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 "Personal power is the ability to achieve what you want,” according
to Frederick Mann, a successful entrepreneur and author of The
Economic Rape of America. “More than anything else, it is personal
power that brings you success and happiness. The biggest barrier to
success in almost any endeavor is powerlessness, negativity,
helplessness, and inertia. They belong together. The problem is not
only our own powerlessness, but also the powerlessness of those
around us."
We can help harness and learn to use our personal power by
understanding and working on our Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills.
Not long ago, when I worked in a corporate environment, there was a
strong push to incorporate EI into the organization's leadership
training curriculum as an array of skills and characteristics that
drive leadership performance.
EI is "the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and
emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to
guide one's thinking and actions," according to psychologists John
D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, who co-developed the concept and were
two of the three authors of the Emotional Intelligence Test.
My EI training and its practical applications to my work team
environment still resonate in my personal life. They became skills
that I now methodically apply to current situations in both personal
and entrepreneurial pursuits.
There are several EI models, but the one to which I ascribe is the
mixed model introduced by Daniel Goldman, a combination of ability
and traits. Here are Goldman’s five main EI constructs, and my views
on how each of us can develop them:
Self-awareness: the ability to know one's emotions,
strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their
impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions.
In order to become self-aware, you need to conduct an honest
self-assessment to determine your strengths and weaknesses, such as
powerlessness and inertia, and determine the root causes. You then
need to create a plan that will help you overcome your fears, which
are barriers to courage and stand between you and your successes.
While I am a big proponent of using my intuition to guide my
decisions, whenever it is appropriate, I need to caution that unless
your gut feelings are often more right than wrong, you cannot make
decisions solely based upon intuition. You need to use a balanced
combination of intuition and logic.
Self-regulation: involves controlling or redirecting one's
disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing
circumstances.
Simply put, you need to exercise self-discipline and know how to
control your emotions and be flexible in order to adapt to changing
situations. You cannot continue on the same trajectory or keep the
same plans when the circumstances or facts have changed. Your plans
need to be modified accordingly.
Social skills: managing relationships to move people in the
desired direction.
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Your social skills refer to your interpersonal skills or your
ability to relate and connect with people, which can motivate them
to deploy discretionary efforts to help you achieve goals that are
best accomplished via partnership and collaboration.
Here are some tips for improving your social skills:
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Pay attention to the feedback of friends and
co-workers, good and bad. Train yourself to repeat the behaviors
that get positive feedback and work on eliminating those that
make people react negatively.
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View constructive criticism as just that. When
we become defensive, we don’t hear what can be very helpful
feedback.
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Learn to handle conflict and confrontation from
a perspective of compassion and caring.
Personal coaching can be very helpful in learning to be more
diplomatic in your interactions with others.
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Empathy - considering other people's feelings,
especially when making decisions.
Some people believe empathy cannot be learned, but I believe
just the opposite. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and
try to see situations from their perspective. Might they be
feeling fear? Shame? Guilt? How do those emotions make you feel?
Understanding and addressing the concerns of others is essential
to EI.
Always consider intent versus impact, and how your actions or
decisions may affect the individuals or groups involved.
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Motivation - being driven to achieve for the
sake of achievement.
Simply put, what motivates you? What are your benchmarks for
success? Once you achieve certain levels of success, you need to
consistently set new benchmarks to keep chasing personal
excellence!
Practice your EI skills on yourself first, and you’ll develop
greater personal power. That can lead to achievements you may never
have dreamed possible.
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] About
Lynda Chervil
Lynda Chervil is the author of “Fool’s Return,” http://lyndachervil.com/,
a new novel that incorporates valuable life lessons in a
page-turning tale that touches on technology, the green movement,
and other aspects of contemporary society. She graduated from New
York University with a master’s degree in Integrated Marketing
Communications and has extensive experience in consumer and
commercial banking and has held positions in new business
development, sales management and executive leadership. Chervil
seeks to push the limits of established understanding by exploring
alternative forms of spiritual healing, and, through creative
writing, to expand the narrative of cutting-edge energy technology
to promote sustainability. |
