Emotional intelligence at work…What’s all the fuss about?

Published on by Bridget Clapham really useful stuff.Leave a comment

There’s a lot being written about EQ or Emotional Intelligence.

It is said that having a high EQ is a greater indicator of our success than having a high IQ which in itself challenges many peoples’ belief systems. If you are a manager, leader or team member and haven’t yet explored the positive benefits of working to raise EQ, I hope that this blog will give you a taste and hunger to learn more!

So, what is EQ and why is it important?

There are 4 components ( 5 if you read Goleman ) but let’s focus on the 4 below for now!

Reflective Learning Activity:-

Before you read my thoughts, look back at the diagram above and reflect upon each quadrant. Think of yourself in an average day at work and consider how, upping your ability in each of the quadrants, could enhance your experience and excellence!

What is so important about emotional intelligence and what will increasing our EQ get for us?

We are each unique and social beings, as a species we thrive in groups and thus, at home and even more so at work, with very few exceptions, interact, on a daily basis, with a multitude of other totally unique human beings.

We are also, thank goodness emotional beings as opposed to computers or robots, we each have a fully functioning emotional spectrum and a full range of feelings that vary throughout any given day, hour or even moment!

Part of the joy of my job is working with people to help them gain insight into how they create their emotions and how to manage them more effectively. These are the first stages of developing EQ. Following this comes coaching on how to raise awareness of others and to communicate more effectively to get better outcomes more of the time!

So- more on the whole issue of emotions:-

If you could select a way to feel from a menu of emotions, these and more would all be on the list of ways to feel:-

 

 

 

 

 

Rest assured, your very amazing brain knows exactly how to create each and every one of the emotions on the menu…and a few more. You have a wonderful ability to generate the different neurochemicals that lead to different feelings and understanding this is key to developing EQ.

Quite clearly, the way we feel in any given moment is going to impact hugely on how we filter and process information AND on how we respond, react and behave towards other human beings in your workplace or home.

(Remember at this point that the other human beings are all experiencing their own cocktail of emotions in any given moment.) This is what makes working together and communicating so interesting!

Think of a workplace scenario such as a meeting :-

If all human beings in your workplace scenario are feeling positive and are aware of self and others, can manage their state and are socially skilled – people will relate well to each other and generally be happier, functioning well and be more productive. Think what this means to wellbeing and team effectiveness at work!

If one or more of the human beings is low on EQ, feeling angry, fed up, low or anxious and NOT able to change it, oblivious their own and to the other person’s emotional state and socially unskilled, all the players will be left feeling negative and functioning below their best.

Building higher levels of EQ

When you stop to reflect on the above, it is clear that when we work on all four quadrants of the EQ model, we will be able to build and develop our EQ. This means that we will feel better more of the time, be able to manage and change our state when necessary, be aware of the emotional state of those around us and reflect on how THAT is affecting their behaviours in any given moment AND be skilled in establishing and maintaining rapport and relate well to others!

The joy of EQ is, that whilst we each have a level of EQ, we can enhance and develop our skills in each of the four areas. I work with many individuals and teams that do just that!

Resources.

For Executive Coaching

Contact me at bridget@bridgetclapham.co.uk to explore ways to enhance EQ and increase wellbeing and performance at individual, team and organisational levels.

Books and links

There are many. Here are just two from the selection available that will be of interest if you want to read more!

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves is excellent. In explaining EQ and giving some strategies for development. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotional-Intelligence-Travis-Bradberry/dp/0974320625/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460554260&sr=1-1&keywords=travis+bradberry

Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence. Why it can matter more than IQ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/0747528306/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460554195&sr=8-1&keywords=daniel+goleman

 

 

 

Thoughts about confidence – what’s it all about?

Published on by Bridget Clapham really useful stuff.Leave a comment

How often do you hear someone say..(that someone could be you!) that they have lost some confidence or that they would be able to do something more easily, if only they had more confidence?  We often talk about it as if it is something tangible when in fact it isn’t!

What has happened here is that through the way we use language, we have turned something that is a feeling, a way of being, sometimes a cocktail of feelings, into a simple noun. An elusive thing!

Sadly we cannot go into our favourite store and purchase a bag of “confidence”. It doesn’t work like that. I would go as far as to say that, in truth, “confidence” as such, does not exist.

If we can identify and recognise “it” as a feeling – a sense of “being” confident,  we start to take control. That sense of control starts to come because we are experts in feeling different emotions and “being” in different states. Lets face it, we have been doing it since we were born!

Your amazing brain has many memories of feeling the way you feel when you have the feeling that you describe as confident. It knows which parts of itself to activate and exactly which cocktail of neurochemistry to create. If you need to feel more confident, you can give your brain a helping hand.

This simple  brain training experiment will demonstrate:-

  1. Take a few moments and sit or be somewhere where you can have some peace and quiet!
  2. Go into your memory banks and think of a time when you felt really confident. What were you doing? Where were you? Who was there? What was happening?
  3. Immerse yourself in that memory ( you will probably be smiling by now)  and step right back into it.
  4. Imagine you are back there again, seeing the sights and hearing the sounds that were going on at the time.
  5. Notice how you feel and smile some more as you replay the events of that memory.
  6. Stop and notice how much of the original confident feelings your brain has cleverly regenerated for you! If you could measure your neurochemistry right now, it would be very different to how it was before you started the exercise!

Clever eh?

Play with this and if you are wanting to incrementally build your ability to “be” confident more of the time, I invite you to do this exercise daily, several times. Notice the differences!

There is a wealth of neuroscience to support these ideas and if you are interested in more ways to run your brain differently, you can look up the many works of two of my teachers :- Dr Richard Bandler co- creator of NLP and Paul McKenna. If it’s business texts you are looking for check out the work of Simon Sinek. he includes some great explanation of our positive neurotransmitters in his book Leaders Eat Last

The aim of this post is to get you thinking about how you “do” confident and to invite you to be curious about how you work on ways to BE the way you want to be in different situations. I am aware that there are many variables to consider and this is one piece of the jigsaw.

Watch out for more pieces. I am excited that I will be sharing them with you!

Until next time

Best wishes

Bridget

 

 

The birth of a blog! Really Useful Stuff!

Published on by Bridget Clapham really useful stuff.11 Comments

Welcome to my blogging adventure, sharing really useful stuff to folks around the world!

Let me elaborate… In my work as a Coach, working with leaders and people at work, with private clients and with students I often send them stuff which relates to the coaching and which is intended to help them to live a happier, more successful and generally more positive life.

The “stuff” can take the form of my own thoughts and alleged wisdom relating to the coaching we have shared to video links, Ted talks, Images, quotes and articles to compliment the coaching. The usual response from my clients is to say:-

“Thanks Bridget, that stuff you sent was really useful.!”

Reflecting on this led me to think that over  the years I have amassed a wealth of resources, some ( lots actually!)  in my head and some in my PC! Why send stuff to just one person when it could be shared to a wider audience?

I will be honest with you folks. I haven’t a clue about how to make best use of the software resources designed to help me blog so I am on a steep learning curve. I invite you to join me and to support me as I build up an online resource of stuff. Who knows how really useful you will find it!

Until next time

Bridget Clapham. http://www.bridgetclapham.co.uk