Emotional Intelligence: what it is and what it comprises
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to understand emotions and drive them, in such a way that we can use them to guide our behavior and our thought processes, to produce better results.
It includes the skills to: perceive, judge and express emotion accurately; contact or generate feelings to facilitate understanding of oneself or of another person; understand emotions and the knowledge derived from them and regulate them to promote their own emotional and intellectual growth.
Emotional Intelligence includes Intrapersonal Intelligence and Interpersonal Intelligence. Intrapersonal Intelligence manifests itself in contacting one's own feelings, discerning these feelings and guiding behavior. Interpersonal Intelligence is determined by leadership ability, the ability to relate, maintain friendships and solve social problems.
Both parts of which EI is made up include a series of competencies. Those belonging to Interpersonal Intelligence, have been the object of managerial training for years, on the other hand, the competencies of Intrapersonal Intelligence, such as self-awareness, self-regulation and self-motivation are, of novel treatment in the business field, For this reason, they are not yet part of the training projects for managers, indeed they are not used to questioning their vital attitudes.
Do today's managers know themselves?
Most managers who attend an emotional intelligence course come with the need to improve their relationship with others or optimize their power of influence or persuasion. However, they are not aware that in order to be effective in this area, they will first have to know and accept themselves. They ignore that they do not know each other. They do not know who they really are, they identify with what their beliefs, values, strengths and weaknesses are based on, without analyzing whether these really correspond to them or are "imported" from the outside and accepted by them as truths. As a consequence of this, no proposals are made in relation to their self-motivation, their professional or personal life, unless they are faced with a difficult situation, a problem or a crisis.But not as something that should be done naturally, in the same way that every day we take care of showering, dressing, eating, etc….
In my experience, in general, the higher the manager's position, the greater the lack of self-knowledge. Could it be that he has not had the need? Has he lacked the time, or has he had too much fear, to delve into such depths? Or maybe you've lived too many years in the race to achieve business or career goals that you haven't had time to define your own life goals. Probably what happens to him is that he has "valued" the external more than the internal.
Based on a well-known phrase "Life is like an echo, if you don't like what you receive, be careful what you broadcast", it is important to make these executives understand that knowing each other implies understanding and understanding is a first step to accept themselves.; and that only by accepting themselves can they begin to love themselves, and to love themselves, is a sine qua non condition to relate well with others.
Only those who know why they feel the way they feel can manage their emotions, moderate them and consciously order them.
After working on these ideas in the seminars, upon completion, they realize that the work that lies ahead is a deep reflection of who I am, what I think, what I feel, and how I behave. These are basic questions to ask, so that they understand what happens to them and why they treat them as they treat them and cause the impact that they cause.
How to promote self-knowledge
Intrapersonal Intelligence competencies such as self-awareness and self-motivation cannot be learned in traditional training sessions. However, these can serve to awaken consciences, turn on a light, see that there are other ways to start on the most fantastic and important journey that exists and that is to know yourself. These are competencies that are developed by doing intense personal work, usually done with external help from a mentor coach.
The first step is to discover what our values are, the next to analyze the beliefs that we have formed around those values. Remember that values are thoughts we have about things, and from those thoughts we define beliefs, which can be limiting or empowering, both to judge others, and to validate or justify the way we behave.
To deepen the self-knowledge of the person, it is necessary to resort to tools that facilitate this process and accelerate its execution. Traditional tests only show a part of the individual, defining a personality style, based on behaviors; but they do not delve too deeply into its origin, that is, into the values and beliefs that constitute the starting point in relation to the individual way of perceiving reality and the vital parameter that will define the person's behavior.
Values have an origin in the education received in childhood, they can be genetic (from the scientific point of view) or also be the expression of the essence of our being (from the point of view of transpersonal psychology). Whatever the origin, the important thing is to become aware of what they are and analyze the beliefs that we have developed based on them, to be able to submit them to a review, with the will to assume or rethink them.
Tools for self-knowledge
The work of knowing oneself represents an arduous task framed in a process of personal development, for which there are several ways, some faster than others. Of the available tools, only a few are known and used in the business world.
Coaching or personalized training, for example, is a system in which the coach helps the trainee to discover their limiting patterns of behavior. However, for this help to be possible, the coach has to be a person who is also highly developed personally, with clarity of mind and deep personal self-knowledge, in addition to having a psychoanalytic basis that allows her to be able to work with
However, there are another series of techniques that are also very effective but not so orthodox, as they come from areas of knowledge that are not explored in the Western world, and less in the business world, such as "archetypes", "centering", and "development of the witness ”.
All of them are approximations to the individual alphabet, in which the individual becomes the objective protagonist, witness and observer of their own processes.
What differentiates these systems from the traditional ones is that the person must learn to feel their behaviors because to effect transcendental changes within oneself, it cannot be done by eliminating those behaviors through discipline, sublimation, or through any other act of will: you have to investigate and understand the causes. This requires patience and awareness, in which there are no judgments of any kind, mental and analytical processes, but from the «inner wise» that is, as Saint Augustine said «Inside me there is one who knows more about me than I do. same". What validates these techniques is that the person distances himself from the ego (the ego understood from a transpersonal psychology point of view, that is, as a desire for certainty, security, which are its main activities).
Using the tools
A tool, as its name implies, should serve as a means, not an end. In my opinion, any system that serves to provide information and shed light on an act as complex as self-knowledge, should be considered, since it represents an element of ignorance to refuse its use because it is not considered valid and scientifically proven in a sufficient sample of individuals..
Is it possible to verify its applicability, through verifying the opinion of an adequate sample of individuals who proposed to know themselves ?. Self-knowledge cannot be measured statistically or scientifically and therefore Human Resources specialists are likely to discard new tools because they are not scientific.
The more I investigate in various lines of self-knowledge, the more I realize that they all come together in the same way in different ways, that is why I wonder why it is necessary to be orthodox, when acting eclectically, incorporates hitherto unproven tools, its effectiveness is proven which It means that the origin of the tools is not so important as the professionalism in their application.
In my opinion, we must not "tear our clothes" and instead we must open our minds and incorporate tools from other cultures validated by studious people in other fields (no less wise), and bring new light to this arduous task of know yourself.
