A little more than a year ago, Jeff Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles fired his head coach Chip Kelly before the end of the season, a rare act in the prestigious NFL football league. The reason Mr. Laurie gave for firing Mr. Kelly was Emotional Intelligence.
The term Emotional Intelligence has been used in the corporate world for years to help executive and managers to lead their organization better. It first became attention to the business community through the work of Daniel Goleman and his 1995 breakthrough book titled Emotional Intelligence.
According to Laura A. Belsten, Ph.D. of the Institute for Social & Emotional Intelligence, Social and Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of our emotions and those of others, at the moment, and to use that information to manage ourselves and manage our relationships. Simply put Emotional Intelligence is your awareness of your emotions and making the appropriate behavioral choice for the situation.
As you define your goals for 2017, make sure to include increasing your Emotional Intelligence. The benefits include better relationships, handling change better, being a better leader and most importantly getting better results at work and home.
The first step to increasing your Emotional Intelligence is to become aware of your emotions and the behavioral choices you are making based on them.
One of the best ways to understand your emotions is to acknowledge the emotions you are experiencing. This can be done in a formal manner by writing down your emotions at regular intervals through the day. For example, in the morning, midmorning, early afternoon, later afternoon, after dinner and at bedtime. Or less formally you can recap your day writing down all the different emotions you experienced and when.
Secondly after acknowledging your emotions for a week or two, start to assessing when you are experiencing those different emotions. Do you consistently get anxious when meeting with your supervisor? Do you constantly feel grumpy when you first wake up? Are you happiest when you are making progress at work?
Now, think back to any behavior changes that can be contributed to those emotions. For instance, you tried to start your monthly results oriented staff meeting, and two of your managers came in fifteen minutes late. What emotions were you feeling? Were you frustrated; were you annoyed; were you incensed; did you feel disrespected?
How did you react? Did you berate them in from of your other staff? Did you ignore them to the detriment of the meeting? Later, did you cut them out of important decisions?
As the emotions and behaviors become more linked in your daily life, you can start making choices on how you want to handle certain situations. For instance, if you know when people are late to meetings, you will feel disrespected; you can make choices on how you want to react? You can get angry if you think that will benefit the situation but more likely, you can let the slight go at the moment and focus on the message you need to deliver.
This exercise takes practice and will not be easy at first but as time passes and you become more aware of your emotions you can start making better choices.
We are not sure what particular aspect of emotional intelligence Chip Kelly is missing. We do know that in the future that if Mr. Kelly works on his emotional intelligence, he can increase his performance; build a stronger relationship with his players; have the ability to handling conflicts and focus his energy on winning games.
If, in 2016, you would like to increase your emotional intelligence and achieve all the goals you have set for yourself, please reach out to me at john@o3consultingllc.com, or one of the many Institute of Social and Emotional Intelligence Coaches at ISEI.com.