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The Four Emotional Intelligence Skills
There are four emotional intelligence skills:
- Self-Awareness
- Self-Management
- Social Awareness
- Relationship Management
Each skill falls under one of two “primary competencies”, as Drs Bradberry and Greaves define them: Personal and Social competencies.
The two competencies of emotional intelligence are personal and social.
--> Personal competencies focus on you as an individual.
--> Social competencies focus on your ability to understand other people and their moods/behavior/motives in order to improve your relationships.
Today, we’ll focus on personal competency skills: Self-awareness and Self-Management.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is your,
“...ability to accurately perceive your own emotions in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations.”
Being self-aware isn’t about discovering your deepest darkest secrets or motivations. Instead, developing your self-awareness is about understanding what makes you tick. This includes your reactions to specific events, challenges, and people.
Having a high degree of self-awareness will enable you to:
- Make sense of your emotions quickly and accurately
- Increase your ability to tolerate uncomfortable and negative feelings/emotions
In my opinion, the most important thing to know about self-awareness is, as Drs. Bradberry and Greaves say that
“...simply thinking about it improves the skill, even though much of your focus initially tends to be on what you do wrong. Having self-awareness means you aren’t afraid of your emotional “mistakes”. They tell you what you should be doing differently and provide a steady stream of information you need to understand as your life unfolds.”
Self-Management
Self-management, on the other hand, is,
“...what happens when you act—or do not act. It’s your ability to use your awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and direct your behavior positively.”
How? Managing your emotional reactions to situations and people is made possible only once you're self-aware.
Self-management is also more than resisting explosive or problematic behavior. The real challenge lies in managing one's tendencies over time and applying one's skills in many different situations.
As Drs. Bradberry and Greaves say,
“Real results come from putting your momentary needs on hold to pursue larger, more important goals. The realization of such goals is often delayed, meaning that your commitment to self-management will be tested over and over again. Those who manage themselves the best are able to see things through without cracking. Success comes to those who can put their needs on hold and continually manage their tendencies.”
ACTION
As we continue to cover the four emotional intelligence skills, you can do two things to get even more out of the information:
- Buy the book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 wherever you can find books.
- Take the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal (I think it is $59 or for FREE when you buy the book) to get a full picture of where you currently are in each skill.
Called exists for this: Evangelize By Community.
We do so by empowering ministry leaders like you to build thriving groups and communities in 3 key ways:
- Building digital tools that enable effective communication, organization, and conversation all in one place. Download Called today (Apple Store or Google Play)
- Providing education on best practices for leadership, building communities, and using technology. Follow us on Linkedin.
- We connect leaders with leaders to share and learn from each other about what works and doesn’t work via our leader's community on Called.