Advantage Point

Mastering Emotional Intelligence – Transform Your Interactions in 63 Days

• Traci Knight • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Unlock the secrets to harnessing emotional intelligence and transform your interactions, both personal and professional. Imagine a world where your emotions work for you, not against you, as we explore the intricate balance between the prefrontal cortex and limbic system. Join me, Tracy, on a 63-day journey designed to cultivate a deeper emotional awareness and empathy. We’ll delve into the science behind emotional intelligence, grounded in insights from neuroscientists like Damasio, and guide you through assessments like the MSCEIT and ESCI to boost your self-awareness and decision-making skills. This episode promises to equip you with the tools to thoughtfully manage your responses and enhance your emotional insight.

Navigating conversations with emotional intelligence is an art, and we’re here to help you master it. Discover how to gauge and manage emotional intensity, employ active listening, and appreciate cultural nuances to create empathetic and respectful exchanges. We’ll share practical strategies, from setting boundaries to using visualization techniques, that will help you build stronger relationships and enhance your leadership abilities. By embracing vulnerability and staying socially aware, you’ll foster meaningful connections and emerge as a more effective, empathetic individual in all areas of your life. Dive into this enriching episode and start your journey toward becoming a maestro of emotional intelligence!

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Speaker 1:

Hi and welcome to Advantage Point. I am Tracy and today we are going to train your brain in emotional intelligence. Have you ever thought that you're an old dog that can't learn new tricks? Are you work with someone? Are you live with someone and you're like are they? Will they ever change? Are people frustrating you? Do they have low level energylevel energy? You know it's not unusual to have low-level energy people in your environment, but it matters what you do that can make that change. Others might decide not to do it, but you can make your changes and I'd like for you to dial in over the next 63 days and create effective habits, healthier habits that will change your life for the better.

Speaker 1:

In today's podcast, it's emotional intelligence and I'm going to help you understand what it is. It is the act of understanding and managing your emotions in various social interactions, plus recognizing and responding to others' emotions social interactions plus recognizing and responding to others. Emotions basically becoming aware of who you are and how you handle situations in order to become more empathetic for others. Think before you act. But we're also going to dial in on the science side of it, because I love science. If you haven't heard my fuel food is fuel podcast and like what in the brain clicks for this and how to sync it up to where our emotions don't rule the better of us, because it can. Situations can get out of control when our emotions control us. So we want our prefrontal cortex, or thinking area, and our limbic area of the of the brain to get that balance right.

Speaker 1:

There are studies and strategies that have been going on since Socrates. Socrates and Buddha those guys are. You know, they basically told us or told back in the day and tell us still today. I guess that you know you need to be aware, just be aware of your regulating your emotions and improving your social interactions, and it continued on. You know, you know that we have something called the IQ and, and a lot of people don't know what emotional intelligence is, and and we think that you know, hiring people with high IQ or high IQ is important, but studies have shown where, okay, it's great to be smart, but very smart people have made very poor decisions, and where emotional intelligence falls in, it is, you know, the act of the brain processing emotional information. It gave the individual emotional intelligence as distinct as the intelligence like. It basically made them smarter, because when you are empathetic but yet have an intuition or gut feeling. Right, you have, and it's natural to have that emotion to come to be immediate. But it's the. It's the point in which that thinking process, the rationale, comes in and goes okay, here's the emotion. But how is that action going to branch out? Is it going to be a high energy, low energy, a positive or a negative? Like what is this about? To look like, it can get really messy or it can go really great.

Speaker 1:

And you know you can take some tests. Psychology Today has it. You can also look up. There's a scale by a gentleman that studied this in the 1970s and 80s. Some psychologist, mayor Salvini and their colleague Caruso, developed a test in the 90s that it is called the. It is an acronym, m-s-c-e-i-t, which is Mayor Salvi I hope I'm saying his name correctly Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. Take that test.

Speaker 1:

There's another test you can take. It's a ESCI Goldman-based Emotional Social Competence Inventory based emotional social competence inventory. There's also genosis EI, which is emotional intelligence assessment, and it targets frequency of emotional intelligence behaviors in the workplace which most of this is stemmed into. It's the derivative of how to manage and make people feel secure in the workplace. But, like I've said before your personal and your professional is. In my opinion, they go hand in hand. You can't check your emotions at the door. You're human and your behavior is just what it is, and so what we need to do is embrace an emotional intelligence to help us manage situations and manage ourselves in situations.

Speaker 1:

There is a gentleman, a neuroscientist, damasio. He has a book 1994, descartes' Era, emotional Reason and the Human Brain. He posted how emotions do play a critical role in rational thinking, what we think, how we think, how decisions are made, how our actions from them. Basically, your thoughts have feelings. Your thoughts become actions from those feelings. When you make a decision, it has emotion behind it. Emotional intelligence is not saying, hey, become a robot and have no emotions for your thought, but instead put yourself in someone else's shoes.

Speaker 1:

On a neuroscientist standpoint, what becomes real to someone stems from the emotional center of the brain, limbic cortex. The limbic cortex processes stimulus and experience, creating cognitive or cognitive area of the brain which frees up the higher thinking. So gut feeling came from, basically, the fact our emotions are made from the decision and then the reasoning, the cognitive part of our brain, justifies our decision, making an irrational decision. Of course, our emotions are created and differ from environmental factors, genetics, ourselves and other people influence, etc. It. You know, if we feel that our decision is valid and accepted by the world around us, we grade those decisions as smart decisions and imprints for future decision making.

Speaker 1:

Emotions are quick and embedded, thus we pull from them very quickly and our reactions follow. So it's important to dial in and be self-aware. So that's why my book is written with awareness, as first you need to know what you're working with, who you're working with, and taking the test does help that. You know we react to things Like if you're late to work, you speed, but then you hear a siren. It's not for you, but the sound provides you a cue to slow down. This is a way our emotions are important in survival.

Speaker 1:

But when the prefrontal cortex, the thinking area, and the limbic or the emotional area are not in sync, then the emotional intelligence is lower. Therefore we make our decisions purely an emotional decision. You know, we think that if we're super smart we can make better decisions. But again, smart folks don't make great decisions. They're, you know you can make great decisions with your gut instinct as a person with a lower IQ. It has nothing to do with IQ, but it does. Emotional intelligence does help us harness a better way of reacting to our environment, those around us, performance and financial decisions to achieve a more positive, more effective outcome.

Speaker 1:

Friedman stated that emotions can lead to our worst decisions or our best ones. The difference is emotional intelligence and understanding your emotional intelligence and emotional intensity matters. So, like I said before, you have high energy, low energy, positive and negative. Anger or excitement can be seen as high energy they can suck all the energy out of the room, you know or excitement can be, and anger can be seen as, like passionate still high energy, whereas sadness or serenity is a low energy.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that helps you understand what's going on is facial recognition. Is someone happy? Do they have fear, anger, sadness, disgust or surprise? And then somebody's mood or vibration helps us cause a shift, either positive or negative, in the room, helps us cause shift either positive or negative in the room. So, like you use these sensations, the mood of the room, to navigate how to respond and you can misinterpret the mood due to your emotional intensity. So if you're on this trajectory and you're, like, already fueled, that is your emotional intensity of one of those four cardinal pieces north, south, east or west, high energy, low energy, positive or negative energy. So just like, think, right, right, when combining these, of course it creates a wave of all that put together, but these are just feelings, which are psychological responses of interpretations, to define what's going on.

Speaker 1:

It's like a survival, like pause, wait. Don't say that, wait, hold on. I gotta read the room. What is their facial expression? How are they walking? How are they walking into the room? What are they wearing? No, even that can help you. If someone wears, if someone is put together, like every single day, and they walk in there and they look like a hot mess, you're like, okay, something is amiss. That's your gut intuition, like something is up.

Speaker 1:

And so then you tap into that empathetic side and just be like, okay, what's happening right now? You're taking notice, you're absorbed, what's going on? You're labeling the emotion in the brain, emotion in the brain, and it's the same as, like you know, you don't just, you don't just tap into oh, they're here at work, I'm going to bombard them immediately. You need to read the room. They clearly need to reset themselves, right, it's the same with at home themselves, right, it's the same with at home. And you have to take a step back, read the room, see what's going on, go okay. How do I need to address this? And should I address this right now? There's a time and place for everything.

Speaker 1:

So, basically, what you're doing is the capacity for recognizing our own feelings, self-awareness to those of others' empathy, for motivating ourselves, which is self-motivation, and for managing our emotions, which is self-management, and in our relationships, which is management relationship. You've got to put it all together so, being cognitive of facial expressions, you can understand a little bit more emotionally, more emotionally, by managing your emotions and balancing between your sensing, your emotions in that limbic area and strategizing and syncing it with the prefrontal cortex of thinking reasonably, reasoning, problem solving and creativity you've now. You're now like dialing in to, oh, self-reflection. Ask yourself why am I feeling this way? Why am I thinking this way? Why did I act, react this way? So, when you kind of are not the best at timing right or you lead with your emotions, ask yourself these questions like why did that happen? Why do I keep this hamster wheel going in the wrong direction? You've got to jump off the hamster wheel.

Speaker 1:

Meditate, take a moment with yourself and understand who you are. Address that. Then take the lessons in that day or that moment. Acknowledge these questions in order to manage your emotions more effectively. Become less reactive with your emotions, which in turn, will provide you a more stable, solid, successful place, and it will in your environment, your relationships, your workplace. It will actually make your life simpler.

Speaker 1:

When you start just really opening your eyes, so to speak, you're going to have a negative person in the room. There's just going to be that negative Nancy situation. But how you respond matters by influencing others with your positivity, becoming that leader, taking effective actions. Reducing the negativity in the room will catapult the performance of your team where, with companies that utilize emotional intelligence have incredible results within their company, from entrepreneurs to major corporations like L'Oreal and PepsiCo PepsiCo. So to give you a little examples here, I'm going to so when using it, it's pretty cool. So I'm going to give you some examples.

Speaker 1:

By the research by the Center of Creative Leadership found that primary causes of derailment in executives involve low EI, particularly difficulty handling change, poor teamwork and interpersonal relationships. When places like IBM uses emotional intelligence, they notice that they have significantly higher employee engagement levels, which improves teamwork and manages conflict more effectively. Improves teamwork and manages conflict more effectively. Even entrepreneurs can see growth and change and more of a community enhancement with a higher emotional intelligence. Pepsico in one year generated 10% more productivity, 87% less turnover rate, which is highly expensive. Like turnover can be the downfall of companies because when with HR, um, when you change when a person comes in, you're having to change insurances, and insurance per person is not cheap. And then turnover and training and name change all this stuff is expensive. And PepsiCo also saw that there was over a thousand return on their investment by recruiting emotionally intelligent managers.

Speaker 1:

I have to say you know you take like these little tests when you're being like you get through the interview phase and then they give you a test to see if you're fit for the company. Part of this is emotional intelligence. Is emotional intelligence on some of its like honesty, how do you handle situations? It's in there. They're actually seeing how you're, how you are under pressure, whether you know it or not. They're seeing what your individual performance will be. You know these are. It's even great for partners in a relationship, a romantic relationship, to take these tests to see Because, at the end of the day, gallup researched so that three critical factors in leadership and an organizational climate, which to me is also in personal relationships.

Speaker 1:

Do you feel cared for? Do you feel like you're being seen and heard? You know praise, recognition do you? And do they believe? Do they do you feel? The other critical point is are they concerned about your development? Does my spouse have my back? Are they concerned Like I am trying to grow this business and I am trying to go to school or I am trying to level myself up? These are development areas. I am trying to learn and enhance my emotional intelligence. So you know, people want to be seen and heard. The areas, the main areas of emotional intelligence and I've said them before, I was saying it earlier is that it's self-awareness, empathy, self-management, self-motivation and relationship management. Now we've broken it down a little bit more because empathy kind of folds into a lot of these. So the four main components is self-awarement, self-management, self-motivation and relationship management. What this means is that you need to take an inventory. I've talked about your SWOT strength, weaknesses, opportunity and threats and what that looks like and how to handle it.

Speaker 1:

You have times in your life where you'll need to dial into difficult conversations. How do you handle difficult conversations? A time and a place right. You need to handle it with TLC. Even you need to look and see, like, what do I need to say? So you need to control yourself. Do not have change in your emotions when you have something to say you want to say. So you need to control yourself. Do not have change in your emotions when you have something to say you want to say. Focus on what you want, be clear on what you want. The exercise you can do and I kind of wrote you want to kind of learn through visualization how am I going to have this conversation, right? So I like to say we want to take pause, right? So let's say we're having a difficult conversation in the workplace or at home and you have been working on your emotional intelligence. But a way to have an effective, difficult conversation in any situation Play it in your mind, see it playing out, take pause and conduct a self-check.

Speaker 1:

Gather your own space with emotions and feelings, thoughts. It will determine the next steps or actions. What is your current emotional intensity? What is your current vibrational mood? What is the background noise in your head? Right, ask yourself number one set the internal emotional tone. Why am I having this conversation? It will help the brain with the strategy.

Speaker 1:

Practice and run that visualizing that conversation. So like this. If they respond and emotions escalate, play it out in your head. You will sense quickly if an emotion that is, a negative emotion rises like a high energy emotion with low vibration, so to speak, like if you feel anger arise in you as you're even thinking about it, or you feel depression, like this is unpleasant. Right, you're not ready for that conversation yet. So you need to continue to practice and work on those emotions first and controlling that, being aware of how this is making you feel, how this is making you feel. And if you need to work and practice with a friend, work and practice in the mirror, take it slow. Your emotions are valid. It's important. So when you get to a place of like you're ready and your emotions are controlled, you're not especially the anger part, because anger we can say some really intense stuff um, depression. Someone else can control the conversation and take over our emotions. So that's why I'm like you need to see where you are with your emotions prior, to Just take pause and even if you have an epic fail the first time, don't worry about it. You're learning from it. Take it and play it back in your head and go. Okay, this is what I need to do differently and try again. Right With your visualization, practice your body language, be in your shoes, be in their shoes.

Speaker 1:

There's a thing called maintaining eye contact. It's a 50-70 where you're speaking and you're listening and looking. So I do this, I do a fortive. I don't want to stare at them. You know you don't stare at people. It makes them uncomfortable. I do a triangle technique approach. I'll look at their eyes, their forehead. I create a triangle somehow by looking at their chin, their cheek, their nose, their eye, their forehead, and create a triangle. I'll look off as I'm retaining the information and maybe look up because I'm listening and visualizing as to what they're saying at the same time. But you're not staring, okay, which is important. You don't want to create a weird awkward moment there now.

Speaker 1:

You also have to think in a cultural standpoint of who you're talking to. Okay, especially in business, you need to learn who you're having the conversation with. Like you need to know your audience and be respectful and adjust accordingly when speaking with people from other countries. Just understand that sometimes if you stare at someone, they see it as rude. Especially if you look into their eyes, they find it as a threat. You're throwing down a curse. You're rude, aggressive or disrespectful. So just understand.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes it might be best to do a written versus an oral due to that, and or you have some type of disability to where you have to adjust. But you need to and it's time sensitive and you need to have the conversation. If you're better with your words on paper and it will be effective in that manner, then take that approach. But also don't write with your emotions. Go with an Abe Lincoln approach and make sure the first letter is getting all your emotions out. Don't send it. Second letter you're filtering those emotions out and then you're getting more to the point and then the final one is a clear conscious. And then the final one is a clear conscious, not led with your emotions email or letter that gets to the point but has that empathetic piece to it.

Speaker 1:

So in the conversation, ask open-ended questions. This is what leaders do, not a yes or no question, not a closed response, but an open response such as how can we best proceed? Can you tell me more? Right? This will reflect respect to the other party, with a desire for a deeper understanding through empathy. And then restate what you've heard, like confirming what you're hearing, like that you're hearing them right. So you say something like what I'm hearing is dot dot dot. You know, validate the other person's feelings, such as, as I can see why you are upset because, again, people want to be seen and heard.

Speaker 1:

And then, after you heard their concerns, you want to make an empathetic statement. I can see why you're upset, because obvious and just stay within a respectful, honest, constructive manner. I, using the word I. Have you noticed this pattern that I was using throughout? I All right, it is important to state clearly what you want, right, speak in a clear, concise manner, watch your behavior. Right, you want to, again, listen actively. Listen actively as open-ended questions. Restate what you heard, validate that person. You know those are ways of listening actively and just let someone understand what your thoughts and feelings because your thoughts and feelings are valid as well. Again, use I statements. These are all ways to enhance your emotional intelligence.

Speaker 1:

During difficult conversations, you sound more intelligent. A person who leads with their emotions and yelling does not sound intelligent and most of the time you can't even remember what you were talking about. When the yelling starts and you walk away and you feel exhausted and anger is more chaotic energy is more energy sucked out of the room than love empathy sucked out of the room, than love empathy. So you just really want to just take inventory of what's going on right and be mindful of how you're speaking to other people. Take inventory when you are talking to someone else. Listen to what you're actually saying. Sometimes we just talk, talk, talk and don't listen to ourselves. It's almost like we're trying to deflect or fill air in the room and a lot of times people just go into the conversation of this is what's happening in my life and not remember that there's someone else in the room that has feelings and has a life as well.

Speaker 1:

You just want to become more self-aware by taking that inventory and taking the test, finding out who are you doing your SWOT, what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? Do you have a lot of anxiety when you have to have confrontational conversations? So you can improve it by taking the quiz. There's another quiz. The quiz is everywhere. Talentsmarteqcom has one. They can help you with the lowest and highest and they rate them.

Speaker 1:

And then you want to improve on those areas of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship awareness. So if you're unaware of what this means, so self-awareness is the ability to identify and understand your feelings or tendencies, like how do you react or respond to something. Your self-management ability to adjust and direct your thoughts and actions, like the sync between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic systems. Social awareness, the ability to accurately pick up others' emotions and perspectives, empathy, gut instinct, empathy, gut instinct. And then relationship management ability to effectively manage interactions and relations. This is becoming a leader in your life so that you can have those difficult conversations with intelligence.

Speaker 1:

So self-management strategies are things like sleep on it. Don't have the conversation today. Visualize yourself succeeding, smile and laugh more. Set a day for problem solving. There's some things that you need to handle and that would take the load off. Do them when you feel like you need to take literally kind of release your foot off that gas pedal in your life and you're just going, going, going, going, going. Take the gas pedal off just slightly. Take a break. Just because you will have burnout, you will start making the wrong decisions. You've got to recharge yourself. So you need to sometimes put it in your calendar because if you go, go, go and you don't have some type of release, things can start unwinding. So also think of a.

Speaker 1:

Take an inventory of when you are dealing with a situation or think a person plays a thing money, family, family, spouse, self, work, possessions what type of emotion comes out when the following arises? Do you have anger, anxiety, happiness, joy, fear, love? Are you balanced? Are you flexible? Think about it. Take personal inventory.

Speaker 1:

Now, in social management, great tools to do is learn the person's name and greet them by their name, watch body language, time yourself, pause, go Listen Right, Live in the moment. Another thing is social management Declutter, de-stress, de-stress, de-clutter. Try to start tuning in to another person's emotions when you react to them. Look at their facial expression, their body language, listen to the tone of their voice. Do these practices Help yourself With relationship management? Things you can do is validate the other person, set boundaries, expectations.

Speaker 1:

When emotions get high, take a step back. It's actually good to be vulnerable, be transparent and express your concerns. Relationship management helps when you have and you practice and you work on diffusing. Difficult situations will lessen dramatically because you have taken a step back, you have worked on yourself, you are listening, you're practicing those steps of when having a difficult conversation or just any conversation you want to be socially aware, like, read up on what's going on in the world, so then you can create and develop a back pocket question right.

Speaker 1:

So emotional intelligence is an ongoing thing. As you grow, you will flow better in the world by continuing to reframe your thoughts, continuing to be mindful, having empathy and compassion, look at it from different angles, knowing that your emotions are valid and others are also valid. Understand that as we develop these areas in our life, we can develop ourselves into a greater leader, a better community, stronger relationships, and you can become that C-suite that you want, that entrepreneur that's strong, the person that gets their point across, the person that people want to be around and work with. I'm Tracy. This is Advantage Point Train your brain to master your game. Have a wonderful day.