What Is Emotional Intelligence? How to Have More Emotional Awareness

In any career path that you may choose, emotional awareness and intelligence are responsible for a full 58% of your overall job performance. Furthermore, 90% of the most successful people in business have a high emotional intelligence quotient (EQ).

Clearly, the importance of high EQ can’t be overestimated. Not only is it important for business, but having emotional awareness is also crucial in maintaining meaningful and lasting personal relationships.

But how can you grow your emotional awareness? That’s what we’re going to talk about today! Read on to learn about the aspects of emotional intelligence and how to boost your EQ effectively.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is commonly defined as the ability to understand and positively relate to your own emotions as well as those of others. When you manage your own emotions and reduce stress, the idea is that you’ll be able to communicate and empathize better with the feelings and needs of those around you.

In this way, emotional intelligence applies to an awareness of both your own emotions and how you manage them as well as the way that your emotional reactions impact others.

There are a few key aspects to having emotional intelligence acknowledged by experts:

• Self-management, or the ability to control your feelings and behaviors in ways that allow you to remain adaptive, charismatic, and positive
• Self-awareness, or the ability to recognize the ways that your own emotions influence your thoughts/behaviors
• Social awareness, or the ability to empathize with and understand others
• Relationship management, or the ability to develop, maintain, and communicated within meaningful, positive relationships

How to Build Emotional Awareness

Now that you know the importance of emotional intelligence, it’s only natural that you may be wondering how to develop yours.

Read on to learn some ways that you can develop more awareness of both your own emotions and those of others so that you can begin to empathize and succeed.

Gauge Your Current Awareness

Before developing any skill, it’s essential that you establish a baseline. Taking emotional intelligence tests will allow you to gauge how high your EQ currently is so that you know where you’re starting and where you want to go. This knowledge will tell you what aspects of emotional intelligence you need to work on and help you set realistic goals.

Be Motivated and Positive

People who have high emotional intelligence are motivated to understand themselves and others. They don’t give up trying to understand other’s motivations and how they feel about the important things in their lives. The motivation of those with a high EQ also serves to motivate and inspire others.

Positivity is an important aspect of this. When you are positive and happy, this mood is going to rub off onto others and make them feel good as well. For this reason, you’re going to want to take the necessary steps toward remaining positive. This means eating and hydrating properly, reading books that you love, and taking time for hobbies that made you happy.

Listen and React

In order to understand the emotions and needs of others, you’ll first need to listen to them. When people talk to you, be an active listener and respond to what they’re saying. Take the time to understand what they’re feeling and remember that their emotions are valid, even if you disagree with them.

Part of being an active listener is responding and reacting to what people tell you appropriately. Make sure that you respond to the meat of what someone is saying to you- don’t brush them off, reply on a surface level, or make it about you. When you listen attentively and react appropriately, you’re sure to feel more of a connection to those around you.

Be Empathetic

While much of being empathetic is indeed genetic, some of this skill can be learned throughout a person’s life. Empathy is generally defined as the ability to feel the emotions of others around you and absorb their energies.

When you do this, you are better able to relate to those around you. Empathy is likely to naturally develop out of listening to and understanding the emotions of others, so as long as you do that, this is a probable natural consequence.

Adapt to Other’s Needs

When trying to develop a higher emotional intelligence, it’s important to remember that no two people have the same emotional needs. What works in relating to one person isn’t going to work in relating to another. Part of having high EQ is understanding this and considering the ways that your interlocutor would want you to relate to them.

This is also a good idea because knowing what people need in certain situations is a great way to get to know people better. You’ll need to interact with them at length and consider what ways their personality type relates to the world.

Remain Approachable and Sociable

Finally, in order to develop high EQ, you’re going to need to remain approachable. If you don’t, people aren’t going to open up to you, which in turn will make it difficult for you to interact with them and understand what they’re feeling.

Get Started

While many people in business believe that understanding and catering to the emotions of others is a weakness, it actually is one of the greatest strengths you can have.

Now that you know the importance of emotional awareness and how to develop yours, it’s time to learn more about yourself and your personality. Check out the ‘personality and attributes’ tab underneath the assessments tab on our homepage. Here, you’ll be able to take quizzes to learn more about the ways that you relate to yourself and others.

Good luck!