First Step Towards Building Emotional Intelligence: Self-Awareness
Much has been written about the importance of developing one’s emotional quotient. In today’s times, EQ is as important as IQ in climbing the success ladder.
Things are changing rapidly around us. As a result, our experience is not as crucial as our adaptability. Therefore, to get to the full potential of our talents, we need to tap into our emotional competence.
Daniel Goleman in his books Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence makes a hard case for these soft skills. He explains EQ through a framework that breaks it down into 2 broad components:
- Personal Competence — Skills that determine how we manage ourselves
- Social Competence — Skills that determine how we handle relationships
Each bucket is further divided into its sub-components: Where self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation comprise personal competence, empathy, and social skills form the core of social competence.
These skills are hierarchical in nature such that one builds upon the other seamlessly. As one would have guessed, self-awareness is the first step towards building emotional intelligence. Our internal store of emotional memory — our reservoir of feelings and intuitions — lies at the heart of self-awareness. Unless we are aware of how our emotions affect what we are doing, we are likely to be sidetracked by emotions run amok!
Building a sense of self-awareness requires 3 vital foundational skills:
I. Emotional Awareness: The recognition of how our emotions affect our performance, and the ability to use our values to guide decision making.
People with this competence
- Know which emotions they are feeling and why
- Realize the links between their feelings and what they think, do, and say
- Recognize how their feelings affect their performance
- Have a guiding awareness of their values and goals
II. Self-Assessment: A candid sense of our personal strengths and limits, a clear vision of where we need to improve, and the ability to learn from experience
People with this competence are
- Constantly assessing their strengths and weaknesses
- Reflective, introspect and learn from experience
- Open to candid feedback, new perspectives, continuous learning, and self-development
- Able to show a sense of humor and perspective about themselves
III. Self-Confidence: The courage that comes from certainty about our capabilities, values, and goals
People with this competence
- Present them with self-assurance; have a “presence”
- Can voice views that are unpopular and stand for what is right
- Are decisive, able to make sound decisions despite uncertainties and pressures
People who are unable to know their feelings are at a tremendous disadvantage. The ability to relate, to speak up with confidence, and be heard, to be comfortable in your own skin — these are the kinds of abilities that make a crucial difference in our success. Even though the rhythm and pace of life give us too little time to assimilate and reflect, understanding oneself is probably the most rewarding investment that one can make. None of us are perfect on this scale, but we can always strive to be better than where we are today.
This framework is adapted from Daniel Goleman’s work on Emotional Intelligence.
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