Emotional Intelligence in Communication
Leading The Conversation With Emotional Intelligence
Conversations can play a crucial role in shaping your future. Whether it is your career or relationships, being clueless about driving conversations to achieve your desired goals can often lead to low success rate. Emotional Intelligence in communication is very important for it to be fruitful. Read on to know more about recipe of leading conversations with emotional intelligence and achieving desired outcomes.
One good conversation can shift the direction of change forever.
Linda Lambert
This quote by Linda Lambert, certainly reminds us about the important role that crucial conversations can play in changing the life of an individual forever. Whether it is about relationship or career, effective communication is one of the key components for bringing about this change. Although there are many aspects of communication, but the most important and basic aspect that can influence communication are emotions of the parties involved.
As human beings, we tend to experience different emotions every day and these emotions determine our actions in any given situation. Be it the excitement of achieving something, or having a bad day at work, or going through the daily routine, emotions tend to influence the way we have conversation with others.
These conversations can sometimes be crucial in determining and shaping our future. Think about it, if you want a promotion, you need to have a sound conversation about it with your boss. If it goes wrong, chances are your efforts will go waste. Or consider this, you want to talk to your partner to resolve a misunderstanding, but end up in a fight, putting an end to the whole relation. Even in the case of children, at times we tend to yell and scream at them, which tends to affect our relationship with them adversely in the long run.
Emotional Intelligence in Communication
In any conversation, the outcome depends on how well we can manage and understand the emotions that are running behind at that point of time. Sometimes, we tend to be angry due to a past situation and end up taking out our anger on some other person. For example, on the way to work, a guy passing by ended up shouting abuses at you for driving on the wrong side, but now you do not reply back at that moment, but due to this when you enter the office, you end up scolding the receptionist. This is sometimes also called the concept of “Emotional Leakage”. This leakage can sometimes hamper a lot of crucial conversations and lead to a loss of direction.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Hence, learning the art of managing our emotions becomes quite significant in helping us lead and drive the outcomes of a conversation. It goes without saying that emotional intelligence plays a critical role in understanding and giving direction to the flow of a conversation.
Emotional intelligence as a concept was first introduced by Salovey and Mayer, who consider emotional intelligence as the ability to monitor one’s own and others emotions, to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions. Before we learn how to increase EQ (emotional quotient), let us examine the characteristics of a person who exhibits emotional intelligence in communication.
What are the traits of a high EQ person?
Individuals who are high on emotional intelligence, tend to:
- Perceive and be sensitive towards the feelings of others by actively looking out for various cues like facial expression, body language, etc.
- Relate more with other’s thoughts and take them into account while solving problems and making decisions.
- They can understand the powerful influence emotions can have while communicating.
- Are able to identify the intensity of emotions.
- They can control and regulate other’s emotions and their own expressions while dealing with self and others to achieve outcomes.
Create gaps between stimulus and reaction, this gap will show you the path.
Amit Ray
In our daily life, we usually tend to react while conversing, without properly listening to the other individual. This reaction can quickly make things go wrong in any kind of interaction. In such situations, we should learn to respond by being emotionally intelligent and becoming more self-aware about our emotions.
When you empathize with others, you listen to what they have to say, which means you are aware about what is going inside. This lays the foundation of exchange of opinions and ideas, and more importantly about getting what you want.
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence?
The following are the 4 ways that can help you increase your emotional intelligence and make you the driver of crucial conversations:
#1 Mindfulness
Emotional self-awareness can be achieved if we make a conscious effort to tune into the signals and sensations of our body.
Mindfulness which is derived from the Vedic word “sati” or “intentness of mind”, has its origin in traditional Buddhist meditative techniques. It is a meditative technique, through which one can practice paying attention to and being aware about the present moment.
Mindfulness when practiced for long period of time helps in slowing down the flow of automatic thoughts and increases self awareness about one’s own body.
#2 Cognitive Re-Appraisal
This technique is about calming oneself and asking questions to diffuse a situation.
It adds a new perspective on how we look at the situation. For example, if your car tyre goes flat and you are already late for a meeting, you call your boss to inform about the situation and he gets angry at you for not reaching the office on time. Now as you feel angry at your boss for not understanding you, the chances are that you will start blaming the roads, quality of tyres or even the timings of the meeting.
With these thoughts in mind, it would not be advisable to enter a meeting. If instead, you try to see that maybe the meeting can wait for you, or your car hasn’t been in good shape since lately, you would have a more peaceful and calmer mind while going back to the meeting, and hence would not let all the past emotions intervene with the conversations that happen in the meeting.
#3 Social Sharing / Venting
Quite often, we tend to suppress our emotions, and hold them back in social situations, only to vent them out without thinking later. This is also sometimes called emotional suppression.
Suppression can help in the short term or in situations of crisis to make better decisions. For example, a soldier in the battlefield might suppress his emotions of distress, to make better decisions.
Using suppression in routine though, can be toxic to mental health. Hence, we should practice venting out or socially sharing our bottled-up emotions with someone. This can be anyone amongst our family-member/ friend/ co-worker, who would listen to us empathetically and help us clear our mind. Venting out negative emotions helps us create room for positive ones, further increasing our focus.
#4 Decision Tree Method
We can always try to win a conversation by practicing for the scenario, where it could go wrong. This can also help us navigate the conversation smoothly without the interference of our emotions.
This can be done by planning a decision tree of what could happen if you say this, what could be the best and worst outcomes of it. And on each worst possible outcome prepare beforehand of what you could say to bring the ball back in your court.
For example, while meeting a friend whom you haven’t met in a few months due to their busy schedule, you blame them for not making time for you. There’s a high possibility that your friend might retort back because they were just doing their job. From that point either you can start the blame game or understand how they have been and what they are looking forward to.
Empower yourself with enhanced EQ
Hopefully, you have learnt how to increase EQ and use your emotional intelligence in communication. These techniques will help you in leading crucial conversations and increase your chances of success in both personal and professional life. Always keep smiling and remember to be an empathetic listener!
About The Author
Megha Sood is a Computer Science Engineering graduate from PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh. Post a work experience of 3 years as a Senior Software Engineer with Amadeus IT, Megha is now pursuing MBA from IIM Udaipur and has also worked with Cisco, as a Project Specialist Intern.
Her passion lies in the field of management. She likes to network with people and studies psychology in her idle time. Megha loves to explore new ideas, and always stay curious on experimenting with them.
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