Is Your Thinking Style Helpful?

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

 

What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ) you may ask, and what does it have to do with my professional life?

Emotional Intelligence is your ability to recognize your own emotions and those of other people, and how well you can process that information and use it to navigate the social environment you’re in.

Your EQ is based on four components:

Self-awareness – Your ability to recognize which emotions are influencing you at any given time and how they’re affecting your thoughts and behaviors. How well you understand your strengths and weaknesses and how confident you are in yourself.

Self-management – Your skill at managing your impulses. How well you manage your emotions in healthy ways, whether or not you get flummoxed by change, how well you’re able to follow through on commitments. Your emotional flexibility.

Social awareness – Your ability to understand the emotions and needs of others, to pick up on emotional cues in group dynamics, to understand what’s really going on beneath the surface.

Relationship management – How well you can communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, manage conflict and work well in a team.

The reason your EQ impacts your professional life is, according to a test conducted by Talent Smart, people with high EQ make $29,000 more annually than their low EQ counterparts. 58% of your job performance is based on your EQ, and 90% of top performers have high EQ.

In the past we were always taught that a high IQ – Intelligence Quotient was what was going to get us ahead in the world, but it turns out your EQ can be an even better indicator of your potential success than your IQ. And the good news is that unlike IQ, which pretty much stays the same your whole professional life, your EQ is something you can develop.

Just because you’ve flown off the handle with little provocation in the past or didn’t take how others felt into account, doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. There are things you can do to help you increase your Emotional Intelligence. Here are six from Psychology Today

Reduce negative emotions

No one is immune to negative emotions. The key is not to let them overwhelm you or let them influence your decisions. Two of the biggest contributors to negative emotions are taking things personally and the fear of rejection.

When someone doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do or they’re rude or unhelpful, our first impulse is to take it personally. What we need to remember is, what people do and say often has a lot more to do with them than us. Maybe that person didn’t return your email right away because they got busy with something else. Before jumping to conclusions, dig a little deeper.

If you’re afraid of getting rejected, then get rejected until it doesn’t bother you anymore. Go ahead and put yourself into the face of NOs. After a while you’ll build up a tolerance to them.

Also instead of focusing all your energy on a single outcome, give yourself lots of options so if one thing doesn’t work out, you have other avenues to turn to.

Find ways to diffuse your stress

There’s going to be stress. Much as we’d like to, we can’t always sidestep it, but instead of flipping out there are a couple of things you can do to cool yourself back down – for example a splash of water on the face can help, or some fresh air. A walk outside, or a quick run. A few minutes of movement and change of scenery might be all you need to deal with the situation with a cooler head.

Learn how to express your emotions with words

We are pretty good at reminding our kids to “use your words” but as adults we will often keep our emotions bottled up inside which:

1. Will often lead to illness and
2. Does nothing to change the situation with the person or situation that’s got us bottled up.

Instead of lashing out with “you are…” or “you have to…” learn how to reframe what you say from the “I” perspective. “I feel frustrated when I have to send several emails to you before I get a response.”

Recognize when you’re getting pulled into other people’s dramas

When someone is in a bad mood or starts yelling or speaking rudely our first impulse is to give it right back – like a mirror. Once again it’s important to remember that’s their baggage and you’ve got no business carrying it.

Learn the art of getting back up after you fall

When life knocks you down you’ll sometimes want to just stay down. Instead of dwelling on the fact that you’re down, ask yourself why? Did I fall because of something I did? What part of what I did wasn’t successful? How can I change that? Instead of thinking of knock-downs as failures think of them as learning experiences.

Foster close personal relationships

When we meet up with someone, we ask them how they’re doing as a matter of course, but do we really care about the answer? Become attentive to other people, to their words, their body language, your body language. The closer your attention to your relationships, the more in-tune you will become to them. The more you learn to genuinely care about others the higher your EQ will become.

 

Get Into The Routine Of Good Habits

 

For most of us, work slowly builds routine. As you get familiar with your job, you start to develop daily work habits. Get up, make a coffee. Eat a quick breakfast and head off. Get to work, head to the back room, put on your uniform and go out to the sales floor.

Or maybe your day looks a little bit more like this: Hit Snooze. Throw some clothes on and run out the door. Get to work, chat with some co-workers and get to your desk. Log in to the computer and check your emails.

Habits become part of your daily life at work. The thing about habits is, they start as small things. But once those small things become entrenched as habits they become near impossible to break. Some habits can propel you to success while others can be detrimental to your work life. If you can form these five key work habits, you’ll be forming habits for success.

Punctuality

We’re not all morning people. Often we just want a couple more minutes in bed. But when we rush to work, or to make a meeting on time, we often end up arriving flustered with little time get ourselves settled in. It’s a small thing to make sure you leave yourself enough time before your next appointment. But if you do, not only will people notice you’re an on-time person–which also speaks to your ability to be organized and manage your time–but you’ll feel better and more relaxed as you start your day or meeting.

Communication and Teamwork

Whether your job calls for you to work with others or not, it’s important to play nice with your co-workers. Sometimes you might feel inclined to think of your coworker as a foe, standing in the way of your next promotion. Although a little healthy competition is a good thing for the most part it’s much better to create a collaborative work atmosphere. A collaborative attitude can start with something as simple as saying good morning and asking people how their day is going. It leads to a situation where everyone looks out for each other.

Initiative

Benjamin Franklin said, “Do not put off to tomorrow, what you can do today.” Procrastination is one of the most common work habits that stifles your ability to succeed. It leaves you little time for revisions and fine tuning. It can also frustrate others who are waiting on your work. Even if you get your project in by the deadline, had you been ahead of schedule, others may have been able to start early on their projects.

Like being late, procrastination also speaks to a lack of organization and time management on your part. So if you have something you can start working on now, do it!

Focus on a Single Task

You may think multi-tasking is the best way to get things done. But having a bunch of tasks on the go at once is only slowing you down! Get into the habit of focusing on one task at a time. You don’t have to finish it before moving on, but make progress before turning to focus on something else. Focusing on a single task at a time will make the time you spend more productive and will also lead you to getting more things done.

Positivity

Of all the work habits, this one might be the most obvious, and the hardest to keep up. It’s easy to complain about work and life to your co-workers. You may also find yourself getting sucked into your co-workers’ negativity. The thing about negativity is, it attracts more negativity and it has a way of sticking around and affecting the work you’re doing. If you get into the habit of being negative, your work will suffer and your boss or supervisor will notice. Being positive has the opposite effect. Your work will improve, the atmosphere will improve and your manager will notice that you are an enthusiastic employee.

Turning Strong Work Habits into Routine

Habits start as small things you do regularly and become the way you work. By turning the above suggestions into your daily habits you will become a productive, personable, positive worker, that your manager or supervisor will be sure to notice.

Why Bother Staying Passionate?

The Productivity/Positivity Cycle

 

Ever wonder how you can get more done everyday? Here’s something you might not realize, the higher your positivity, the higher your productivity!

You are a mirror to yourself

It might sound a little too smile and the whole world smiles with you simplistic to be true, but it is. You are a mirror to yourself and everything you think and do reflects back to you. Being productive makes you feel good about yourself and feeling good will make you more productive. It’s kind of like the opposite of a vicious cycle!

Get the cycle started

The key is getting the cycle started. Make a point of deciding to bring more positivity to what you do and that will encourage the productivity. Or conversely, bring up your productivity a bit, feel good what you’re accomplishing and boost your positivity.

Believe in your abilities

You will never be able to boost your productivity if you don’t believe you’re capable of doing more than you’re doing right now. If you don’t really believe you can do more then are you sure you’re in the right place? Is this something you want to continue with? If you don’t believe you can do more then you certainly can’t.

If you believe you can do more then you’re ready to lay down the foundation for achieving your productivity goals.

Schedule your productivity

To increase your productivity you need to set clear guidelines for yourself. Written guidelines that you adhere to. That means lists. Priority lists of things that MUST get done, should get done and wouldn’t it be great if I could get it done for each day.

Block out time for your lists and don’t finish the day without completing the MUST list. Hopefully you’ll also get through the should list. And wouldn’t it be great if you also made a dent in that list as well?

Plan out your lists for tomorrow at the end of today so as soon as you’re ready to get to work, you know what needs to get done.

At the end of the week create a master list for the week ahead. By filling your time in advance you are much more likely to stick to the plan when the time actually comes.

Seeing your accomplishments feels good

As soon as you start seeing progress you immediately start feeling better about what you can do. The better you’re feeling, the more motivated you’ll be to keep on doing what you’re doing to increase that productivity.

Your productivity is a reflection of your abilities. Feeling good about your abilities encourages you to push yourself to the next level.

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Procrastinator? Me?

 

Some people have no trouble with procrastination. They get up with a list of things to do and they do them, systematically without delay. Others have a list of things to do or more often, a single thing to do and they take it with them from pit stop to pit stop while their procrastination problem distracts them with unending diversions to keep them from stopping long enough to get on with their list.

There are those who are strong enough to eventually learn to beat their procrastination problem. Others of us do battle with it everyday. I’ve surrendered to the fact that I will probably never beat my problem, but I have learned some tricks to tame it and keep it at bay, and some days, weary of our constant battles, my problem simply lets me push through.

I’ll do it today is not good enough

When you plan on doing something today you’re inviting the problem to spend the day with you. It will drag you here and there and everywhere with a million distractions until today has somehow become tomorrow – again. Much better to say, I will do it at 10:00.

Set aside a SPECIFIC time and stick to it

The thing that plagues your procrastination problem is strict timelines. In order to ensure something gets done, block out a specific hour to do it and short of a true emergency situation, get on with it on the button.

Once you’re started, all you need to do is keep yourself at it for at least five minutes. In the Lifehacker article, Work For Just Five Minutes to Break Procrastination Habits they talk about the importance of getting started. How once you get going you’re likely to keep going.

Routine

Setting up a routine where everyday you do A during this time and B during that time and C during this other block of time is an excellent way of ensuring that things get done. It may not seem fun or spontaneous, but if you’re plagued by procrastination problems, routines are a great way to keep them at bay.

Dreading is worse than doing

Sometimes we put off doing something because on some level we’re afraid of doing it. We’re afraid of the difficulty of the task or the reaction we’re going to get in response. For instance, you have to make a difficult phone call and you know the person on the other end of the line isn’t going to react well. For the most part, dreading a thing is worse than doing it. The thing has to get done. The longer you postpone it more entrenched your problem is going to become.Think of the task like a band-aid and just rip it off.

Turn off Internet

Procrastination problems have been plaguing some of us forever, but since the Internet came along the problem has become out of proportion. If you don’t specifically need the Internet to complete your task then why not turn it off – just for a while. There are all kinds of programs that will turn the Internet off – for whatever amount of time you choose. Freedom is an example.

Your problem doesn’t just follow you onto the computer, there’s also your equally distracting phone. There’s an app called Forest: Stay Focused, Be Present, that plants trees on your phone for as long as you don’t touch it. For every half hour you don’t touch your phone a tree grows and every time you do touch your phone the tree dies. You don’t want to let your procrastination problem kill trees!

Rewards

Your procrastination problem is always enticing you with rewards. You deserve to play this game first and then we’ll get on with that little thing you want to do. Or You haven’t eaten anything for at least five minutes, let’s just have a sandwich first then we’ll do that other thing.

Rewards are great. You just need to flip the order. Remind yourself, Sure you can have that sandwich or play that game but dessert generally comes after the meal.

If you’ll excuse me now there’s a cupcake waiting for me at the lunch counter.

Get Off The Office Treadmill And Start Going Somewhere

 

 

There are always all kinds of things that need to get done at work. From projects everyone is working on, to individual to-do lists, we all have a lot of things we’re trying to achieve.

Even if you do have specific things you need to get done everyday, what if you don’t also have personal goals? If it’s just one day after the next of the same thing over and over again it’s easy to start feeling like you’re stuck on a treadmill with nothing to look forward to.

That’s why setting goals is so important. The website Mind Tools says this about Setting Goals:

“Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.”

Setting goals and achieving them is all about growing as a person, and growing your role within your company.

Setting Goals

The goals you set for yourself can be as small as getting all the emails in your inbox dealt with, or ensuring you follow up with select people. Your goals can also be as big as planning to get your next promotion, or seeking recognition from an industry magazine.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when you’re setting goals for yourself in your personal or work life.

Be specific. Having wide open goals like “Get Rich” won’t help you when it comes to figuring out how to achieve them. “Have a conversation with my boss about what I can do to get promoted” is a far more specific goal you can attain.

Have a timeline. If you don’t give yourself a deadline, chances are you’ll just keep putting off your goal. With a deadline, you give yourself added incentive to meet it.

Keep it Tangible. Dream big and set big goals, but make sure they are attainable. If your goals are big ones, its also a great idea to make sure you set various smaller goals that lead to the big one.

Write them down. if your goals are only in your head and nowhere concrete, they’re likely to seem less important and can be forgotten. Writing them down keeps you accountable.

Achieving Your Goals

Once you have your goals written down, develop a plan for achieving them. Your goals won’t meet themselves so research what you need to do in order to achieve them. Once you’ve developed a plan, make sure you check in with it consistently. If you don’t keep yourself accountable to your plans, they’re nothing but scribbles on a piece of paper.

Most of all, realize that goals change and evolve over time. Priorities shift and that’s okay. Every now and then reassess the goals you have laid out for yourself. Do they still match up with what you want out of your personal and professional life? Don’t be afraid to change the goals you’ve laid out if they not longer reflect what you want.

Finally, don’t be upset if you can’t complete all your goals within the deadlines you have given yourself. The goals of goal setting are to break up the monotony of the daily grind, encourage you to pursue your dreams and help you achieve success; not bum you out and make you feel bad.

If at first you don’t succeed, give yourself a little more time, figure out what didn’t work, revise and repeat.

Concentrating On The Essential

Make Strong Communication Your Priority

 

Ever notice that some people seem to have a knack for getting the best out of those around them, while others seem to go from creating misunderstanding to snafu to lost opportunity? The difference might be as simple as a lack of strong communication skills.

 Start with the little things

You might think small talk is a waste of time, but it’s part of day-to-day socializing. It’s the beginning of getting to know people. Through those small daily interactions you’ll find out that Jen’s husband has gone back to school, you’ll know when it’s time to encourage Sanjar in his quest to run his first marathon.

Use what you learn through that small talk to help you form relationships and bonds with the people you work with. Not only are you getting to know them better, you’re building an atmosphere of trust and camaraderie.

 Listen with your ears and your eyes

Pay attention to the body language of the person you’re speaking to. Are they engaged with what you’re saying or are they distracted?

If you don’t have their full attention, your communications are not hitting the mark. Are your instructions unclear? Is there something going on with them that needs to be addressed? Is there a problem with what you’re asking them to do? You cannot guess the answers to these questions so ask.

Sometimes if you’re busy you might be tempted to let yourself be distracted by a screen or a piece of paper in front of you while giving instructions to someone. That’s a shortcut to giving the same instructions again later.

If you want someone to understand what you’re saying you need to give them your full attention. If you expect them to respect you then start by respecting their time and presence.

Be approachable

Ultimately you want to get things done. That shouldn’t mean they have to get done in exactly the way you suggested if there’s a better way. Make sure people understand you want them to come to you with questions and suggestions. Communication is a two way street. Being heard and listening are equally important.

With strong communication skills you’ll be able to ensure things get things done right, the first time!