Diana Vides

EI

Diana Vides

Emotional Intelligence

 

The ability to express and manage our own emotions is very important, it is especially important when you are working with people. Being able to understand and interpret what others feel is a big component of emotional intelligence. Three things I learned about emotional intelligence during this project were that self-awareness, self-regulation, and perceiving emotions are important components to understanding and managing emotional intelligence.

            Self-awareness is the ability to know one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions. As Goleman states, self awareness is having a deep understating of one’s emotions, people who have high self-awareness are honest.  Honesty is an important quality towards leadership, a leader who is honest is a good leader. Self-awareness meshes together with a person’s personal values, which impacts the way a person communicates and interacts with others. After completing this assignment I learned that having self-awareness is very important for myself. Being able to understand my own values and putting those towards my career goals is important in building my emotional intelligence.  Having self-confidence in what I do can also help me understand my self-awareness better. If I am confident in my work then I will handle constructive criticism better, and be able to bounce back with a high self-awareness on my weakness and strengths.

            Self-regulation is being able to manage one’s emotions; it’s like the inner voice in our head. Self-regulation is being able to pick words carefully in stressful situations. As a manager this is a very important quality to have. Being reasonable is an important attribute of self-regulation, when a leader is reasonable they create an environment of trust and fairness.  This is very important towards the success of an organization. If a leader isn’t reasonable then employees will find it difficult to trust them.  For myself, self-regulation means being able to manage my emotions when a situation doesn’t go as planned. For example, when I take an exam and I have studied hours and hours for it, but unfortunately it is more difficult than I planned. I must regulate my emotions during the exam so that it does not interfere with my grade. 

            Perceiving emotions is being able to understand non-verbal signals such as body language and facial expressions.  I learned that people may not say what they are feeling but their faces and body language can say more than words. It is important as a leader to be able to read your employees body language.  As a future manager I want to be able to learn how to properly read people’s body language as to better understand what they are feeling.

            I feel as though some of my strengths are motivation and self-regulation. Motivation is one of my strengths because I can normally pursue goals with a passion and energy. I have a strong drive to achieve many goals that I have placed for myself. I am also a very optimistic person, I do not like pessimistic people. I normally try to see the better outcome in situations. I also believe self-regulation is  a strength for me because I have the ability to control my mood in many situations. I normally think before I act, and I am always open to change even though I may not always like it. People find me to be a trustworthy person who they can count on. One of my weaknesses in emotional intelligence is communication, at times I find it difficult to communicate my feelings to others. I find it especially difficult when I do not know the people around me.

            There are several ways I can improve my emotional intelligence for one I can improve my nonverbal communication skills so that other people can read how I am feeling based on my facial expressions and body language. I feel like I need to improve my eye contact with the individual that I am talking to, so that they can understand my emotions better. I need to stop judging people based on certain characteristics, as a leader I must not judge others based on certain characteristics. A way I could improve this would be by putting myself in other’s shoes, it will allow me to be more open and accepting of their perspectives and needs. I could also do a self-evaluation where I list my weaknesses and strengths, this will allow me to see what specific areas I need improvement on.  

            Everyone is different, and therefore being able to understand people’s needs and wants is important, especially as a manager. Emotional intelligence allows a person to understand how others emotions work, it allows us to understand what people are telling us, and what emotions people are feeling. Not only is emotional intelligence about reading people, but it is also how you, the individual perceive others. Without emotional intelligence managers would not be able to properly manage others. They would not understand when an employee is feeling stressed because of an assignment, and this could lead the employee to produce inadequate work. Emotional intelligence is detrimental in being a good leader. If a leader does not display proper emotional intelligence they should seek help from either top management, human resources, or an outside source.

 

 

 

Works Cited Page

"Emotional Intelligence: Developing Strong "People Skills"" Emotional Intelligence. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2014. <http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_59.htm>.

 

Goleman, Daniel. What Makes a Leader? N.p.: Harvard Business School Pr, 2008. Harvard Business School Publishing, 1998. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.