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I have been working with my coach to take my leadership skills to the next level. This week we looked at an emotional intelligence framework to better understand leadership.
The grid, as outlined below, has four quadrants. To demonstrate great emotional intelligence the aim is to be highly skilled in all four quadrants. My coach began to outline that I was fantastic in three areas but one area was greatly missing. I began to wonder what could it be. I thought I had a pretty high emotional intelligence, well at least that is what all the assessments had reported.
-> Self Awareness
-> Social Awareness
-> Self Management
-> Relationship Management
Then I realised it was self management. Now you would think that we all get the importance of managing ourselves first, or at least equally, to all the other areas above. But this is not the case. I spend great amounts of time everyday managing people at work, socialising with them and developing our relationships. What I often notice is that at the end of the day I feel a little all talked out.
Over time, this feeling moves into a general flattening of my batteries and then eventually the batteries get rusty and need to be charged or changed. Now if we don’t identify the need for recharging or changing then all that is left is the ‘need’. The need grows and we become needy and then resentful and then blaming and then generally all round negative about most things. We cycle down into the space of negative energy, allowing our self talk to exacerbate this feeling until we feel very disempowered to move out of it. Slowly we spiral down into complete darkness, action is not part of our life and we have stalled everything. It really is a pretty bad picture when you think about it and we have all been here.
So what to do:
1. Put in place a self management plan and ask your coach, friends and family to support you in achieving it.
2. Take one step at a time. Introduce one new self management technique at a time. Give yourself one month to practice this every day and then introduce another technique.
3. Ensure your day is balanced between each of the four quadrants. Too much relationship development and no self awareness is not good.
4. Recognise what you look like when you aren’t self managing. Identify the early signals and act upon them.
5. Stay in action, whether it be thoughts, plans or doing. Keep moving forward.
After all this you will feel great as you are not needy and can openly express what your needs are and have them met. Your emotional intelligence will be rocking off the scales and you will feel invigorated and able to give more generously.
I am off to enroll in a yoga class. I will keep you posted to let you know how it is going in a month’s time.
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Source by Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland
