5 actions to master your emotional intelligence

It's not something you're born with, we practice and master it over time

Nov 14, 2023

“I don’t think I’m naturally emotionally intelligent”

Contrary to popular belief, emotional intelligence (EI) is not something you're born with.

Like most other great leadership skills (even the soft ones) we practice and master it over time.

EI is the ability to manage your own emotions, alongside properly understanding and responding to the emotions of the people around you.

How good are you at dealing with anger? Stress? Are you conscious of other people’s emotional state and know how to respond accordingly?

If the answer isn’t great, don’t worry, I’m here to teach you how to improve.

What are the components of emotional intelligence?

Daniel Goleman, the psychologist who popularised the concept of ’emotional intelligence’, developed a framework of the 5 key components of Emotional Intelligence.

Today, we’re going to go through each of the 5 key components along with actions to start practicing each one.

Today’s 5 actions are behind a paywall as it is incredibly valuable and involves years of my learning. Paid members keep scrolling to access.
Free members, check out the paid options below. You’ll get easily digestible and heavily actionable Leadership frameworks and practical strategies like these to your inbox every week.

Goleman breaks down EI into five components:

Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Motivation
Empathy
Social Skills

Now I’ll break down each of these components and give you actions to start practicing them 👇

1- Self aware

We’ve been sold a lie that emotions like anger, nerves and fear are ‘bad’ emotions.

All emotions are valid and important. But what IS ‘bad’, is when we are completely unaware of how these emotions show up and control our actions.

Being self-aware is step 1 to becoming an emotionally intelligent leader. Here’s how you can start getting good at it:

Action: Put a notebook next to your bed, and every night for a month, write down:
What emotions have shown up most in your day?
What situations were you in at the time?
Over the coming weeks you’ll start to see patterns and become aware in the moment of particular triggers.

2- Self regulation

Remaining calm in stressful situations. Taking accountability. Owning your mistakes.

Now you’ve become aware of your emotions in step 1, you can start to reclaim power over the ways you respond. This is self regulation, the step up from self-awareness.

When you possess great emotional intelligence, you don’t bottle things up, you express your emotions healthily.

But what we don’t do is allow hasty reactions fuelled by emotion to dictate our response. We self-regulate and manage our emotions and responses instead.

Here’s how you can practice it:

Action (2):
Next time you identify a trigger, something that usually gives you a strong emotional response, no matter how much you want to, you’re not going to respond. Not now anyway. Take AT LEAST a couple of hours to step away from the situation before responding. Even take a full 24hrs if you need.
Stress is one of the biggest emotions that can dictate our leadership style, so you need to find a healthy outlet to deal with your stress that isn’t hasty responses at work.
I use meditation and the gym and I prioritise 8 hours sleep EVERY night to manage my cortisol (stress hormone) levels.

3 - Motivation

Motivation, EI step number 3. Motivation dictates our personal drive to improve and achieve, commitment to our goals, initiative, or readiness to act on opportunities, as well as optimism, and resilience.

But we don’t wait for motivation to show up, we use discipline to build motivation.

And when we’re in a leadership position, we need to practice and drive motivation not only in ourselves but in our team too.

Action:
Set yourself some small, measurable goals: What is something you’ve really been wanting to achieve recently? Stop drinking for a month? Go to bed earlier?
Set some small achievable goals that are specific, measurable, and time-bound. This will help you stay motivated.
Take some risks in your team, encourage experimentation, fail, get people out of their comfort zone. You might find motivation in places you never knew.

4 - Empathy

Empathy feels like a word people throw around all the time, but it’s incredibly important in Leadership.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share important emotions in others.

Demonstrating empathy allows you to increase your attentiveness, practicing it teaches you how to be patient. If you're able to demonstrate empathy, your team will feel safer talking to you.

Here’s how to improve how empathetic you are:

Actions:
Next time you’re in a disagreement with someone at work, take a moment to genuinely try and see where the other person is coming from. We really struggle to do this because of bias an ego. We’ll keep fighting out corner.
But I need you to try hard.
Try and assume the best intentions in them. Seek to understand over judging, and when you go back in, practice active listening skills.
This doesn’t mean we can’t continue to disagree, discipline or overrule as a leader. Sometimes we are right.
But you can only be certain, and act in the best faith, when you have first practiced empathy.

5 - Social skills

If you think of the best leader you’ve ever had, I guarantee you’ll reference them as ‘someone you could just talk to’.

Well it’s true, and here’s the psychology behind it… People who have strong social skills, or the people we’re just able to ‘talk to’, they’re emotionally intelligent. They do the below things:

They’re vulnerable
They praise others without reservation
They have ability to resolve conflict
They know when to speak and when to listen

Here’s how you can practice your social skills:

Action:
Experiment. I dare you to go to a networking event alone, dive into some conversations, understand what feels great (and where you need practice).
Check in with your body language. Is it under control? Slouched? Panicked?

To round up

In order to be an emotionally intelligent leader, you need to practice these 5 things:

Self-awareness
Self regulation
Motivation
Empathy
Social Skills

How do you do?

Rate yourself from 1-10 on each of the 5 components above.

Where do you need to do the most work?

Peace,

P.S. I’ve just started growing my YouTube channel, for the video versions of these practical strategies and tips go check it out.