TRANSCRIPT: Emotional Intelligence: The Other Key To Academic Success

Speaker: Dr. Peggy Mitchell Clarke (Formerly Dr. Peggy Mitchell Norwood)

Emotional Intelligence: The Other Key To Academic Success

Welcome. I’m Dr. Peggy Mitchell Norwood. I’m a clinical psychologist, and I taught psychology for 19 years at different colleges and universities, and currently I’m a mental health consultant. Today our topic is Understanding Emotional Intelligence. Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “The rules for work are changing. We’re being judged by a new yardstick. Not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and each other. He goes on to say that this yardstick is increasingly applied in choosing who will be hired and who will not, who will be let go and who retained, who will be passed over and who promoted." Surprisingly these choices have little to do with with academic ability.

A New Focus

The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs. It focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative, empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness. What Goleman is talking about is what has been termed emotional intelligence, the key skills, abilities and competencies that help you to be effective in your life and career and to solve problems in your emotional world.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is made up of key competencies that enable you to recognize and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others, which in turn helps you to relate positively with people, enjoy healthier relationships, achieve greater success at work, and lead a more fulfilling life. Fortunately you don’t have to excel in every competency to be effective, and these competencies can be learned.

Emotional Intelligence Test

Take a few minutes now to complete the activity on your screen.

How Did You Do? 

How did you do? My scores were pretty high, but I did have one area that was lower relative to the others. This tells me that I might want to take a closer look at this area and be intentional about developing it. You might want to consider that as well.

Two Competencies

Emotional intelligence is made up of two competencies, personal competence and social competence. We can vary on two dimensions, awareness versus management and self versus social. So as you saw in the activity you just did, you may have varying degrees of self-awareness and self-management as well as social awareness and social or relationship management.

Personal Competence 

Let’s take a closer look at personal competence, which is how we manage ourselves. Goleman identified three areas of personal competence. Self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is knowing your own internal states, your preferences, your resources, and your intuitions. If you’re emotionally aware, you’ll be able to recognize your emotions and how they impact your performance. Accurate self-assessment enables you to identify your strengths and your limitations. And self-confidence gives you a strong sense of your self-worth and capabilities. Self-assessment allows you to receive feedback well and reflect on it to make improvements.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is the ability to manage your internal states, impulses, and resources. It involves self-control, which is keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check during difficult situations. Also, trustworthiness, which is an ability to maintain standards of honesty and integrity and act ethically. Conscientiousness, which means taking responsibility for your personal performance while also being organized and keeping your commitments. Adaptability means openness and flexibility in handling change and multiple demands. Finally, innovation, being comfortable with novel ideas, fresh approaches, and new information.

Personality Test

Complete this activity now, so you can get a better sense of your personality profile related to self-regulation.

Results 

Now you should have more self-awareness in these five areas that relate to emotional intelligence: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to change, and extroversion. Note that they spell out the acronym CANOE. This feedback can give you help to be more intentional about the areas you want to develop. 

Motivation

Motivation is your emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals and the reasons we all do what we do. Achievement drive is striving to improve or meet a standard of excellence. If you have a high achievement drive, you tend to set challenging goals and to be results oriented.

Commitment means that you will align yourself with the goals of the group or organization to which you belong.

Initiative is a readiness to seize opportunities and to go above and beyond the bare minimum. And optimism is persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks and holding on to a strong sense of hope. Someone with high levels of optimism realizes that the glass really is always full - it’s half water and half air.

Interpersonal

So let’s shift gears and look at the interpersonal side of emotional intelligence.

Your social competence is how you handle relationships, and it consists of empathy and social skills.

Empathy

Empathy is the awareness of other people’s feelings, needs and concerns. Understanding others is sensing their feelings and perspectives and taking an active interest in their concerns. Developing others might involve things like mentoring and giving feedback to allow people to develop their abilities. Service orientation is anticipating, recognizing and happily meeting other people’s needs. Leveraging diversity allows you to see diversity as opportunities and including different kinds of people and different perspectives.

Political awareness enables you to read a group’s emotional current and power relationships.

Social Skills 

Social skills involves your adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others. Influence means you’re good at using effective tactics for persuasion and winning people over. Communication, well that’s listening well and fostering open dialogue. Conflict management is where you’re able to negotiate and resolve disagreements and handle difficult people. And leadership, that’s inspiring and guiding individuals and groups.

Activity

Please click the link on your screen to complete the activity to help you identify your style of leadership.

Your Leadership Style 

What does your style look like? Are you more of an ambassador or an advocate? Or perhaps you’re a creative builder. It really does help to know where you are and to leverage your leadership strengths.

Social Skills

Let’s look at four more characteristics of social skills or your adeptness at influencing others. Being a change catalyst. That means initiating or managing change. I have a friend who is a life coach, and she describes herself as a champion of change.

Building bonds is your ability to nurture and cultivate instrumental relationships. Collaboration and cooperation, working with others toward shared goals.

Team capabilities. Creating group synergy and pursuing collective goals and drawing everyone in to active and enthusiastic participation.

There you have it, the many facets of emotional intelligence. It would be unrealistic to address all of these at once. Instead go back to your EIQ activity results and see what areas are relative weaknesses for you and pick one or two to focus on.

Emotional Intelligence 

Let's recap. Emotional intelligence is made up of two competencies, personal and social competence. And we can vary on two dimensions, awareness versus management and self versus social. Here are some suggestions for increasing your emotional intelligence. Recognize signs of stress and practice good stress management strategies. Pay attention to your internal thoughts and feelings. Know your emotional triggers. Maybe you might want to even keep a journal. Take personal development classes or workshops, and consider getting into counseling or joining a support group. 

Let me show you a few stress management techniques right now. 

Triangular Breathing

When we’re stressed out and in a tense situation, and we’re having difficulty regulating our emotions, we tend to hold our breath. So one of the simplest things you can do to reduce stress is to breathe. Triangular breathing is a simple technique that prompts you to breathe in and out over the course of a count of three. So on one, you’re going to breathe in. On two you’re going to hold it. And on three you’re going to exhale. And you’re going to do this at whatever pace feels most comfortable to you. So even as I count off, you can just adjust to what’s comfortable. So try it with me.

One. Breathe in. Two. Hold it. And three, exhale. Great. That was easy, right?

Muscle Relaxation

Okay, the next technique I want to show you is progressive muscle relaxation, and that involves increasing your awareness of where you’re holding tension in your muscles by tensing and relaxing different muscle groups throughout your body. So let’s start with your forehead, face and jaw muscles. Gently scrunch up those muscles and hold them. Now release and feel the contrast. Next, gently tense your shoulders, and clench your fists, and tighten your forearms.

And now release. Next, tense your stomach muscles, and release. And lastly, tense your quads, calves, and tense your toes. And release.

Notice the difference throughout your body. This is something you can practice and take more time and maybe even smaller muscle groups until you’re very aware of how tension feels in your body and what it feels like to truly be relaxed.

Guided Imagery

Okay. The last technique is guided imagery. You’re going to allow your mind to vividly imagine a relaxing scene and scenario, and then you’re going to go there in your mind. So imagine you’re at the beach, or in the mountains, or wherever your favorite relaxing outdoor, or even indoor, location is. And then imagine what you’re seeing around you. Take a moment to really visualize in great detail all the sights and colors and textures that you’ll be seeing. And then, what sounds are you hearing? Are you feeling a gentle breeze or the heat of the sun on your face? And what do you smell? Maybe even open your mouth and see what faint taste you can perceive. Maybe the salt water or even that taste of pine. And just take a moment and take a mental vacation in all five of your senses. Now don’t you feel more relaxed?

Closing

And there you have it. The many facets of emotional intelligence. It would be unrealistic to address all of these at once. Instead, go back to your EIQ activity results and see what areas are relative weaknesses for you, and pick one or two to focus on.

Congratulations! You’re on the road to improving your emotional intelligence. Thanks for participating.