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Regardless of our
organizational role, each of us has the ability to enhance our Emotional
Intelligence! In this article, we’ll recommend ways that individuals can
bring out their innate verbal, logical, visual/spatial, intrapersonal, and
interpersonal elements of Emotional Intelligence. And unlike the
commercials, we do encourage you to “try this at home”!
Ways to Enhance
Verbal Abilities
Do you ever find
yourself searching for just the right word, either when writing a letter
or explaining how you feel about an issue? To expand your vocabulary, the
Thesaurus can be your new best friend. In many word processing software
programs, a Thesaurus is included in the Tools section of the menu. Take
a minute when you’re composing to look up words that are the best fit for
your intended meaning. If you’re about to make a presentation, whether
it’s for a conference or an internal staff meeting, pull out a hard copy
of a Thesaurus and check for similar words to those you’re considering but
aren’t completely satisfied are “just the right words”.
For some people,
daily journaling is cathartic and a wonderful way to capture thoughts,
impressions, and reactions to one’s everyday existence. If you haven’t
ever kept a journal, consider starting one. This is a terrific – and
private – way to become accustomed to using the written word as a means of
personal expression. Stationery stores offer a wide selection of
journals, from the basic notes pages style to hardbound fancier styles.
The cover isn’t what’s important – the opportunity to capture your
thoughts, hopes, and dreams in writing is.
One of the best ways
to enhance your verbal skills, especially presentation skills, is to
attend a program such as the Dale Carnegie Course. No, we don’t receive a
commission for referring people to this program. We do believe, however,
that this and other presentation skills workshops can provide an excellent
practice medium to get past shyness and a sense of inadequacy in giving
presentations. Courses such as this provide a foundation of platform
techniques first, followed by an opportunity to plan, give and receive
feedback for mini-presentations on a regular basis. The key to skill
building is practice, and a course such as Dale Carnegie can afford a safe
environment for honing one’s skills.
If you have a car and
a CD or DVD player in said car, then you have an opportunity to develop
your verbal ability! Instead of listening to the same music over and
over, why not occasionally listen to a book on tape? Not only will you be
entertained, but you will be hearing words that are new (or words you know
used in different ways). Of course you could also listen to audiotapes of
workshops and conferences with the same end result.
For some of us, 8th
grade English class is a distant memory. We learned in 7th and
8th grade how to diagram sentences and use grammar correctly.
We can’t all go back to junior high and audit an English class; however,
you could purchase an English textbook and browse through it in our
leisure time. This would refresh your recollection of the proper use of
our beautiful language, both in verbal and written form.
Our final
recommendation for expanding verbal ability is to volunteer to act in a
local theater group. Not each of us is a “ham” that wants to take center
stage; however, many local theater groups need people who are willing to
audition for smaller parts. Acting can take us outside of ourselves and
serve as a wonderful stress reducer, and can provide a way to become less
intimidated by an audience. (By the way, with the stage lights it’s
impossible to tell whether there’s an audience of 10 or 100!)
Enhancing Your
Logic and Analysis Abilities
We’ve often heard
people say, “I can’t make good decisions,” or, “I get mired down in the
details.” If you find yourself among this group, we have some suggestions
to help you improve your analysis and objective decision making skills.
There are some
excellent seminars at local universities on Decision Making. Linda
teaches one at Xavier University that covers steps in objective decision
making; identifying the true problem; generating sound alternatives; and
analyzing the results of a decision. In order to enhance analysis skills,
it’s necessary to first have a framework for effective decision making.
We recommend that you investigate workshops of this nature in your area.
Whenever you’re faced
with a personal or workplace dilemma, do you make a pro’s/con’s list of
potential solutions? This is a technique called Force Field Analysis,
using the framework below.
Potential
Solution:__________________________
+
-
Factors that
support solution
Factors that hinder solution
Impact
Impact
1 to
3 1 to 3
1 to
3 1 to 3
1 to
3 1 to 3
Total
Total
Let’s insert an
example to demonstrate how you would use this tool. When Linda was trying
to decide whether she should quit her full-time position as Court
Administrator for a U.S. Court of Appeals and pursue a Ph.D., here were
her considerations:
Potential
Solution to Career Restlessness: Quit Job and Pursue a Ph.D.
Factors that
support solution
Factors that hinder solution
Desire for ongoing
education 3 Would need to work part
time 3
Husband supportive of
ongoing education
2 Starting at age 40 1
One year of income in
bank 2 Friends’
disapproval 1
Total
7 5
Impact Legend: 3 –
high impact 2 – moderate impact 1 – slight impact
Force field analysis
helped Linda to think through factors that would enable her to quit her
position and return to school and to be realistic about areas in her life
that would be affected negatively. The positive factors outweighed the
negatives (although this isn’t always the case). Even if the negative
factors are higher, that simply means that consideration must be given to
how these factors can be minimized. For instance, a significant negative
factor for Linda was the necessity to earn some income during her academic
detour. So she elected to start a consulting practice and pursue
part-time assignments for supplemental income to her husband’s salary.
We recommended that
you purchase a junior high English book to enhance your verbal ability,
and we’re recommending that you purchase a 9th grade business
math textbook to enhance your logic and analysis capabilities. If you’d
like more of a challenge, go to a university bookstore and purchase a
Quantitative Analysis or Statistics textbook. Go through a chapter a week
and don’t just read the material: actually do the homework assignments!
You can secure the answers from the publisher if you want to be certain of
your work.
Process mapping is an
excellent tool to visually show the flow of work. Many process
improvement teams use this method to identify work bottlenecks and
duplication of effort. The exercise of process mapping could help you to
hone your logic and analysis skills. You could begin with something you
know well: your own job. Take one function and map each step, then look
at the final results and ask yourself, “where do bottlenecks occur?” or,
“where is there replication of effort?”
Our final
recommendation is for you to go back to school! Well, not for a degree,
but for a single class or two. You can take a small number of
undergraduate or even graduate-level courses without registering for the
entire program, and we suggest an undergraduate class in Statistics. Hate
the idea? Look for a college or junior college that employs adjunct
faculty who live “in the real world” and are teaching part-time.
Instructors with this background are excellent because they provide
practical applications rather than pure theory.
Enhancing Your
Visual/Spatial Abilities
We’ve heard many of
our friends and coworkers say, “I’m just not creative!” You may have more
creativity locked inside you than you realize. The key to unlocking that
creative bent is to engage in some different types of activities to
stretch those “brain muscles”.
One suggestion is to
take an art or photography class, even if you haven’t ever had an interest
in pursuing either as an avocation, let alone a vocation. This type of
class will guide you towards leaning on your visual sense of proportion
and color and placing items in relationship to one another for the best
possible effect. Linda, who scored abysmally in all the 8th
grade standardized tests on visual/spatial ability, took a series of
photography classes when she was 21. She stretched her visual senses to
appreciate how objects look juxtaposed to one another and to understand
how to frame an excellent shot so that people and scenery are shown to
their best advantage.
This may sound
strange, especially for you ladies: take a basic auto repair class at a
local high school or vocational school. Auto mechanics must have a solid
sense of “what goes where” and the impact of one part on several other
parts. This type of class will provide you with the knowledge to
understand what estimates really mean and heighten your “feel” for
shapes and sizes of objects.
A practice you can
engage in while you’re all alone is to write directions to your house from
several different locations. This exercise promotes a sense of geography
and your seeing in your “mind’s eye” where the target location is in
relationship to a fixed point. As you become more adept at this skill,
people to whom you provide directions will be very grateful!
You can enhance your
visual/spatial skills AND have fun at the same time by purchasing and
playing with children’s building block toys, such as LEGO’s. While some
of the toys are fairly basic, LEGO also has more sophisticated toys to put
together, such as race cars and rocket ships, which are definitely
challenging. If you have young children or grandchildren, you’re in luck
– you can use them as your “cover” to practice!
Another suggestion is
along the same lines as LEGO’s, and that’s putting airplanes together from
a kit. As with other kits, these can run from basic to quite complicated
and intricate, with hundreds of tiny parts. Putting these airplanes
together requires transference of the visual on paper (the instructions)
to an actual object in your hand. An added bonus is that this process
will help build your patience and persistence.
The final suggestion
for this category is putting puzzles together. Linda’s mother used to
have an entire game table filled with puzzle pieces. If any of the
children dared to move one small piece, mom would know almost
immediately! (Somewhat akin to how men know when their wives move a small
tool from the rack above the tool bin.)
Enhancing
Intrapersonal Skills
More men than women
have confessed to us that this is a weak area for them because they
weren’t encouraged as children to be introspective and reflective. Yet,
one of the best ways to minimize making the same mistake twice is to
reflect on lessons learned from past errors in judgment. The suggestions
below are intended to get you more in tune with yourself and build your
understanding of why you do the things you do.
Our first
recommendation is for you to start a journal and keep it up on a daily
basis. You may be thinking, “what do I write about?” Write about what
you did that day, your dreams and how you moved forward to achieving those
dreams, and the people with whom you interacted and how they affected
you. Those we know who keep a journal have reported this to be very
cathartic because they can vent without actually saying something out loud
that they’ll regret later. Going back over what you’ve written in the
previous month can provide insights to how certain people, events, and the
world around you affect and influence your behaviors.
If you haven’t had an
opportunity to take a personality profile such as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI) or True Colors, this could provide insights into your
personality and why you react the way you do to certain people or
situations. These indicators are not “tests” – they can’t be failed.
Through a series of event-centered or people-centered questions, these
profiles assess the way people take in information, process that
information, and respond to the world around them. When Linda took the
MBTI years ago, she had that “aha” moment that comes to those who aren’t
sure why some people just push all their buttons, or some situations are
clearly uncomfortable.
A career coach could
also help you understand your true wants and desires; specifically, in
terms of the direction you want to take your career. If you’re solid on
that front, you might consider a life coach whose role is to ask you the
tough questions: What do you really want out of life? What makes you
happy? What volunteer activities will help you grow personally and
professionally? The coach does not answer the questions for you. The
coach guides you towards finding the answers and being truthful with
yourself first and foremost.
Linda has studied
T’ai Chi for years, beginning when she lived in Southeast Asia. T’ai Chi
is a combination of dance, toning, and self discipline. In T’ai Chi, the
body is calmly and steadily moving and bringing in energy to fuel the body
and the brain. The quiet time necessary to move through a series of what
appear to be dance steps has the secondary benefit of opening the mind for
introspection and reflection. Only 20 – 30 minutes a day is necessary for
maximum benefit.
Enhancing
Interpersonal Skills
If you’re an
introverted, reserved person, you may desire to build your interpersonal
skills in order to relate effectively to people at work or socially. The
following suggestions are tailored to that end.
Our first
recommendation is to take a course on negotiation or conflict resolution.
Courses of this type require that individuals consider others’ needs and
wants in order to offer solutions to problems they have in common.
Successful conflict resolution requires all parties involved to think
creatively to find ways to improve a process or address a problem.
Conflict resolution workshops teach people to “get over themselves” and
think about what others might want in order to agree to a course of
action. These workshops also teach people to articulate their own wants
and needs effectively so their feelings are clearly understood.
Let’s go back to the
Dale Carnegie courses for a moment. In these workshops, people are
required to write and present speeches on assigned topics. Participants
must conduct the research, write their remarks, and present in front of a
“friendly” audience of their peers. This is a safe environment in that
everyone else is in the same position going in – fearful of making public
presentations.
Most fields have a
professional organization that meets on a regular basis, such as the
Society for Human Resource Management. Membership and active involvement
on a committee are wonderful ways to enhance interpersonal skills. To
best take advantage of membership, go to most of the meeting during the
social hour and walk from group to group to introduce yourself. Join a
committee so that you know at least those people in the organization.
Linda joined her local SHRM chapter early in her career and immediately
signed on for the Membership Committee. In that capacity, she volunteered
to meet potential or new members at the door and take them around and
introduce them. This forced her to meet and talk with the membership
herself, and she later became a local chapter President!
If you don’t tune in
to peoples’ “body language” during conversations, start doing this. If
there’s a discrepancy between the words someone is saying and their body
language, discount the words and rely on the message they’re sending
inadvertently. Having a sense of the entire message helps you become a
better listener, ask probe questions when there’s a disconnect between
body language and words, and takes you “out of yourself” to build better
interpersonal skills.
Our last suggestion
serves many purposes: get a dog, take it for walks, and talk to other
walkers. If you’re not comfortable just starting a conversation with
people you meet, a dog is a terrific vehicle to break down barriers.
Linda is 5 feet 2 inches tall and she had an Irish Wolfhound (about 100
pounds) for several years. She couldn’t walk more than a block without
someone stopping to comment about that!
Our central message
in this chapter is a simple one: you can build your Emotional
Intelligence on a day by day basis. We’ve offered a few suggestions in
order to get you thinking, and we’re certain you can use them as a
springboard for even more techniques!
For more information or comments, contact Dr. Gravett at
Linda@gravett.com.
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