Ever talked to a neighbor that won’t stop talking no matter how many hints you give that you want to leave? Are you giving the right clues? Ever talked to people that don’t care what you have to say and only want to tell you about themselves? Ever talked to someone at work that snapped at you for no reason? Did you notice them before to see if they seemed stressed or were having a bad day?

If you aren’t familiar with Emotional Intelligence I recommend you read some more about it. I recently learned about EQ at a work seminar and thought it’s a great concept that others should know about as well. Here’s are a couple resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligencehttp://www.time.com/time/classroom/psych/unit5_article1.html

If you like psychology you will probably enjoying learning more about this.

Taken from the wiki page:

“The model introduced by Daniel Goleman [16] focuses on EI as a wide array of competencies and skills that drive leadership performance. Goleman’s model outlines four main EI constructs:[1]

Self-awareness — the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact while using gut feelings to guide decisions.

Self-management — involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.

Social awareness — the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions while comprehending social networks.

Relationship management — the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing conflict.”

Some of you may find some of this common sense but others may not. Why is this important? Because even the smartest person in the world (IQ) will have problems succeeding if he/she can’t manage their emotions or the way they interact and are perceived by others (EQ). I think the more understanding a person has of EQ, the easier life becomes. There are various situations that can be avoided or easily overcome just by paying attention causing less unnecessary stress.

Here is an example of where I think I use EQ relating to technology. When I go to speak to a person about say coding, I have to ask myself – “Do I know this person and if so, how tech savy are they?”. Based on that answer, I’ll adjust the way I speak to this person and use wording and or acronyms that I think this person would understand. If I don’t know this person and don’t know enough of their background to guesstimate, I’ll start talking to this person in a very general level (not too low to insult them if they are techy but not too detailed to lose them from the start if they aren’t) and based on the way this person interacts with me, see if I can go more tech details or if I need to get more generic and use none-tech related examples.

From then I also try to pay attention to see if this is a person that really truelly understands what I’m saying or is just knoding since many, including myself, are guilty to this. And finally based on the interaction or lack of I know if it’s time to change the subject or if we can keep going. All that just to have a conversation…

Have any similar experiences to share? Please do! We can all learn from each other.

Tags: ei, emotional intelligence, eq