Thursday, 19 July 2018

Emotional Roller Coaster

Emotional Roller Coaster


For ages, people have debated if leaders are born or made? So too, goes the debate about emotional intelligence. Perhaps it has been my most favourite organisational behaviour topics since I read Daniel Goleman’s book about emotional intelligence in 1998. I always had a belief it could be an acquired skill but I never knew how? But later on I felt it must be a born talent hidden in genes and finally I got the answer actually it is both. It is just like empathy, some people are born with it and some people acquire it with life experiences.

Emotional intelligence like empathy is a psychological muscle which needs emotional work out, like our physical muscles. Good news is that our psychological muscles too get stronger and stronger with work out just like our physical muscle. Only the work out regime is little different, in order to build our emotional intelligence muscles we need play full out in our brain gym with dumbbells of feelings, drive, impulses, anxiety, stress, motivation, laughter and happiness.

Our brains have a little area called “Neocortex” responsible to grasp concepts and logic. It along with our conscious thoughts and experiences form emotional intelligence system.

Some people might be better with it by virtue of genome structures. Rest of us could also develop this by putting our mind to work out in the brain gym simply, by taking each experience with intension to get better at it next time when it comes around. Just like as a kid when you learnt not to touch a hot stove after getting burned with it once or as an adult learning how to handle professional and personal stressors. Once you do it next time round you’ll have emotional muscles much stronger to handle the situation better.

There are five aspects to practice when it comes to building muscles for emotional intelligence:

·         Self-Awareness – Knowing your emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals. Their impact on you and others around you.

·         Self- Regulation - Controlling or redirecting disruptive thoughts, emotions and impulses.

·         Motivation – Being driven to achieve for the sake of self-esteem.

·         Empathy – Considering others feelings, especially when making decision about things that matters.

·         Social Skills – Managing relationships to move people/ thoughts/ situations in desired directions

Research is demonstrating that people can, if they take the right approach, develop their emotional intelligence. I had personally found it very rewarding and can easily tell the difference between the days it works and days it doesn’t. Offcourse it is a never ending learning experience and not an easy process. It takes time and most of all commitment. But the benefits that come from having a well-developed emotional intelligence, both for the individual and for the organisation, make it worth the efforts.

Happy working out at the brain gym!
"When I say managing your emotions, I only mean really distressing, negative emotions. Feeling emotions is what makes your life rich. You need your passions." - Daniel Goleman