These are the 10 skills you’ll need in the workplace by 2020

Emotional Intelligence

5 Aspects of Emotional Intelligence Required for Effective Leadership
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BY BRENT GLEESON

CREDIT: Getty Images

Emotional intelligence is widely known to be a key component of effective leadership. The ability to be perceptively in tune with yourself and your emotions, as well as having sound situational awareness can be a powerful tool for leading a team. The act of knowing, understanding, and responding to emotions, overcoming stress in the moment, and being aware of how your words and actions affect others, is described as emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence for leadership can consist of these five attributes: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, relationship management, and effective communication.

As a Navy SEAL veteran, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and leader of one of the fastest growing digital marketing agencies in the country, I have experienced many emotions and become very aware of how those emotions can have a positive or negative effect on my ability to inspire and lead a team. Many individuals try to shut off their feelings, but as much as we distort, deny, and bury our emotions and memories, we can't ever eliminate them.

You can learn to be emotionally independent and gain the attributes that allow you to have emotional intelligence by connecting to core emotions, accepting them, and being aware of how they affect your decisions and actions.

Being able to relate behaviors and challenges of emotional intelligence on workplace performance is an immense advantage in building an exceptional team. One of the most common factors that leads to retention issues is communication deficiencies that create disengagement and doubt.

A leader lacking in emotional intelligence is not able to effectively gauge the needs, wants and expectations of those they lead. Leaders who react from their emotions without filtering them can create mistrust amongst their staff and can seriously jeopardize their working relationships. Reacting with erratic emotions can be detrimental to overall culture, attitudes and positive feelings toward the company and the mission. Good leaders must be self-aware and understand how their verbal and non-verbal communication can affect the team.

To help understand the emotional intelligence competencies required for effective leadership, I would recommend determining where you stand on the below elements.

Self-Assessment: This can be defined as having the ability to recognize one's own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values and drivers and understanding their impact on others.

Without reflection we cannot truly understand who we are, why we make certain decisions, what we are good at, and where we fall short. In order to reach your maximum potential, you must be confident in who you are, understanding the good with the bad. Those that have a strong understanding of who they are and what they want to work on, can improve themselves on a regular basis.

Self-regulation: Also known as discipline. This involves controlling or redirecting our disruptive emotions and adapting to change circumstances in order to keep the team moving in a positive direction.

Leaders can't afford to lose their cool. Being calm is contagious, as is panic. When you take on a leadership role you can no longer afford to panic when things get stressful. When you stay calm and positive you can think and communicate more clearly with your team.

Empathy and Compassion: Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand how they may feel or react to a certain situation. When one has empathy, the capacity to feel compassion is open. The emotion that we feel in response to suffering that motivates a desire to help.

The more we can relate to others, the better we will become at understanding what motivates or upsets them.

Relationship Management: You can't make deep connections with others if you're distracted. Many of us have families, other obligations, and a crazy to-do list, but building and maintaining healthy and productive relationships is essential to one's ability to gain higher emotional intelligence.

You must have the ability to communicate effectively and properly manage relationships in order to move a team of people in a desired direction.

Effective Communication: In the SEAL teams you have to do three things flawlessly to be an effective operator and team member: Move, shoot, and communicate. Communication being of the utmost importance. Studies show that effective communication is 7% the words we say and 93% tone and body language.

Misunderstandings and lack of communication are usually the basis of problems between most people. Failing to communicate effectively in a workplace leads to frustration, bitterness, and confusion among employees. Effective communication can eliminate obstacles and encourage stronger workplace relationships. When employees know their role within a company and understand how they benefit the overall direction and vision, there is a sense of value and accomplishment. Good communication results in alignment and a shared sense of purpose.

Emotional intelligence is a powerful tool critical for exceeding goals, improving critical work relationships, and creating a healthy, productive workplace and organizational culture.

Why You Need Emotional Intelligence to Succeed

Emotional intelligence is responsible for 58 percent of your performance, so what are you doing to improve yours?

http://www.inc.com/travis-bradberry/why-you-need-emotional-intelligence-to-succeed.html?cid=sy304time

BY TRAVIS BRADBERRY

CREDIT: Getty Images

When the concept of emotional intelligence was introduced to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the sole source of success--IQ. Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack.

Emotional intelligence is the "something" in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence consists four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence.

Personal competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.

• Self-awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.
• Self-management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behavior.

Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people's moods, behavior, and motives to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.

• Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.
• Relationship management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others' emotions to manage interactions successfully.

Emotional intelligence, IQ, and personality are different.

Emotional intelligence taps into a fundamental element of human behavior that is distinct from your intellect. There is no known connection between IQ and emotional intelligence; you simply can't predict emotional intelligence based on how smart someone is. Intelligence is your ability to learn, and it's the same at age 15 as it is at age 50. Emotional intelligence, on the other hand, is a flexible set of skills that can be acquired and improved with practice. Although some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, you can develop high emotional intelligence even if you aren't born with it.

Personality is the final piece of the puzzle. It's the stable "style" that defines each of us. Personality is the result of hard-wired preferences, such as the inclination toward introversion or extroversion. However, like IQ, personality can't be used to predict emotional intelligence. Also, like IQ, personality is stable over a lifetime and doesn't change. IQ, emotional intelligence, and personality each cover unique ground and help to explain what makes a person tick.

Emotional intelligence predicts performance.

How much of an impact does emotional intelligence have on your professional success? The short answer is: A lot! It's a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction with a tremendous result. TalentSmart tested emotional intelligence alongside 33 other important workplace skills, and found that emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58 percent of success in all types of jobs.

Your emotional intelligence is the foundation for a host of critical skills--it impacts most everything you do and say each day.

Of all the people we've studied at work, we've found that 90 percent of top performers are also high in emotional intelligence. On the flip side, just 20 percent of bottom performers are high in emotional intelligence. You can be a top performer without emotional intelligence, but the chances are slim.

Naturally, people with a high degree of emotional intelligence make more money--an average of $29,000 more per year than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence. The link between emotional intelligence and earnings is so direct that every point increase in emotional intelligence adds $1,300 to an annual salary. These findings hold true for people in all industries, at all levels, in every region of the world. We haven't yet been able to find a job in which performance and pay aren't tied closely to emotional intelligence.

You can increase your emotional intelligence.

The communication between your emotional and rational "brains" is the physical source of emotional intelligence. The pathway for emotional intelligence starts in the brain, at the spinal cord. Your primary senses enter here and must travel to the front of your brain before you can think rationally about your experience. However, first they travel through the limbic system, the place where emotions are generated. So, we have an emotional reaction to events before our rational mind is able to engage. Emotional intelligence requires effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of the brain.

Plasticity is the term neurologists use to describe the brain's ability to change. As you discover and practice new emotional intelligence skills, the billions of microscopic neurons lining the road between the rational and emotional centers of your brain branch off small "arms" (much like a tree) to reach out to the other cells. A single cell can grow 15,000 connections with its neighbors. This chain reaction of growth ensures it's easier to kick a new behavior into action in the future.

As you train your brain by repeatedly practicing new emotionally intelligent behaviors, your brain builds the pathways needed to make them into habits. Before long, you begin responding to your surroundings with emotional intelligence without even having to think about it. And just as your brain reinforces the use of new behaviors, the connections supporting old, destructive behaviors will die off as you learn to limit your use of them.

Why You Should Hire for Emotional Intelligence

People with high EI are better at reading and responding to customers, for one thing. Here's how to spot them in a lineup of potential hires.

http://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/why-you-should-hire-for-emotional-intelligence.html?cid=sy304time

BY CHRISTINA DESMARAIS

CREDIT: Getty Images

The notion of Emotional intelligence (EI)--the ability to understand one's own and other people's emotions and steer behavior accordingly--has been a widely touted leadership trait in recent years. Adam Ochstein, founder and CEO of Chicago-based HR consultancy and software company Stratex, defines EI as the ability to look at a situation, analyze it and understand its objective and subjective angles. In essence, he says people with high EI are adept at reading people. "I think one of the biggest attributes of someone who has emotional intelligence is someone who can take a critical look at themselves, laugh at themselves and not take themselves too seriously," he says. "They realize that what I see on the surface might not really be the whole story."

Here's why he says you need to hire these kinds of people and how you can spot them.

Employees with high EI are better at wooing your customers.

Regardless of the stellar nature of your product, customer service reps, receptionists and account managers who are good at reading customers and responding appropriately will be better at making them happy. "Clients connect with people, not with a product, and hiring people who have those type of innate skill sets enhances your brand," he says.

Employees with high EI make great leaders.

These people are excellent listeners who have an ability to empathize with a myriad of personalities. Because they're aware of other people's feelings, they understand that their decisions--and how they communicate them--will affect everyone on a team. "People want to follow people who have a personal investment in their success, and people who have a high degree of EQ typically excel in human interaction and getting people to follow them," he says.

Prospective employees with high EI are easy to spot in an interview.

They raise questions, own their failures without dwelling on them, and are comfortable in their own skin, meaning you can throw tough questions at them. Look for potential hires who are good listeners and think about their responses before answering honestly. They also use adjectives and adverbs generously, an indication they're thinking more with the left side of their brain. "There's not only the factual element to something, it's the component of how does that make me feel and what was my reaction to it," he says. "They're very descriptive in their language, not only giving you X, Y and Z but how and why X, Y and Z impacted them, how it made them feel and how it impacted people around them."

7 Interview Questions For Measuring Emotional Intelligence

The traditional interview model helps you probe someone's past experience, not their style of thinking.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3057294/work-smart/7-interview-questions-for-measuring-emotional-intelligence

HARVEY DEUTSCHENDORF

[Photo: Flickr user Al Ibrahim]

Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. In other words, it's a complicated amalgam that hiring managers have a hard time testing for. As a result, many fall back on gut instincts and subjective impressions.

It isn't always a smart move to leave something so important to such faulty measures. When a candidate has these qualities, they can work well with others and lead change effectively, so it's no wonder why organizations are placing a higher priority on emotional intelligence. And fortunately, even the traditional interview format can be retooled to test for it.

Just about every smart interview candidate has figured out how to appear highly emotionally intelligent, whether or not they actually are. For hiring managers looking to tell a great performance from genuine attributes, a helpful first step is to get out of the office. Go to a quiet coffee shop, park, or some other place where you won’t be interrupted. That can help get your candidate off guard a bit without making them overly uncomfortable. Then ask these seven questions.

1. WHAT BOTHERS YOU MOST ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE?

Instead of asking that outright, you might tell a quick anecdote about a family member or colleague who annoys you. Then ask if there's anyone at the candidate's last job who really bothered them and how they dealt with that.

Of course, a savvy candidate will focus on solutions—like how they've smoothed that relationship over—but it can still give you valuable insight into how they perceive other people. You'll probably also learn something about how well they understand the effect of their behavior on others (and its limits).

2. TELL ME ABOUT A DAY WHEN EVERYTHING WENT WRONG

Here, too, you can start out by giving them an example of one of your days from hell. It isn't about feeding them a scenario you're looking for your interviewee to spit back; you're just modeling the type of situation you want to hear them reflect upon.

So don't just ask them to describe a bad day; ask how they dealt with it. Does it seem that they dwelled on the problem or blamed others (even if they put it differently), or really looked for solutions? Listen for evidence of any surefire coping mechanisms. You want to hire someone who's got the flexibility to deal with uncertain and unpredictable situations—a hallmark of emotional intelligence.

3. TELL ME ABOUT A COLLEAGUE YOU REALLY GOT ALONG WITH AND WHY YOU THINK YOU DID

The relationships people build with others can tell you a lot. For that matter, so can the way they perceive those relationships. Based on the candidate's account, how do they see themselves, and what do they value in others? You'll also get some insight into your interviewee's self-awareness. Humor, unless it's sarcastic and demeaning, is always a good sign. If the relationship they describe sounds too formal and humorless to be true, it probably is.

4. WHAT'S SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN TEACH ME?

This can set an interviewee off their footing a bit, but in a good way. Ask questions that indicate your lack of understanding and really press for details in the explanation. As you do, does your job candidate seem to fight back frustration and impatience—in their facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice? Or do they ask more questions in order to gather information about what it is you don’t get?

Are they able to explain the idea simply and rework their approach to clarifying things when it becomes clear you're still confused? A highly emotionally intelligent candidate naturally assumes responsibility for getting their ideas across. The opportunity to share their knowledge and teach others is exciting, not stress inducing, and takes communication skills that this type of person loves to hone.

5. TELL ME ABOUT SOMEONE YOU ADMIRE AND WHY YOU DO

Consciously or otherwise, we tend to model some of our behaviors after those we admire. Ask your interviewee to reflect on that. Is the object of their admiration a "people person," someone who inspires and encourages others, or more of a tactical thinker who's better left down in the weeds, working things out on their own? There are no categorically wrong answers here, and sometimes the person a candidate says they admire reflects attributes they wish they possessed, not those they do.

All this is useful to find out. Listen carefully, then dig further by asking if there's anything they've picked up from the person they admire. You can even ask whether there's anything about that person the interviewee doesn't like, in spite of the things they do.

6. WHAT'S ONE THING YOU'RE REALLY PROUD OF AND WHY?

This one's good to leave open-ended, although you can offer an example of something you've personally achieved in order to get them started. It can be related to their career but doesn't need to be. When the candidate talks about their achievements, do they include and credit others, or are they a one-person show?

Do they talk about how it made others feel—the validation and support they got from family, friends, and coworkers who helped them along the way and celebrated their success? Sometimes great accomplishments really are individual wins, but emotionally intelligent people know that nothing really meaningful ever happens in a vacuum.

7. IF YOU RAN YOUR OWN COMPANY, WHAT KINDS OF PEOPLE WOULD YOU HIRE AND WHY?

This will give you a view into what your interviewee values in others and on teams. What sorts of people do they prefer to work with? Do they focus on the people or the outcomes? What's their style of relating to and managing others in order to accomplish shared goals? Do they like to work closely with others, or do they prefer to work independently?

The more you can get away from the traditional interview model, which is mostly geared to probing a candidate's past experience, the better insight you can gain into their emotional intelligence. This means being creative—ask hypothetical questions and don't hesitate to share your own views and experiences.

That can help get a candidate to open up and offer their own candid (rather than scripted) perspective on the things that will matter most in a real work environment. These seven questions are great to start with, but they're only a jumping-off point for measuring emotional intelligence, so don't hesitate to adapt them. You might even make better hires if you do.

 

18 Behaviors of Emotionally Intelligent People

http://motto.time.com/4117921/emotional-intelligence-signs/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook
By Travis Bradberry / Inc.

When emotional intelligence (EQ) first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into the broadly held assumption that IQ was the sole source of success.

Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. The connection is so strong that 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions to achieve positive results.

Despite the significance of EQ, its intangible nature makes it difficult to measure and to know what to do to improve it if you’re lacking. You can always take a scientifically validated test, such as the one that comes with the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book, but unfortunately, most such tests aren’t free. So, I’ve analyzed the data from the million-plus people TalentSmart has tested in order to identify the behaviors that are the hallmarks of a high EQ. What follows are sure signs that you have a high EQ.

1. You have a robust emotional vocabulary

All people experience emotions, but it is a select few who can accurately identify them as they occur. Our research shows that only 36 percent of people can do this, which is problematic because unlabeled emotions often go misunderstood, which leads to irrational choices and counterproductive actions.

People with high EQs master their emotions because they understand them, and they use an extensive vocabulary of feelings to do so. While many people might describe themselves as simply feeling “bad,” emotionally intelligent people can pinpoint whether they feel “irritable,” “frustrated,” “downtrodden,” or “anxious.” The more specific your word choice, the better insight you have into exactly how you are feeling, what caused it, and what you should do about it.

2. You’re curious about people

It doesn’t matter if they’re introverted or extroverted, emotionally intelligent people are curious about everyone around them. This curiosity is the product of empathy, one of the most significant gateways to a high EQ. The more you care about other people and what they’re going through, the more curiosity you’re going to have about them.

3. You embrace change

Emotionally intelligent people are flexible and are constantly adapting. They know that fear of change is paralyzing and a major threat to their success and happiness. They look for change that is lurking just around the corner, and they form a plan of action should these changes occur.

4. You know your strengths and weaknesses

Emotionally intelligent people don’t just understand emotions; they know what they’re good at and what they’re terrible at. They also know who pushes their buttons and the environments (both situations and people) that enable them to succeed. Having a high EQ means you know your strengths and how to lean into and use them to your full advantage while keeping your weaknesses from holding you back.

5. You’re a good judge of character

Much of emotional intelligence comes down to social awareness; the ability to read other people, know what they’re about, and understand what they’re going through. Over time, this skill makes you an exceptional judge of character. People are no mystery to you. You know what they’re all about and understand their motivations, even those that lie hidden beneath the surface.

6. You are difficult to offend

If you have a firm grasp of who you are, it’s difficult for someone to say or do something that gets your goat. Emotionally intelligent people are self-confident and open-minded, which creates a pretty thick skin. You may even poke fun at yourself or let other people make jokes about you because you are able to mentally draw the line between humor and degradation.

7. You know how to say no (to yourself and others)

Emotional intelligence means knowing how to exert self-control. You delay gratification and avoid impulsive action. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying no is a major self-control challenge for many people, but “No” is a powerful word that you should unafraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them.

8. You let go of mistakes

Emotionally intelligent people distance themselves from their mistakes, but do so without forgetting them. By keeping their mistakes at a safe distance, yet still handy enough to refer to, they are able to adapt and adjust for future success. It takes refined self-awareness to walk this tightrope between dwelling and remembering. Dwelling too long on your mistakes makes you anxious and gun shy, while forgetting about them completely makes you bound to repeat them. The key to balance lies in your ability to transform failures into nuggets of improvement. This creates the tendency to get right back up every time you fall down.

9. You give and expect nothing in return

When someone gives you something spontaneously, without expecting anything in return, this leaves a powerful impression. For example, you might have an interesting conversation with someone about a book, and when you see them again a month later, you show up with the book in hand. Emotionally intelligent people build strong relationships because they are constantly thinking about others.

10. You don’t hold grudges

The negative emotions that come with holding onto a grudge are actually a stress response. Just thinking about the event sends your body into fight-or-flight mode, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. When the threat is imminent, this reaction is essential to your survival, but when the threat is ancient history, holding onto that stress wreaks havoc on your body and can have devastating health consequences over time. In fact, researchers at Emory University have shown that holding onto stress contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease. Holding onto a grudge means you’re holding onto stress, and emotionally intelligent people know to avoid this at all costs. Letting go of a grudge not only makes you feel better now but can also improve your health.

11. You neutralize toxic people 

Dealing with difficult people is frustrating and exhausting for most. But high-EQ individuals control their interactions with toxic people by keeping their feelings in check. When they need to confront a toxic person, they approach the situation rationally. They identify their own emotions and don’t allow anger or frustration to fuel the chaos. They also consider the difficult person’s standpoint and are able to find solutions and common ground. Even when things completely derail, emotionally intelligent people are able to take the toxic person with a grain of salt to avoid letting him or her bring them down.

12. You don’t seek perfection

Emotionally intelligent people won’t set perfection as their target because they know that it doesn’t exist. Human beings, by our very nature, are fallible. When perfection is your goal, you’re always left with a nagging sense of failure that makes you want to give up or reduce your effort. You end up spending time lamenting what you failed to accomplish and should have done differently instead of moving forward, excited about what you’ve achieved and what you will accomplish in the future.

13. You appreciate what you have

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it also improves your mood by reducing the stress hormone cortisol (in some cases by 23 percent). Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who work daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experience improved mood, energy, and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of cortisol play a major role in this.

14. You disconnect

Taking regular time off the grid is a sign of a high EQ because it helps you to keep your stress under control and to live in the moment. When you make yourself available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors. Forcing yourself offline and even–gulp!–turning off your phone gives your body and mind a break. Studies have shown that something as simple as an email break can lower stress levels. Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of work when an email with the power to bring your thinking (read: stressing) back to work can drop onto your phone at any moment.

15. You limit your caffeine intake

Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, which is the primary source of a fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response to ensure survival. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. Caffeine’s long half-life ensures you stay this way as it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body. High-EQ individuals know that caffeine is trouble, and they don’t let it get the better of them.

16. You get enough sleep

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams) so that you wake up alert and clearheaded. High-EQ individuals know that their self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when they don’t get enough–or the right kind–of sleep. So, they make sleep a top priority.

17. You stop negative self-talk in its tracks 

The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that–thoughts, not facts. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural tendency to perceive threats (inflating the frequency or severity of an event). Emotionally intelligent people separate their thoughts from the facts in order to escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive, new outlook.

18. You won’t let anyone limit your joy

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from the opinions of other people, you are no longer the master of your own happiness. When emotionally intelligent people feel good about something they’ve done, they won’t let anyone’s opinions or snide remarks take that away from them. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within.

This article originally appeared on Inc.com