Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your emotions and the emotions of others. Emotions are expressions of core feelings, including happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and shame (1). Everyone displays one or more of these emotions during the course of a day. Being able to perceive and interpret these feelings in yourself and others is an important skill that can set you up for success in your professional career and personal life. Studies have shown that over 80% of people with high emotional intelligence are high performers (1). Yet, this is not a skill taught in school. Graduates enter the workforce without a formal understanding of the concept of emotional intelligence. Follow these guidelines to help improve and enhance this vital skill.
Understand and manage yourself. Many of us work in teams on several projects simultaneously. Team members need to understand one another to be efficient collectively. The first step is to understand yourself. How can you understand others if you don’t understand yourself?
The key to understanding yourself is to develop a keen sense of self-awareness and self-management. The ability to recognize your own emotions in the moment can help you to control and direct your behavior positively (1).
For example, imagine you need to leave your family for a work assignment at a remote site to test a new system. Upon arrival, the system is not nearly ready...
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