How to develop emotional intelligence in an adult. Where to start developing EQ

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of intelligence level or IQ, and many have probably taken IQ tests at school, university or at work. Thus, the first technique for measuring mental abilities such as memory, attention and decision making logic problems, created by Alfred Binet in the early 1900s, became very popular and spread throughout the world. Well, after refinement by researchers and scientists, this technique turned into the IQ tests familiar to all of you. And today, most psychologists use tests to measure intelligence and, based on the results, try to determine whether this or that job is suitable for him. And there seem to be no complaints about IQ tests, everything is smooth and smooth, and most importantly, it works. But is it possible, based on the results of such tests, to obtain an adequate assessment of human abilities?

One of the problems that psychologists constantly faced was that some people, although possessing a fairly high level of intelligence, were completely unable to manage their emotions. On the other hand, a person with a relatively low level of intellectual ability surprisingly showed a fairly high level of emotional stability and had good control over his emotions. Similar examples from life different people from all over the world made researchers think about creating an additional scale that would allow them to measure the level of a person’s emotional abilities. It was very difficult to do this, but already in 1990 the first attempt to define emotional intelligence was published by Salovyom and Mayer and it sounded like this: “Emotional intelligence is the ability to control the feelings and emotions of one’s own and other people, as well as recognize them and use this information for guidance in your thoughts and actions."

In more scientific terms, a definition of emotional intelligence might look like this: “ Emotional intelligence is emotional awareness and emotion management skills that provide the ability to create a balance between emotions and reason with the goal of achieving greater happiness in the long term." Having a high level of emotional intelligence means being able to recognize your emotions and change them according to at will. So, good memory and the ability to solve problems are not sufficient to be considered truly reasonable person, but add here the ability to manage your emotions and we see everything in a completely different light. Emotional intelligence makes it possible to acquire and apply knowledge about your emotions and the emotions of other people and make your life more complete and rich in joyful events and vivid emotions. By developing emotional intelligence, we become better able to control our own life, and most importantly - to get more pleasure from it.

If you want to roughly assess your level of emotional intelligence, answer the following questions:

1. Do you know how to express your feelings?
2. Do you listen to other people's opinions?
3. When you are stressed, do you act intelligently?
4. Do you easily adapt to unexpected changes in your life?
5. Do you take responsibility for your actions and actions?
6. Do you know how to recognize your emotions as they arise?
7. Do you control your strong emotions and impulses?

Even one answer “no” to the above questions indicates that your level of emotional intelligence is not high enough, especially if you answer the seventh question in the negative. Many researchers tend to believe that the inability to cope with stress can not only harm a person’s well-being, but also reduce his emotional abilities, leading to the so-called temporary setback. Subsequently, if you do not take decisive steps to eliminate stress and manage your emotions, you may notice that your behavior becomes less and less appropriate. It is important that this process can be reversed, but this will require serious work on yourself.

About most of the mental skills required for high level IQ, you probably know, but what skills should a high level of emotional intelligence include? Peter Salovey and John Mayer, in their definition of emotional intelligence, identified abilities in five main areas. So.

Emotional intelligence includes:

1. Self-awareness. This is emotional awareness, which includes the ability to identify the emotions present in us, identify connections between our emotions and the reasons that led to their appearance, and also predict their appearance in future situations and circumstances.

2. Managing emotions. This is the ability to promptly get rid of such negative manifestations as anxiety, anger and stress. In addition, it is the ability to use energy negative emotions to solve your problems without getting stuck in them or giving them too much importance.

3. Self-motivation. This is the ability to focus on a goal, emotional self-control, in which you refrain from satisfying immediate needs for the sake of long-term gain, or go through unpleasant experiences for this if it is really necessary.

4. Recognizing other people's emotions. Sympathy plays important role V social life people, and is one of the components of a high level of emotional awareness. Interestingly, sensitivity to subtle social cues and the ability to determine how others are feeling are some of the most important skills for achieving success in your personal and professional life.

5. Relationship management. “He who knows how to manage other people is successful, he who knows how to manage himself is great” - this is approximately how one ancient truth goes. But let's rephrase it: by being able to manage your emotions, you develop the potential to manage the emotions of other people. This is how true leaders are born, and how the highest levels of emotional intelligence are achieved.

It is possible that you have already achieved success in any of the listed areas, but this is just the beginning and you just need further development your emotional skills if you want to achieve a high level of emotional intelligence. Let it happen already achieved success will become the basis for a confident upward movement.

How to develop emotional intellect?

In fact, no matter how much emotional intelligence you have, you have already achieved some success because emotional development each of us begins in early age and continues throughout life. And even if this does not always happen consciously, development still occurs. Of course, we go through most of the journey in childhood and adolescence, when most of our emotional habits, however, even if you are unhappy with your level of emotional intelligence and you do not like your character, you can still fix it. True, this will become more difficult the older you get. In addition, you will need to be prepared for the fact that you most likely will not be able to change some of your character traits, which means you will need to learn to accept yourself as you are, although if you have the desire, there will be a way.

What skills are needed for high levels of emotional intelligence?

Below are a few skills that will help you improve your emotional intelligence. We will look at three types of skills, namely emotional skills, cognitive and behavioral skills.

Emotional Skills:

Identifying and defining emotions– emotional awareness, that is, the ability to recognize the emotions inherent in us as they arise and predict their occurrence. This is also knowledge of what they are.
Expressing emotions– the ability to express one’s emotions without holding back or suppressing them, and, if necessary, expressing them in a safe way.
Assessing the intensity of emotions– how your emotions manifest themselves, brightly or weakly.
Managing Emotions– the ability to evoke the necessary emotions, or eliminate them as they arise, or change them if necessary.
Abstaining from momentary pleasure– the ability to control your desires in order to achieve your goals.
Pulse control– the ability to weaken the controlling influence of strong emotions and gain the upper hand over them.
Knowing the difference between emotions and reason– understanding when your actions are dictated by your emotional impulses, and when your actions are thought out and logical.

Cognitive Skills:

Positive attitude– to life, to the surrounding reality, to ourselves, the understanding that being negative is extremely unproductive.
– the ability to direct thoughts in a positive direction - to solve problems without hanging on negative thoughts.
Reading and Interpreting Social Signals– recognition of social influence on your behavior, determination of your role in society.
Understanding other people's points of view– the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes.
Understanding behavioral norms– knowledge of what and where is considered acceptable and what is not.
Planning– step-by-step achievement of your goals, setting goals, identifying alternative paths, anticipating consequences.
Self-awareness– living in the present, the ability to think about the past or future only if it is necessary and benefits you.

Behavioral skills:

Nonverbal methods of communication– the ability to act confidently in any place, even if you don’t feel confident inside, that is, this presupposes excellent knowledge of body language.
Verbal methods of communication– development of speech skills - confident, clear and vivid speech.
Internal self-control– control of your body, identifying and preventing unconscious impulses and movements.
Healthy Habits– exercise, nutrition, everything that helps strengthen your body.

This seems like enough information to get started, and as you can probably tell, there's a lot of work ahead, but don't let that scare you, because as long as you move forward, you're getting closer to success. One of the good news is that the skills listed in this article will not only help you increase your level of emotional awareness, but will advance you in every other area of your life. By developing your emotional intelligence, you accelerate your step towards self-improvement, personality development and success. Best wishes to you!

Do you want to control your emotions, be happy without external stimuli? The highest level of development of emotional intelligence is all that is needed for this. It will provide you with a constant inner life that satisfies you (you will easily understand what you need right now), rational and productive resolution of issues without including unnecessary, unnecessary or dangerous emotions. It’s easy to understand, manage and regulate your own and others’. From the article you will learn exactly how to do this.

“To be happy, you need to constantly strive for this happiness and understand it. It depends not on circumstances, but on oneself,” Leo Tolstoy, domestic writer and thinker.

Managing emotions automatically involves controlling your mind. You cannot be productive in a situation of emotional “slagging” or make serious decisions in moments of anxiety, anger, etc. Why develop emotional intelligence? To think clearly and in the right direction, to speed up the flow of things in your life and ensure ease of communication and relationships.

A person who is able to manage emotions is cheerful and active. His life is a world of possibilities and joy, for which it is impossible not to love it. His opposite is a hostage of negative and chaotic thoughts, a gloomy and dissatisfied type. For inappropriate emotions, he has to pay with health, money, reputation, and sometimes life.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the basis of charm and the ability to remain balanced in any situation. In addition, this is the key to productive and strong relationships in and at work. Understanding other people's emotions is a must. And we have to communicate every day.

Emotional intelligence allows you to:

express and understand emotions (your own and others);
include emotions in reasoning;
evaluate emotions and determine their causes;
control and manage emotions.

People with high levels of emotional intelligence:

are more efficient and productive;
more than others are satisfied with their appearance (especially girls) and weight;
more accurately than others determine emotions by facial expressions;
They are more responsible about their studies and work (fewer absences for unexcused reasons).

Signs of Low Emotional Intelligence

You can definitely determine your EQ level and the need for its development using special tests. However, there are several signs to suspect low level emotional intelligence:

self-doubt, doubt about the correctness of actions;
excessive self-criticism;
problems and difficulties in communication, inability to find mutual language with people;
modest and unbiased attitude towards other people.

How to develop emotional intelligence

We are talking about the development of a skill; accordingly, the same methods of development are applicable as in the formation of other skills. But first, pay attention to the conditions of development:

daily training;
patience and discipline;
high motivation.

Gaining control over your own, and even more so, other people’s emotions is not easy. Don't expect an easy and quick victory, be prepared for difficulties and small steps back for a powerful leap forward. So, how to develop emotional intelligence:

Study yours. They influence what, when and how you feel. The conditions and specifics of decision-making are also determined by others mental characteristics. For example, for a choleric person, due to congenital reasons, it is very difficult to control emotions, and a phlegmatic person experiences obvious difficulties in understanding them. Conduct a complete personal diagnosis using psychological techniques. Remember that a person changes every day, even congenital characteristics are corrected. Observe yourself, record changes using. You need to find out who you are, and only then learn to understand what you feel.
Be aware, relaxed and open. Knowing your emotions begins with meditation and relaxation, that is, gaining maximum unity of body and mind. Master these and others, such as breathing. They will allow you to maintain and restore rationality in tense situations, and will limit you from making decisions rashly.
Determine which component of emotional intelligence requires improvement: expression and understanding of emotions, reasoning and comparison, assessment and search for causes, management. Determine your current level of emotional intelligence.
Once you know your emotions, move on to studying other people. Start by trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Why is a person angry? Is he tired, offended, dissatisfied with his life? Do this exercise every day - come up with as many ideas as possible more reasons(sources) of a particular emotion (feeling).
Keep a mood diary and learn to differentiate emotions. Learn to express your feelings, distinguish anxiety from fear, and anger from resentment. Record the dynamics of feelings. This will allow you to determine the roots of emotions, the percentage of positive and negative, and the prevailing emotions.
Develop, expand your horizons. Limitations of thinking and perception also limit the understanding of emotions. Watch films, read books, create, go to exhibitions. The larger areas you are involved in, the more you will learn versatile and unique people, realize the impossibility of generalization and the diversity of human feelings.
Break down your environment into vital and minor people. Focus emotional intelligence on the first group. With close people, emotional communication should be especially interesting and meaningful. Surround yourself with people you want to learn from, harmonious and emotionally intelligent people.
Learn to think long-term, don't make promises you can't keep. Don't promise, even if you're sure you can handle it. In addition to subjective factors, life is influenced by external stimuli that cannot always be predicted.
Form responsibility for your own life. You are the source of all events in the life scenario. Learn to be independent from external circumstances.

Upon realizing the deep psychological problems and that prevent you from working independently on the development of emotional intelligence, consult a psychotherapist.

Exercises to develop individual EQ components

Mindfulness

Cover your ears and strain your visual analyzer as much as possible. Take a close look at everything around you. Gradually, the picture should become brighter, and you will notice new details in your usual environment.

Then close your eyes and strain your ears. Under normal conditions, we perceive sounds at a maximum distance of 1.5 meters from us. Concentrate, you need to hear more.

The third step is to close your eyes and ears and feel. You must become aware of your body and its interaction with the outside world. You may feel a breeze or swaying.

It is enough to carry out the technique once a week to learn to better recognize intonations and short-term facial expressions. You will be able to more accurately determine the true and hidden motives of your interlocutor, messages in your direction, as well as your reactions to this. In addition, you will become better aware of how the body reacts to certain emotions.

Adaptability (adjustment to situations)

Write down the names of emotions on cards. Pull out the cards one at a time and depict the emotions that are written on them. The exercise can be done in the form of a game in a group.

Self-esteem

Find your “power pose.” What it is? A pose that increases the level of dopamine - the hormone of joy, pleasure, activity, euphoria. The most popular power poses include: straight, elongated posture, upturned nose and chin, and raised arms. You shouldn’t get into such positions in public—they’ll misunderstand you. But at home you need to spend a minute on your power pose. It is also effective to stand in this position before negotiations - during them it will be easier to remember and assimilate information, you will feel more confident.

Motivation

Write down 10 of your favorite activities. Now name each of them with one verb that conveys the content as accurately as possible. One verb - one month. Now you need to live 10 days in each month under the motto of a specific verb.

Afterword

There is an interesting opinion that emotional intelligence is wisdom. In this context, wisdom refers to the ability to combine reason, logic and emotions. We can also say that emotional intelligence is a complex of social skills, empathy, motivation (adequately overcoming failures and difficulties, perceiving new things, making plans and goals, striving for self-actualization), and awareness (awareness of one’s thoughts and emotions, body and behavior). Emotional intelligence is the balance of mind and heart, that golden mean that many people dream of. You can and should develop EQ and increase its level throughout your life.

Emotions can help or hinder you, but you won't know until you understand them. The book "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" will help you understand your emotional states and learn to cope with them.

We have chosen five tips for you that will help you perceive your own emotions correctly.

Stop perceiving feelings as good and bad

It is human nature to divide our emotions into two simple groups: good and bad. For example, most people automatically attribute feelings of guilt to bad emotions. You don’t want to experience this feeling and are ready to fight yourself with all your might, wanting to get rid of it. In other situations, you release your excitement. Sometimes you pump yourself with energy, and sometimes you spray it in all directions.

The downside to labeling emotions is that by labeling them you can't truly understand what you're feeling.

When you give yourself the opportunity to calmly deal with an emotion and understand what it is, you get a chance to find out what causes it. Relinquishing judgment about emotions will allow them to do their job and disappear without a trace. And constantly thinking about whether you should feel what you feel awakens new emotions to life and does not allow the original feeling to be realized.

Therefore, immediately pay attention to situations when you begin to develop certain emotions. Refrain from labeling your emotion as “good” or “bad,” and then you can understand something important.

Record your emotions

The main problem in developing self-perception is objectivity. It is quite difficult to gain perspective on your emotions and tendencies when you are trying to start climbing the mountain from the very bottom every day. By writing down your thoughts, you can document what events triggered your emotions and how you responded to them.

You can write about what happened to you at home or at work - there are no restrictions. In just a month, you will notice a consistent pattern in your behavior and emotions, and this will allow you to better understand your tendencies. You will begin to better understand which emotions make you depressed, what makes you feel uplifted, and which emotions are the most difficult for you to cope with.

Carefully observe the people and situations that push your buttons and release your strongest emotions.

Describe the emotions you experience every day. Don't forget to also describe the physical manifestations that accompany them. You gain the ability to see more clearly because putting your emotions on paper makes it easier to determine where your tendencies lie. Your journal can be a great resource to use when evaluating your self-perception.

Notice the presence of your emotions in books, films and music

If you find it difficult to look within yourself to understand your emotional patterns and tendencies, you can discover the same information through movies, music, and books that you feel intrinsically connected to. If the lyrics of a song or its mood resonate with your feelings, then this can say a lot about your inner feeling, and if you constantly remember a certain character from a book or movie, this may indicate that his thoughts and feelings parallel yours. Carefully studying these points can teach you a lot about yourself. Moreover, with this tool you can tell a lot about your feelings to other people.

Finding your emotions reflected in the performance of artists allows you to learn a lot about yourself and discover feelings within yourself that are difficult to express in words.

Sometimes you just can't find the right words in order to express the necessary emotions... and suddenly you hear exactly how the hero of the film pronounces them. Listening to music, reading books, watching movies, and even looking at an artist's painting can open the door to your deepest emotions. Next time a movie or book catches your attention, try digging deeper—you never know what you'll find in your search.

Don't let your bad mood fool you

We constantly succumb to a bad mood when it seems to us that the whole world is against us. This state covers our thoughts, feelings and everything that happens to us with a thick and dark fog. There is one focus in how your brain works. Once you fall into the grip of a bad mood, you lose all the good things in your life. Suddenly you begin to hate your job, your friends and family irritate you, you are dissatisfied with your achievements, and your optimism about the future goes up in smoke. Somewhere deep down you know that everything is not as bad as it seems now, but your brain remains deaf to it.

Part of our self-perception is recognizing what we're going through, even if we can't escape it. Admit to yourself that your Bad mood is a kind of cloud that covers everything you see. Remind yourself that your mood is temporary. Emotions change constantly, and a bad mood will pass - you just need to wait a little.

Bad mood - no best time to make important decisions.

You must constantly be aware of what mood you are in. If you think that you can make good decisions regardless of your mood, you will end up facing even more serious problems. It is important not only to reflect on what events led you to your current mood. Sometimes these thoughts themselves (if you don’t get too hung up on them) can be enough reason for a bad mood to go away on its own.

Understand how you behave under stress

If you learn to recognize the early signs of stress, you will be doing yourself a huge favor. The human mind and body speak to you in their own way own language(at least when stress is involved). They use emotional and psychological responses to let you know when it's time to slow down and take a break. For example, an upset stomach may indicate that you are feeling nervous and anxious. Indigestion and fatigue are your body's way of asking for time to rest. An upset stomach may indicate stress and anxiety, and symptoms such as headache, sore throat or back pain may be an expression of other internal problems.

Your self-perception during times of stress and tension should serve as a third ear, listening intently to your body's voice or cries for help.

When you push too hard, your body has a lot to say. Take the time to listen to these signals and recharge your emotional batteries before emotional stress causes permanent damage to your internal systems.

What is emotional intelligence? How to work on its development and why do it?

The amount of emotional intelligence, abbreviated EQ in the specialized literature, determines how much a person understands emotions, is aware of them, can recreate, manage them, and therefore apply them to solve assigned problems. A person with well-developed emotional intelligence can significantly reduce the impact of negative emotions on their life. Developing emotional intelligence promotes recognition negative impacts from the outside, a calm understanding of the situation and a normal, balanced reaction to it. A person who is emotionally developed lets go negative emotions, does not experience them again and again, thereby destroying your psyche in particular and life in general.

Working on the development of emotional intelligence makes a person more mature, more self-confident, relieves him of complexes and mental tossing, allows him to take part in normal life, interact with other people and understand their motives, that is, see through your interlocutors. Such abilities make it easy to make new acquaintances, which means using people to achieve your goals.

You, without knowing it, use emotional intelligence every day, because it is impossible to completely turn off emotions, to be completely dispassionate (about the influence of emotions on human activity we already talked about it in one of our articles). Keeping feelings under control is a difficult task that only strong personalities. But this is for the better. After all, emotions help to correctly assess the situation and find the right solution to any problem. Well-developed emotional intelligence is a factor that helps achieve success.

You can understand in more detail what benefits the development of emotional intelligence provides using the diagram below:

If you want to easily find a common language even with unfamiliar people, be friendly and open, and therefore pleasant to communicate with, if you set your goal to achieve maximum success in any endeavor, then you simply need to work on developing your own EI.

1. Recognize emotions and identify critical moments.

Lose control over your own behavior, explode because of someone's words, lose calm at empty space? Oh, how familiar this is! Every person has a certain boiling point caused by a situation that leads to loss of self-control - the so-called emotional trigger. People who know how to recognize them, and therefore accept them, can stop in time and not succumb to destructive emotions.

How to learn such control? Analyze your emotions, record them on paper, highlight your own emotional triggers.

2. Repeat over and over again mentally those situations that lead to emotional breakdowns.

Constantly turning over this or that situation in your head helps you find the right solution and not react as violently as it could happen in the first place. real life. When considering an event that could lead to an emotional breakdown, come up with a different course of action than your usual one. This exercise will allow you to correctly accept the emotional trigger. This means that you will get a chance to act differently when a real explosive situation occurs.

3. Exercise your brain.

Anyone can control your mind and emotions. As soon as you feel anger creeping in, switch to something else, for example, solving complex math problems. Agree, it’s hard to get angry and nervous when you’re multiplying three-digit numbers in your head!

Whether you solve the problem correctly or not is irrelevant. The main thing is that you tried, used your brain to the fullest and did not let your emotions overcome you.

4. Escape from reality into memories.

If in Hard time If you find it difficult to concentrate, then use another technique: abstract yourself from what is happening and immerse yourself in Nice memories. Surely there is something in your life that brings a smile to your face. It could be a favorite song or a book you recently read. Remember them, quote your favorite lines to yourself. Such thoughts will help you avoid an emotional breakdown, as they will switch your brain to another situation.

The main thing is not to perceive this technique as a cowardly escape from reality. This is done for your benefit.

5. Before you send angry letter addressee, re-read what you wrote.

This way, you will take a time-out for at least a few minutes, once again relive what you experienced while writing, and be able to rethink your overflowing emotions. You take a break - and it's wonderful. You have a chance to change your mind and fix everything. If after reading this you still want to send a letter, ask a friend or loved one read it. Listen to outside advice and think twice about whether it’s worth offending the recipient. Learn to keep your emotions in check!

Research confirms that everyone thinks differently. A rather neutral message can actually cause aggression on the part of the recipient. To understand how the addressee will react to your letter, remember the character of the person to whom you are writing. Adjust the message so as not to offend your recipient.

6. Avoid immediate answers.

Modern life sometimes requires us to make lightning-fast decisions. But often you can not force things and take a minute to think. Do they require a clear answer from you? Avoid having to answer right away. Say that you will return to this conversation and take a break to think. This will allow you to understand what is really important and not let your emotions prevail over your reason.

7. Respect your interlocutor in any situation.

Remember that in any situation you need to remain well-mannered, educated person, express your thoughts clearly and clearly, avoiding profanity. This will characterize you as a serious, respectable person with whom it is pleasant to do business. Emotions may rage in your soul, but you shouldn’t show them. To curb them, it is better to think about your vocabulary in advance and highlight those words that it is better not to say out loud.

Once you decide to be calm and composed in any situation, you will take a big step towards controlling your emotions and developing emotional intelligence.

P.S. Here is another article on the topic of EQ published on our website: “ What is emotional intelligence and why is it needed?»

If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.

Victoria Shimanskaya is a psychologist, a leading specialist in emotional intelligence (EQ) research in Russia, the author of the “Monsiki” methodology for developing children’s EQ, a partner in the EQ-factor Laboratory, a leader of master classes and trainings on the topic of EQ - about the intellectual-emotional profile of a person and its roles in organizing and running a business.

Key Factors of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is talked about often and a lot today. The need to develop emotional intelligence has been proven more than once by scientists and various examples from life and business.

It is obvious that a person who has a higher level of emotional intelligence perceives reality more adequately and reacts to it and interacts with it much more effectively. This applies to almost all communications - both interpersonal and social; subjective and objective experiences; abstract and concrete concepts. Thus, emotional intelligence has become one of the new tools for business management, building effective communications and management.

Perception of information occurs through sensory systems. In this case, key areas of the brain act first, and then reactions of the autonomic nervous, muscular and other systems occur. Interaction with information, with yourself and the world around you is built depending on the degree of development of the key drivers of emotional intelligence: awareness, self-esteem, motivation, adaptability.

Drivers actually contain the basic personality traits, but they are not immutable and can develop.

Each driver can be unlocked through four skills:

awareness through awareness of your thoughts and emotions, your body and behavior;
self-esteem through positive perception peace and determination, as well as through acceptance and assertiveness (a person’s ability not to depend on external influences and assessments, to independently regulate their own behavior and be responsible for it);
motivation through the desire for self-actualization and determination, as well as through an open perception of the new, strong goal setting and objective experience of failures;
adaptability through conscious empathy for another person - empathy, stress resistance, decision making and communication skills.

Emotional Quotient

It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that emotional intelligence does not exist separately from intelligence. Over the past three decades, science has made significant progress in studying the interaction of the emotional and intellectual spheres (IQ and EQ) from the point of view of brain activity, psychology and business.

“It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of the heart over the head - it is the only way the intersection of both,” once said David R. Caruso, a psychologist, professor of psychology at Yale University (USA), management specialist and co-author of the concept of emotional intelligence.

Along with the well-known abbreviation IQ (English Intelligence Quotient - intelligence coefficient or mental development coefficient), there is the concept of the emotional coefficient EQ ( English. Emotional Quotient), which was introduced by clinical physiologist Ruven Bar-On back in 1985. In 1996, at the American Psychological Association meeting in Toronto, he presented his EQ-i (Emotional Quotient Inventory) test, which contained a list of questions to determine the emotional intelligence quotient, from which the now famous “Bar-On Model of Emotional Intelligence” was born.

Despite the fact that the interaction of IQ and EQ is recognized by many researchers, the first model that clearly showed the interaction of these two coefficients was developed by Russian scientists at the EQ-factor Laboratory for the Study of Emotional Intelligence under the leadership of N. Koro and V. Shimanskaya.

Intellectual-emotional personality profile of a leader

This model acts integral part intellectual-emotional personality profile IEPP. According to this model, emotional intelligence EQ is a kind of base of the personality pyramid in the coordinate system. The vectors of this system are EQ drivers and form various behavior strategies in various fields life:

awareness – “the strategy of philosophers”;
self-esteem - “star strategy”;
motivation – “heroes’ strategy”;
adaptability – “managers’ strategy.”

When emotional intelligence is combined with the IQ vector of intelligence, a “creators’ strategy” is formed - a strategy that is key in all areas of life, and even more so in business.

It is the “strategy of creators” that allows one to realize a person’s potential so much that ultimately he reaches the highest level of self-realization. Therefore, the larger the volume of this pyramid (due to the development of EQ drivers and IQ itself), the more opportunities a person will have to influence his life, the lives of other people and the world as a whole.

IN modern world any manager and entrepreneur must be a creator - create not just a product or service, but the best product, the best service, best service And best impressions. And this is almost impossible without the ability to manage your emotions.

How to develop EQ?

As already noted in this article, the development of EQ occurs through the development of its main factors - drivers. Therefore, it is necessary to develop them first.

1. Exercise to develop “awareness”

Close your ears and concentrate on environment, try to see all the details. The picture will become “brighter” and you will notice something that you didn’t pay attention to before.
Then close your eyes and concentrate on the sounds. IN normal situation we subconsciously concentrate on a zone of no more than 1.5 meters around us. By “expanding” our hearing, we begin to notice the nuances of natural and mechanical.
Close your eyes and ears together. Feel how your body interacts with the outside world - for example, the touch of the wind or grass if you are ready to take off your shoes.

It is enough to do this exercise once a week so that your ability to recognize the voice intonations of your interlocutors and the nuances of facial expressions become significantly higher. This will allow you to more accurately determine the explicit and hidden messages of your interlocutors and, most importantly, your own reaction to certain processes, as well as understand how your body reacts to information and how it experiences emotions.

2. To develop “adaptability”, a simple training using “emotion cards” is suitable.

You pretend to be angry, happy, sad or interested, depending on which card you draw. It's simple and effective method“work out” your emotional expression. At the same time, your effectiveness as a negotiator increases several times.

3. To develop “self-esteem”, you should first master power poses

Power poses are poses of the human body that “trigger” the production of dopamine: straight back, arms raised up, head held high. The production of this hormone contributes to better memorization of material and information.

One minute of this exercise before negotiations will make you feel much more confident.

4. To develop “motivation”, do the following right now

Write down ten things you enjoy doing. Then reformulate them so that only verbs remain. Find exactly the verb that the best way will convey this or that activity.

Using these verbs, create a plan for the month. And during this month you will need to live ten days under the motto of this word. Travel or laugh, taste and learn new things, jump or count – there are many options.

For example, with the verb "tasting" as the motto, you could head to a special restaurant or wine boutique - or maybe throw a party at home. This can also become a concept for presenting your company’s products and services.

Just live each of these days with 200% of those ten words-actions that truly constitute your essence of growth - what you can give to the world.

When performing such exercises, you will definitely move closer to your true goals than in the last few years, because you will be engaged in the most important task of a successful businessman or leader - the implementation of the “creator’s strategy.”