Feelings, and their place in business
Your five-minute guide to emotional intelligence
What’s your view on knowledge? What makes someone smart? Is it a high GPA, taking hard classes, doing well on the ACT? I think America has been trained to believe that knowledge = grades. EHHHH!!! Wrong!
It’s a shame that the uber-prestigious colleges like Harvard, Stanford, and Yale care so much about students’ GPA and ACT scores because they’re missing out on so many bright people! Now I’m certainly not saying that Harvard students are not smart, I’m simply saying that we cannot determine how smart an individual is solely by how well they do on a standardized test. Which, by the way, is on its way out. University of Chicago is going to stop requiring undergraduate applicants to have an ACT score.
Colleges and employers are missing out on a HUGE part of the success equation: emotional intelligence. You may have read about it in the news or watched a TED Talk on it, but what does emotional intelligence really mean, how does it help you be successful, and how can we increase it?
Defining “emotional intelligence”
Emotional intelligence is defined as “the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s)” (Wikipedia).
It’s simply being able to understand your feelings and being aware of the feelings of other, and interacting with them appropriately. Empathy is often associated with emotional intelligence, and there’s other components like self-awareness and motivation.
So why is emotional intelligence important? It’s kind of hard to comprehend how a soft skill could help someone build the next giant tech company or next world-changing invention, especially for me with an engineering background!
How emotional intelligence affects success
It really boils down to two things: product and team. Whenever you hear people talking about successful companies you’re either hearing about how their product is 10x better or how they have the most talented people. Enter: emotional intelligence.
If you recall the definition of emotional intelligence, it mentions guiding thinking and behavior. Emotional intelligence is absolutely essential to understanding how people interact with your product. If you think of some of the classic products, like the iPhone, their creators intuitively knew how users would most benefit from them — they were emotionally aware.
The other half of a successful company is the team. This is a little more obvious because it has to do with people and relationships, but this is the one that gets screwed up the most! Read about how Americans hate their bosses in “The Modern Workplace”. The fact that we’re still talking about bad bosses and toxic cultures is sad.
Obviously, the more inspiring, understanding, and loving leaders will attract the best people. People want to work for bosses who empower them and let them know they achieve their dreams. That’s why AMEND is so successful and continues to get elite talent. Read all about our people on Paul Delaney’s account.
Emotional intelligence does vary between men and women. Women tend to be better at the empathy part and men tend to be better at the self-confidence part. Interestingly, the top 10% of leaders are equal across the board!
Learning emotional intelligence
All the support of emotional intelligence begs the question “can you increase your emotional intelligence?” The answer is absolutely. There are so many factors that go into your emotional intelligence; family upbringing, society and culture, and so many more influences impact your emotional skills.
There are plenty of how-to articles on increasing emotional intelligence, but the simplest place to start is by identifying your emotions today, right now. Start asking yourself “what am I feeling?” throughout your day. This will make you more in tune with yourself and help you see how others are feeling.
We can teach our kids emotional intelligence by helping them do the same. Encouraging children to articulate their emotions increases their awareness and ability to handle stress — whether they’re in first grade or a senior in high school.
Other thoughts on emotional intelligence
The success of AMEND is dependent on how well our leadership lead the team, how Project Leaders can help the Analysts grow, and ultimately how our company helps solve our clients problems. Relationships are the one thing that is seen in every facet of our business, so getting emotional intelligence down is critical to AMEND. That’s why we start early.
Every term I run a session on personality for our Analysts using the DISC personality test. We talk about natural and adaptive states, what each personality looks like in its best and worst versions, and how to fully utilize your thinking.
If you’d like to take the DISC assessment to gain more insight into how you think, you can find it at: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/disc/
In 1996, Daniel Goleman published a powerful book titled Emotional Intelligence that brought in a lot of great research and really started the discussion on emotional intelligence and its relationship to success. I highly recommend you check it out ($12 on Amazon).
I’ve gotten the opportunity to do dozens of emotional intelligence trainings in businesses and have seen the impact it can have on truly leveraging individuals’ gifts and passions. If you’d be interested in conducting a leadership training for your team, I’d love to talk. Feel free to reach out!
