Emotional Intelligence Archives

Improve Your Relationships and Connect With Others

It can be difficult to know what does it take to improve your relationships and connect with others without recognizing first that people are emotional first and rational second. But this is just one piece of the emotional puzzle that you can use to help connect and build relationships with others.

Emotional First and Rational Second

Understand that people will act with their emotions and make sure to appeal to the person with empathy. Empathy is a crucial characteristic of Leaders. The only way to manage and lead people is through caring relationships.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

In the book “How to Win Friends and Influence Others” by Dale Carnegie, Dale talks about a few principles that you should follow when handling people, no matter who they are.

Don’t criticize, condemn or complain

The first principle is about using empathy to try to be understanding. People are different and understanding their personalities and quirk can be the key to gaining that trust and will help you to know when to be tolerant and sympathetic.

Give honest and sincere appreciation

People know when you are not being true to your word or sincere about what you are saying. Be honest and show people that when you do something, you do it with the benefit of everyone in mind. Appreciation can affect someone massively if you appeal to what people care about, but there are simple things that you can do that will affect everyone.

Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Convincing people to help your cause requires them to join the cause. We have to be motivated and buy into what is said. Making sure people know that their opinions matter through your words and actions as well as sharing ownership of the ideas and responsibilities they create.

Tips for Being Likeable

Carnegie also had a few tips on what is needed to be an approachable and liked person. These tips included:

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Listening and encouraging openness.
5. Talk about what people care about most.
6. Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.

There are additional ideas available in the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and by using these tips and the ideas within our series of E.I. blogs, you can improve your relationships and grow your influence with the help of Emotional Intelligence.

Processes

Managing E.I. and Cognitive Roadmaps

Managing your emotions can help you immensely to make decisions that are lead by reason rather than emotions. Your cognitive roadmaps were built through your experiences, but are they serving you to a benefit or detriment.

Internal Roadmaps

Everyone has preset interpretations of the world through their internal roadmaps created from their beliefs, values and past experiences. The easiest ones to explain are like fight or flight, which are responses from our evolutionary path that built roadmaps for human beings as we know it! Your roadmaps act similarly. It could be hard to go out and do public speaking if something happened that caused you to be protective of yourself in those situations. Maybe you did a speech as a child that did not go well, and it stuck in your mind since then! Recognizing that you have these roadmaps is the first step to changing them to work more for you rather than against you

Practice Makes Permanent

Thought processes and their emotional ties, whether good or bad, can become permanent in your personality and roadmaps if practiced consistently. You’ve heard of the “Debbie Downer” personalities where a person is always looking at the worst aspects of whatever the subject is. This mindset is a practiced behavior that has made that person see what they want. In this case, it’s the worst of a situation that affects them.

Whatever you look for you will find which translates into everything in life. We either focus on we want to happen, or we focus on what we are afraid will happen and either way, we can be right. Combined with the meaningful events of our lives, this mindset can shape your understanding of people and the world to create out outlook and emotional roadmaps.

Cognitive Process for Managing your EI

The process for managing your EI and changing your roadmaps goes through the following stages:

1. Events

An event is anything that happens that gets your attention. It is the catalyst to the cognitive process.

2. Interpretations

Your roadmaps start with your interpretations of the event taking into account your past experiences while questioning what the event is and what it means to me.

3. Responses in feelings and behaviors

Stopping your predetermined roadmaps begins here as your responses, feelings, and behaviors are all affected by those maps. Your response is how you act off of your interpretations which could potentially lead you to an action that does not serve you and your goals.

4. Results

Your roadmaps will lead you to the same results unless you take the time to stop them and look at the results to see if they are serving you properly. Ask yourself the following questions:

Are you getting the results you desire?
If not, what has to change to get different results?
What is the cost of the behaviors this event creates?
What do you gain/lose if you change the behavior?

All of these questions can help you determine if your roadmaps are currently serving you in the best way possible, or if they should be examined and potentially changed for better results.

How Do My Roadmaps Serve Me?

Recognizing when you are falling into your roadmaps to think outside of them and develop new paths that serve you better can lead to some amazing breakthroughs in your mindset that can influence and change how events are processed and help you to own your intentions rather than have the past dictate your future. Sometimes those old roadmaps serve you better so make sure to look at everything you do with the idea of “Am I getting what I need from my behaviors/emotional intelligence or would it serve me better to change them?”.

Tag: <span>Emotional Intelligence</span>