How Emotional Intelligence helps build Resilience to Stress

Emotional intelligence is not about being soft and gooey, far from it. The ability to generate positive emotions in your working life is certainly an important part of it but so is emotional resilience and dealing with negative emotions.Emotional resilience is a significant emotional intelligence competency that comes under the banner of: emotional self-management.

Who needs emotional resilience? Emotional resilience is important for everyone in the workplace.The workplace is full of unexpected problems, negative outcomes, unrealistic deadlines, endless changes, a lack of resources, difficult people and volatile discussions. And that's just on a Monday! Your ability to stay healthy and productive through these ever changing scenes is vital. If you can do this you have emotional resilience and emotional intelligence.

What is emotional resilience? Emotional resilience has a number of key attributes.I think of it as having a tough head and a warm heart at the same time. Out of its many features here are eight pivotal ones.

Emotional resilience is the ability to:

1. Stay calm and clear headed when the pressure and stress around you is high. In other words you have the mental toughness to guard against being sucked in.
2. Bounce back quickly after upsets, set-backs and bad moods or emotions. You don't get stuck in bitterness, anger or resentment.
3. Look after yourself psychologically, spiritually and emotionally even when you are frantic. You don't neglect yourself whilst still being able to care for others. This takes mental discipline and an appreciation of what's important. Too often when people are no longer resilient and they become overwhelmed, tense or stressed, they stop looking after themselves and indulge in self-defeating behaviour.
4. Keep a sense of humour. Losing your sense of humour and no longer laughing at issues you'd normally laugh at is one of the early warning signs of too much stress.
5. Keep things in perspective, rather than letting emotions such as anger, exasperation or anxiety distort your world view, so you can judge situations fairly.
6. Not take on board other people's problems, stupidity or emotions, whilst at the same time being able to be compassionate and care for others. This requires mental toughness and a warm heart.
7. Stay physically well and strong with a healthy immune system even in times of emotional or physical difficulty. This may include whilst undergoing work problems, poor performance feedback or even grief.
8. Being able to feel and express your emotions in ways that are safe, clear and healthy. Emotional resilience does not mean pushing your emotions down or away, or ignoring them altogether. It means acknowledging and managing them well. Your heart needs to stay open toward you, so you can care for yourself in even the worst case situation.

Emotional resilience is not:

1. Blocking out your feelings with drugs.
2. Saying to hell with you and to hell with everything.
3. Ignoring everyone else and always putting yourself first.
4. Being aggressive, verbally violent or looking for a fight.
5. Not crying when someone you love dies.
6. Pretending that everything is okay when it is not.
7. Being too tough to tell someone you are proud of them, love them or appreciate them.

Emotional resilience is not just about being tough as this is often based on the denial of emotions and physical and emotional needs. Emotional denial or suppression may be needed at specific times in order to survive when you're in the military or the police and witnessing traumatic events, but over time this may lead to health problems or post-traumatic stress.

In contrast, emotional resilience is a healthy balance between a tough head and a warm heart, set in a context of emotional self-awareness.

Emotional resilience is a healthy way of managing your life and your emotions, and staying well even in difficult circumstances.

How high is your emotional intelligence & emotional resilience?

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About the Author:
Emília M. Ludovino, is the founder of the Emotional Intelligence Training – Ki Flow, entrepreneur, Team Manager, Certified Social & Emotional Intelligence Coach, Certified Motivational Coach, Master Practitioner of NLP, Reiki Master/Teacher, a life-time practitioner of Mindfulness & Meditation and Expert Lawyer in Business Investment in Africa and South America. (and YES! I still have a normal life!). Worked since the age of 20 building and managing teams in Africa, South America and Europe, mainly in NGOs, United Nations, training Politicians and Community Leaders, Empowering Entrepreneurs Law Enforcement, Law Firms and Top Executive Managers (Communications, Marketing, IT, Pharmaceutical, Private Banking, etc.).

BRIEF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE QUIZ

#emotionalintelligence #test

There are a number of EI assessment tools that will give you a formal opinion on where your EI strengths and weaknesses might lie. However, next quiz has some questions to help you get a very basic idea of where your emotional intelligence is currently. Choose the answer for each question that is most like the way you would likely react. Be honest!

1 – You are feeling depressed and a friend asks you how you are doing. You are more likely to respond:

1. Great!
2. Fine, thanks.
3. I don’t know. Ok, I guess.
4. Not so great.
5. I feel depressed.

2 – When the person you are in a relationship with says something that hurts your feelings, you:

1. Break up.
2. Walk away.
3. Try to hurt them back.
4. Say, ‘You really hurt my feelings’.
5. Say, ‘I feel hurt by that.’

3 – When someone discovers that you have made a mistake, you:

1. Deny it,
2. Blame someone else.
3. Defend yourself.
4. Remind them of when they made a mistake.
5. Thank them.

4 – When you feel afraid about something, you:

1. Worry and worry and worry some more.
2. Try not to think about it.
3. Ignore it and hope it goes away.
4. Consider how possible it is your feels will come true and think about options.

5 – When someone tells you that you upset them, you:

1. Say they are just too sensitive.
2. Say you were joking.
3. Say you’re sorry and ask questions to understand exactly what upset them.

In this quiz the last answer for each question is the one that displays the highest level of emotional intelligence.

If you chose a different answer, then congratulations – you have already identified an area of your emotional awareness that you can begin to improve.

If you chose all of the last answers, remember that this is only a sampling of the types of emotional situations that we face in any given day. You will need to continue to pay attention to what you are feeling in order to locate areas for improvement.

Of course, there is an Emotional Intelligence assessment tool that is very simple to use. It’s free too. You simply ask others for feedback about your strengths and weaknesses. You won’t do this with just anyone – you would do it with people that you trust and with whom you have an important relationship. For example, you could ask your spouse, boss, subordinates, children or close friends. You let them know that you are trying to learn how you interact with others and you want them to feel free to say what they really think. There are two rules to using this tool. Rules of  Feedback

1. You just listen. Avoid interjecting, interrupting, defending yourself or justifying your actions. You can ask clarifying questions such as: “Can you tell me more about that?” or using listening acknowledgements like ‘right’, ‘uh-uh’, ‘sure’. You don’t defend, explain or rebut what is said to you. You have to keep an open mind and listen to the other person with the understanding that what they are saying is how you appeared to them in experiences they have had with you. This is a chance for you to learn about yourself, not an opportunity to justify past behaviour.
2. You don’t hold anything against the person giving you feedback, even if you don’t like what you hear. You need to be able to hear the good and the bad and to appreciate the other person’s candour. You should appreciate that they feel comfortable enough to tell you what might be difficult to hear. And if you find out you have something to apologize for, do it! Take the chance of cleaning up your relationship if you get it.

Have Fun and share with us your feedback :) 

About the Author:  Emília M. Ludovino, is the founder of the Emotional Intelligence Training – Ki Flow, Social & Emotional Intelligence Coach, Motivational Coach, Master Practitioner of NLP, Reiki Master/Teacher, a life-time practitioner of Mindfulness & Meditation and International Business Lawyer. Worked since the age of 20 building and managing teams in Africa, South America and Europe, mainly in NGOs, United Nations, training Politicians and Community Leaders, Empowering Entrepreneurs Law Enforcement, Law Firms and Top Executive Managers (Communications, Marketing, IT, Pharmaceutical, Private Banking, etc.).

CAN WE DEVELOP OUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

CAN WE DEVELOP OUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

In a blog in June 2012, Daniel Goleman, the man who brought Mayer and Salovey's work on emotional intelligence into public prominence, was asked whether we could enhance our emotional intelligence.

Specifically he was asked the following question:

You explain that emotional intelligence has four parts: self-awareness, managing emotions, empathy and social skills. Is it possible to enhance them, with practice or training?

I found his answer interesting and would like to give a more comprehensive answer, as well as a shorter answer. What Daniel Goleman replied was this:

Emotional intelligence competencies are learned – and can be improved at any point in life. But first you have to be motivated – ask yourself if you really care. Then you need a well-structured learning situation where, for instance, you have a clear picture of what you want to improve, and can practise specific behaviors that will help you enhance the targeted competence.

What do I make of this? - Well it depends.

What does it depend on? - How much of your innate emotional intelligence you are already using to the maximum and how much is still lying untrained and dormant. It isn't only about how motivated you are. If emotional intelligence is an intelligence, it isn't something that we can all becoming shining stars in, no more than we can all develop an IQ of 150 or more. There is a bell curve distribution for emotional intelligence in the same way that there is for IQ.

What this means is that most of us will have average amounts of emotional intelligence, because that is what average means! Also, some of us will have lower levels of emotional intelligence, and some of us will have higher levels.

CAN YOU DEVELOP YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE? In answer to what Daniel Goleman has said I would say an emphatic, yes! We can develop more emotional intelligence skills, definitely, well most of us anyway! The reason I say this is that the analogy between IQ and EI does not apply to the whole consideration of the question.

There is at least one big difference between IQ and EI that matters here. The difference is this.

Our IQ is the focus of thousands and thousands of hours of training in our education system. As we grow up we are taught how to use and develop our IQ skills. We are given activity after activity, lesson after lesson, and exam after exam, in its development and application. We are taught to read and write, to recite the alphabet, to learn the rules of mathematics, to measure and collect facts. Indeed, we are exposed to an ongoing training to make the most of our innate IQ. For most of us, this continues throughout our childhoods and into young adulthood, and even beyond.

This is not the case for emotional intelligence and EQ. For the vast majority of us, we got very little training or assistance in developing our innate emotional intelligence.

When we were reciting the two times table, or being marked for our knowledge of history and geography, or being trained how to write, were we also reciting an extensive vocabulary of feeling words, or being marked on our knowledge of how two emotions relate to each other, or being trained for hours in emotional recognition?

It is highly unlikely. If your schooling did focus upon aspects of emotional intelligence it still would not have been anywhere near to the same extent as IQ. Think how many hours you spent learning to read. The time spent learning emotional literacy would nowhere near have involved the same number of hours, would it? Did you even spend ten hours doing that? 

CAN YOU DEVELOP YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO ITS MAXIMUM? How does this bear any relation to what Daniel Goleman says? It is good news. It means that you are highly unlikely to have developed your emotional intelligence to its maximum potential. There is hardly anyone who has who has gone through this kind of schooling. Thus, you have every chance of being able to benefit from work to develop it.

So Daniel Goleman is right, (and I do not always agree with Goleman's take on emotional intelligence). In a well-structured learning situation where you have a clearly defined goal of what you want to improve, and can practise specific behaviors realted to it, you should be able to further develop your skills related to emotional intelligence.

There is mounting research evidence to back this up in Australia. Studies have been conducted with groups in the workplace. Some have been put through an emotional intelligence training programme and others haven't. Pre and post tests have then been done and significant differences in performance have been found between the start and finish of the programmes, and between the trained and untrained groups.

I have also seen my own clients show demonstrable improvements in skills following coaching and training. People, who for instance, may have found it hard to control their emotions when dealing with difficult customers have been able to learn how to keep their cool and stay calm and composed.

I have also personal experience in witnessing my own emotional intelligence development.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO DEVELOP MY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE? A word of warning. Emotional intelligence is not "one thing". It is an intelligence involving a wide and comprehensive set of skills. You don't just do one exercise to develop your emotional intelligence skills, you have to work on specific skill sets, and specific tasks, in specific areas, to reach specific goals.

EI is like IQ in this regard, there isn't one set of skills to learn to develop and use your IQ, and you don't do it in a day or a week. The same can be said for emotional intelligence. It is a journey of a lifetime, but you can take a step each day to develop your emotional intelligence skills. I have seen people take significant strides in developing their emotional intelligence in specific areas after attending just a one or two day course. How exciting is that!

A good starting place for many of my clients has been in developing their emotional self-awareness and emotional self-management, and this may help you too, but that's another article. 

For now, let me finish with a quote, by the master himself, Dr John (Jack) Mayer, from his article in the book "Emotional What?" 2010.

When most people ask the question, what they may mean is “Is it possible for someone to increase his or her emotional knowledge?” and, perhaps, “Is it possible for someone to improve their social and emotional functioning?” In both cases, the answer is almost certainly yes.

In other words, if you want to design an EQ program for yourself or your team at work it's a good idea.

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About the Author:  Emília M. Ludovino, is the founder of the Emotional Intelligence Training – Ki Flow, entrepreneur, Team Manager, Certified Social & Emotional Intelligence Coach, Certified Motivational Coach, Master Practitioner of NLP, Reiki Master/Teacher, a life-time practitioner of Mindfulness & Meditation and Expert Lawyer in Business Investment in Africa and South America. (and YES! I still have a normal life!). Worked since the age of 20 building and managing teams in Africa, South America and Europe, mainly in NGOs, United Nations, training Politicians and Community Leaders, Empowering Entrepreneur (Women&Men), Law Enforcement, Law Firms and Top Executive Managers (Communications, Marketing, IT, Pharmaceutical, Private Banking, etc.) and sport teams.