EI Alley: Things you must know about Emotional Intelligence

Vulnerable was my other name as a kid. I used to wear emotions on my sleeve and often got an earful from my elder brother for the same. Extremely sensitive and touchy you may call. Fast forward 10 years. Teaching Emotional Intelligence is my favorite thing So what changed? When after graduation I missed an excellent opportunity and couldn’t find a second one soon, my quest for learning Emotional Intelligence started. I lost the opportunity because I did not like the interviewer, he was forthright and blunt mostly. Feeling offended by his remarks on my college, I started replying in a rebellious tone after 2-3 questions. However ever since I experienced the power of EI, my life changed 360◦

Although no one can claim that they are 100% emotionally intelligent, some people as you may see are super successful because they have power over their emotions. Still, there are so many people who aren’t familiar with EI as a tool to manage their lives better or scale up their game. Here are five things you must know about EI.

1.   EI is a way of life: When you are Emotionally Intelligent, life is simpler and there aren’t many roadblocks in terms of emotional turmoil, baggage or negativity whether personal or professional. You achieve more productivity and speed when you don’t have entanglements or you know how to deal with them. In fact, people tend to you for solutions and advice.

2.   EI is the first lesson in leadership: leaders are people who set benchmarks for others; people follow them and learn from them. Mostly it is their people skills blended with strategic skills that strike cord with people. Imagine a person who is super successful in his field or a billionaire but deals with people poorly. Would he gain followers? Never!

3.   EI can help you reach your goals faster: An EI person is sorted in mind and responds objectively to daily hustle and struggle. They generally don’t become part of politics and grapevine. It saves them so much time. Such people are clearer about choices, goals, and plans. They reach their goals faster than others.

4.   EI people enjoy life more than others: they are friendly, compassionate, good company, less fussy and great conversationalist. All these traits make them enjoy life more than others. They channelize their negative emotions in the right direction and do not react to unwanted behaviors. This makes them friendly and amicable.

5. You can learn it: by working on its 4 main elements in yourself, Self-awareness, Self-management, Social-awareness, and Social-skills you can learn to be more Emotionally Intelligent.

My journey towards EI started in 2003. It took me 7 years to learn; fully experience and eventually become a beginner expert in EI at that time. Yeah, beginner because it takes time to build your own system, experience transformations in other and create solutions around it. I often used it for my personal coaching clients who are mostly business owners or executives to become better at what they do and leverage their full potential. While teaching business owners I had to blend EI with my business strategy knowledge and that kind of turned my position upwards as a coach pretty soon. So I owe a lot to my knowledge on EI for a successful career as a coach.