It’s no secret that building a successful career isn’t easy.
After all, you need the right education, choose an industry where you can utilize your strengths as an individual, and build a professional network that will connect you to the best possible contacts for getting ahead.
Believe it or not, another key factor is understanding the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace. In fact, this might be one of the most challenging yet powerful aspects of achieving big-time success.
Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place for advice. This article takes a look at how to increase emotional intelligence in order to take your career to the next level. Keep reading to get the inside scoop.
1. Increase Your Self-Awareness
The first step into elevating your emotional intelligence is by working on your self-awareness.
What exactly does this mean? Well, most of the time people simply walk through their day focusing on the behavior of others rather than how they themselves are behaving. After all, we typically judge others based on their actions while judging ourselves based on our motivation. This is obviously unfair and unproductive.
The key is to learn to take a good long look in the mirror and assess how you speak to those around you and treat the people in your office environment.
Keep in mind that the people around you are reacting to your behavior. This means you actually have a lot of power in improving your working relationships by simply altering the way you interact with them. In fact, small changes can have a huge impact.
2. Increase Your Level of Empathy for Others
Empathy is a rare yet extremely valuable commodity in human relationships. This is also a major aspect of emotional intelligence.
What is empathy? On the most basic level, it’s the ability to connect with others by relating to them emotionally and letting them know that you understand how they feel.
It’s important to remember that you cannot fake genuine empathy. This isn’t a tool for manipulation. It’s actually a very powerful way to cut through the common social pretenses of office environments, allowing you to see each other as fellow human beings rather than as adversaries.
Empathy enables you to broaden your relationship with your co-workers, which is obviously a very useful tool for creating a more welcoming and productive workplace. Because the more you’re able to view the world through the eyes of another, the more effectively you’ll be able to make the best possible decisions for both your employees and your company.
3. Continually Seek Feedback
Let’s be honest, seeking feedback from those around isn’t always easy. After all, asking a peer to critique your performance can be extremely uncomfortable. This is especially true when the feedback contains negative comments.
And yet, feedback of any kind can be useful. The key is for both parties to learn to communicate in the most healthy and constructive ways possible. This doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it can make an enormous impact on the way work peers interact, which can obviously lead to greater efficiency and productivity.
It’s important for people at every level of your organization to give and receive feedback. In fact, it’s crucial for management to constantly seek feedback from the members of their team so that they can make adjustments as needed.
As a leader, you need to look for ways of asking for feedback that won’t lead to confrontation or create tension in your office environment. That’s why it’s important to present your team with tools for submitting feedback that will be honest yet construction, rather than simply presenting the opportunity to tear each other down.
4. Increase Social Awareness
It’s also important to develop a more astute social awareness. In other words, learn to be attuned to your surroundings, especially when it comes to the emotions of others.
When you walk into a room, don’t just remain lost in your own thoughts and feelings. Look around, take the temperature of the room, assess how people are interacting with each other, and then process accordingly.
Believe it or not, this is one of the most valuable skills you can possess as a manager. It’s also one of the most effective tools for resolving conflict and de-escalating tension among members of your team.
Self-awareness combined with strong social awareness is a powerful tool that will make your office a much more pleasant place to work and will help increase the level of respect between management and employees.
5. Manage Your Relationships
Every relationship inside and outside of your company is important, and yet each relationship is different. Learning to manage relationships will give you a superpower when it comes to being more productive and efficient.
Not everyone understands relationship management, but the ability to communicate positively with those around you will definitely help you increase your emotional intelligence aptitude. This is essential for building trust and inspiring people to follow your lead.
Learn more about emotional intelligence and leadership training.
6. Focus On Being Present
In recent years, the practice of mindfulness has become increasingly popular. This is the simple concept of understanding that the human mind is a chaotic place, thus you need to focus on the present moment rather than worrying about the past or future.
Being present isn’t easy. And yet the more present you are at any given more, the more effective you will be at empathizing with others and making difficult decisions.
7. Work On Being Proactive Rather Than Reactive
This is another difficult concept for many people to grasp. Being proactive gives you power, whereas being reactive puts you at the mercy of the situation. Learning the difference will definitely help take your emotional intelligence to the next level and make you a more effective leader.
8. Lead With Passion
It’s almost impossible to overstate the value of being a passionate leader. This includes the willingness to let yourself be vulnerable in order to connect with others in your organization. People need to be inspired, and passion is one of the best ways to inspire employees to perform at the top of their abilities.
A Guide to Enhancing Emotional Intelligence In the Workplace
Being a good leader isn’t easy. Fortunately, these tips for emotional intelligence in the workplace will help you be a better manager regardless of the size of your company.
Keep scrolling to discover more great personal growth and lifestyle advice on this blog.
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