-awareness:
1. Name your emotions. The more you can bring curiosity to your emotional state, the better you will be able to manage your own emotions. There are no such things as “good or bad” emotions. Emotions can be pleasant or unpleasant to experience, and of course some emotions are more challenging than others; however, all emotions provide data and information for us. Each emotion contains information from which we can learn, that is, if we are up to it.
The best place to start is to sense the emotions in our body and to identify them. When we name and label our emotions accurately, we can more fully understand the reasons why we are experiencing them and eventually take appropriate action. Developing our emotional literacy is essential in this matter.
2. Be mindful of the language you use. When we say things like “I’m sad” or “I’m scared” we are giving that emotion authority over our entire identity. When we do, it’s quite easy to hold on to the motions, and feel like they’re the ones in charge. It’s important to remember that we are not our emotion and they don’t define us.
Instead, label your emotions in a way that creates space between you, such as using phrases like “I’m noticing the feeling that I’m sad”, or “I’m noticing I’m experiencing sadness”. In this way, you don’t let your emotions define you, but recognize them for what they are – fleeting sensations and thoughts – not facts.
3. Show selective vulnerability to your professional network. In these times, it would seem strange and robot-like to ignore the big fat pink pandemic in front of us all and not confront it, or the range of emotions it brings to the team. Being comfortable with vulnerability and sharing your own feelings will build trust among your youth and your colleagues.
Of course, selective vulnerability is the key for leaders. While open sharing can help people to feel more comfortable and connected, oversharing can make teams lose faith in their leader. Mollie West Duffy, the author of No Hard Feelings states, “Doing selective vulnerability well means walking that fine line between acknowledgement (‘I also feel worried – you’re not alone in that!’) and demonstrating leadership by finding a path forward (‘Given the situation, here are the steps we plan to take to address it.’)”. (2020). More resources on getting selective vulnerability right can be found here.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Discover more tools on Emotional Intelligence in our next article.
References:
GolemanEI.com | Emotional Intelligence Coaching and Training. (2020). Retrieved 23 April 2020, from https://golemanei.com/
Image Source: https://golemanei.com/
Illustrations by @LizandMollie
Author of the article