How emotional intelligence helps in your career

Modern technology is advancing faster than we can imagine. Artificial intelligence can maintain a conversation, make transactions and manage finances, perform dangerous and routine work for humans, and diagnose diseases. Many professional skills (hard skills) quickly become obsolete and become irrelevant due to automation. New areas of activity and specializations are emerging.

The diploma may say “marketer”, or “teacher”, or “programmer”, but what kind of marketer, teacher, programmer a person will become depends on how well he has developed flexible skills (soft skills). Emotional intelligence, collaboration, communication, creativity, systems thinking, media literacy - these are all soft skills.

What is emotional intelligence

A person can be a high-level professional with good theoretical knowledge, but absolutely unsuitable for communicating with people in real conditions and solving non-standard problems. To avoid this, it is necessary to develop emotional intelligence (or EQ) - the way we are aware of our emotions, feelings and experiences, build communication with others and make decisions.

People with a high level of emotional intelligence:

successfully cope with difficult situations;
are aware of their emotional reactions and the reactions of others;
effectively control themselves;
clearly express thoughts and desires;
remain sane under the pressure of the situation;
know how to motivate themselves and others to achieve goals.

How emotional intelligence helps in professional development

It's good when work brings not only income, but also pleasure. However, the definition of pleasure and joy is always subjective. After all, the same job will be perceived differently by different people. One is ready to sit for days with numbers, analyze the tablets, while the other goes crazy with such tasks, but he performs well in public and conducts negotiations.

In order to feel at ease and not waste valuable time doing the wrong thing, it is important to define a role-based behavior model. A role is a tool to achieve a goal. How a person interacts with the world through a profession or work that they do.

Successful self-realization as a professional is directly related to whether a person has found a role in life, whether he understands his own strengths and weaknesses.

What role models are there

Leader - the core around which a group of people is formed. He supports each member of the team, motivates to work. For the role of a leader, the skill of emotional intelligence is the leading one. Good empathy helps to unite the group based on common goals and values, raise team spirit and improve the emotional atmosphere in the team.

Coordinator organizes all teamwork. This is the person who sets goals and objectives, plans according to priorities. The leading skills for him are communication and collaboration - joint activities to achieve a common goal. He knows how to evenly distribute his energy between many projects and ideas and can help other people in this.

These two roles complement each other, but are rarely combined in one person.

For ideas and suggestions, that is, for the intellectual activity of the group, the roles of the analyst, creator and visionary are responsible. They are characterized by different types of thinking:

Creator. Able to see new things in familiar things. It is he who generates ideas and offers non-standard solutions. This is a source of creativity and inspiration for companies, the main thing is not to dream too much and not get away from reality.
Analyst. Perfectly complements the creator. His leading type of thinking is critical. This allows you not to overlook important details, notice nuances and find differences. He knows how to work with information so that in the end he can formulate meanings and the main idea. It is important for the analyst not to go into dry analysis without emotions and feelings that are so necessary for a person.
Visionary. Useful when you need a solution or idea from the outside. Systems thinking allows the bearer of the role to see the big picture and the relationship with related areas of activity. He is able to comprehensively approach the task and find additional sources of help to solve it. The ability to see the intersection of different areas makes him a useful expert in strategically important issues.

It is noteworthy that all these roles are often combined in one person. If you have noted in yourself one of the three types of thinking as a virtue, develop the rest as well. This will increase your value as an employee.

There are more practice-oriented roles:

Producer. If a person feels an entrepreneurial spirit, understands and hears the audience, then this role is for him. From such a specialist is required the ability to create and sell quality material that will be interesting to others. Customer focus is his strong point. The main thing is, carried away by the packaging, the form of presentation and genres, not to lose the essence and bring what was started to the end.
Digital Expert - the role of the new generation. People who are familiar with modern technologies can pump their digital thinking (the ability to solve problems using IT).

To become a sought-after and successful specialist, you need to know about the features of not only your own, but also other people's roles. This is important in those situations when you have to perform the functions of a role that is unusual for you for some time. This will make you more interesting to the employer.

Remember: we are multifunctional. One person can often fill 2-3 roles, and your flexibility in this matter depends on how well you know your strengths and weaknesses. A strong quality in one role may be a disadvantage in others, and vice versa. Just like in this picture, solely from your desire, pits can become bulges, and bulges - pits.

Understanding your role model helps to qualitatively and harmoniously build not only the sphere of work or business, but also others, be it family, leisure, hobbies, development.

How to define your role model

You can go through an exciting test quest or choose a faster way.

Imagine that you are on an internship at a company with other people. Your task is to come up with a new application. You have an idea, but so do the team members. How will you proceed? Choose one option:

The main thing is not to rush, but to carefully analyze all the materials.
I can convince the team to choose my idea.
I will try to offer the most original solution.
I will translate it into the program so that everyone can vote on their gadgets.
The main thing is that the final decision is made without conflicts. I will draw the team's attention to the needs of the prospective client.
I will try to combine the strengths of all solutions.
I will propose to listen to everyone and make a comparison in the table.

1. Analyst.

2. Leader.

3. Creator.

4. Digital expert.

5. Producer.

6. Visionary.

7. Coordinator.

Find out your role model Hide

How to Develop Emotional Intelligence: Practical Exercises

1. Convert "must" to "want"

Let me tell you a secret: no one owes anything to anyone. We only do what we want. However, most of us find it difficult to understand our desires.

Want to be fit, but eat hamburgers and forget the last time you exercised? You don't want to be fit.

Imagine that you dream of going to college and becoming a top-notch professional, but you don't want to do your homework. To achieve your goal, you can quickly do formal lessons, and spend the rest of the time on interesting courses, practices, meetings with professionals from this field. Thus, what you have to do becomes a stepping stone to achieving the goal - what you want.

2. Formulate the steps to the goal

Introduce your long term goal. Let's say you decide to become a programmer or an outstanding filmmaker. List five key steps that will help you get what you want. Perhaps it is worth signing up for an internship at a large company or taking some kind of courses.

Tip: try to fill the ladder from top to bottom, and at the end, check that the first step is realistically achievable within the next month. If so, you will definitely find yourself at the top.

3. Make an empathy map

This practice will help not only to better understand other people, but also to negotiate with them. Every time someone does something “wrong,” “wrong,” try to answer all the questions on the card. Imagine yourself in the place of this person. Think about what he heard, what he saw, what he did and said in that situation. Imagine his emotional state. This way you will learn to see the problem from different angles, draw more informed conclusions and make the right decisions.