This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Do you want to boost your emotional intelligence and become better at navigating social situations, no matter the context? What are some emotional intelligence strategies you can practice?
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your ability to identify your own and others’ emotions and handle them effectively. Unlike IQ, EQ can be learned and trained. Travis Bradberry classifies emotional intelligence strategies into four groups: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
Keep reading for more about emotional intelligence strategies.
Emotional Intelligence Strategies
As much as our society values and admires intellect, it’s really your ability to navigate your emotional landscape and develop relationships with other people that opens doors in life. Since social interaction permeates all aspects of life, developing your emotional intelligence is vital to achieving success in any domain. But where do you even begin?
As with personality and intellect, emotional intelligence can be broken down into several domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Below are 32 emotional intelligence strategies to develop each of the four components.
Strategies to Develop Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is your ability to identify your emotions as they occur and recognize your tendencies during different scenarios. Practice these emotional intelligence strategies to develop your emotional self-awareness.
Strategy #1: Understand the physical effects of your emotions. Close your eyes and examine different physical factors such as your heartbeat, breath, and muscle tension. Then, recall a memory that elicits a strong emotional response. Notice the way your body changes based upon that emotion. Recognizing physical responses allows you to quickly identify your emotions in your day-to-day life.
Strategy #2: Find the reason behind your emotion. Emotions act as a guide, pointing out things in your psyche or surroundings that you may not recognize otherwise. Assess why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. This helps you resolve any problems or tensions that are causing unwanted feelings.
Strategy #3: Embrace discomfort. Avoiding painful feelings only creates a short-term solution and exacerbates problems further down the line. When an uncomfortable emotion emerges, dive into your feeling and work through it. Once you understand why you’re uncomfortable, you can handle the uncomfortable emotion more effectively.
Strategy #4: Don’t identify your emotions as “good” or “bad.” Emotions aren’t “good” or “bad.” Judging a feeling only puts more emotions (such as shame or pride) on top of that feeling. This keeps your original emotion from developing and muddies your current emotional state.
Strategy #5: Know your triggers. Everyone has people and behaviors that push their buttons. Knowing what triggers you allows you to strategize for those situations. Be specific when noting your triggers. Identify people, activities, and environments that irk you. Then, mentally prepare yourself for the situation.
Strategy #6: Be specific about the message you send to the world. The clothes you wear, your physical demeanor, and your facial expressions all send specific messages and usually reflect your internal emotions. Understand the message your demeanor and appearance sends. This will help you understand why people interact with you the way that they do.
Strategy #7: Invite feedback. When it comes to examining your behavior, you’re inherently biased. Reach out to other people to get a truly objective picture of yourself and the ways you respond to certain situations or people.
Strategies to Develop Self-Management
After you’ve strengthened your self-awareness skills, you can begin to practice emotional intelligence strategies for self-management. Self-management is the ability to use your self-awareness to manage your emotions and stay in control of your behavior.
Strategy #1: Focus on your breath. Your brain requires oxygen to function properly. Especially when stressed, people don’t breathe deeply enough, robbing the brain of valuable oxygen. When the brain lacks oxygen, it prioritizes basic needs (such as touch or sight) over complex processes (such as thought or emotion). When you take deep breaths, your rational brain engages and your body calms down.
Strategy #2: Develop a reason vs. emotion list. To make decisions clearer, make a two-column list. On one side, list what your emotional brain wants you to do, and, on the other, list what your rational brain wants you to do. Once you complete your list, compare the two sides and ask yourself two questions:
- Where is emotion warping my perspective?
- Where is rationality ignoring key information from my emotions?
Strategy #3: Take time before you react. If you respond to emotionally charged situations too quickly, your feelings become the driving force behind your words, and, often, lead you to say or do things that don’t align with your intentions. Instead, step away from the situation before responding. This gives you a clearer perspective on the situation and helps you make logical choices instead of emotional ones.
Strategy #4: Sleep better. Most people don’t sleep effectively, denying their brain a full recharge. Self-management requires focus, energy, and clarity—all of which rely on the brain working as efficiently as possible. To get restful sleep, turn off your electronics two hours before bed and only use your bed for sleeping.
Strategy #5: Schedule time to exercise. Exercise increases blood flow and overall fitness. It releases chemicals into your brain that help recharge your mental battery and strengthen areas of your brain that correlate to decision-making, rationality, and organization. Schedule specific time to commit to some form of physical activity and stick to it. Ideally, these activities should be active and vigorous, but any form of exercise will yield results.
Strategy #6: Publicize your goals. When creating goals for yourself, have other people hold you accountable. It’s much easier to abandon your goals when no one else knows about them. When you publicize your goals, the people around you will watch after you and help you make decisions to get you to achieve your objective.
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- What emotional intelligence is and why it's essential for your workplace success
- The 4 reasons you need to work on your EQ
- How you can use EQ to better manage relationships
