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Self Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

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Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

If you read the, first article in this series, you may be attending to the assumptions that frame written and spoken communications and beginning to come to your own conclusions about their validity for you.,  In Daniel Goleman’s article in the New Yorker on 7th April, previously introduced, he identifies four qualities which he believes assist people in business.

The first recommended attribute is Self Awareness. Goleman describes the qualities of this as:

  1. “Realistic self-confidence: You understand your own strengths and, limitations; you operate from competence and know when to rely on someone, else on the team.
  2. Emotional insight: You understand your feelings. Being aware of what, makes you angry, for instance, can help you manage that anger”.

Self awareness means different things to different people and so do the associated ideas proposed by Goleman. He describes the results of realistic self-confidence above, but how do you know when you are doing that?

Gathering Information

You can compare your own knowledge and intentions with what is taking place in your environment. Then you can gather additional information and take action to support or change the situation.

Is competence a feeling of knowing what you are doing and if so, is that sufficient? If you are competent at doing something or taking charge of something, there will be evidence in the world that you can see and hear and point out to anyone who asks.

That is one component of self-awareness.

There is another aspect to knowing when you are competent. Are you relying on external validation from other people or the credentials you hold? These have their uses; minimally, they allow you to perform your function with enough latitude to become good at it.

Optimally, if you have the endorsement of a discerning expert in your field, you may be able to incorporate some of their standards in your yardstick for competence.

“The most reliable standard for competence is the product of your own research and experience.”

When you discover what you require of yourself when performing competently, with reference to your own values as well as criteria for competence that you have identified, you can answer fluently and confidently if asked ‘What are you doing that for?’

Clear Values And Self-awareness

To back up further, self-awareness is supported by knowing your own values. Most people run values at the back of their minds and have difficulty articulating what prompted them to take a particular course of action. When you interact with members of different cultures, either through travel or living in a multi-cultural context, different assumptions about proper behaviour bring some of your own assumptions to awareness.

You can identify values you hold by asking yourself what keeps you in your present job/home/car or other ongoing context. This applies whether your initial response is satisfaction or dislike. Another clue is accessible when you think you should do or not do something, but your inclination is the opposite.

If you explore your inclination, there is probably a value supporting it which is more important to you and further from your awareness than the value associated with the should.

And backing up even further, if you become aware of how you are using your attention in the moment, whether it is all or partly on your internal experience or the outside world at any you can alter the direction and quality to facilitate your thinking and interactions. Awareness of how your attention functions, allows you to access your presupposed values via your low level internal responses to others’ actions and your own and others’ expectations.

When you have these resources readily available to you, Goleman’s criteria for self-awareness will be a natural part of your repertoire.

The next article in this series is on Self Management.

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about  NLP and Emotional Intelligence you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

Related articles

Learn more about NLP, read our Ultimate NLP Compendium of NLP

If you found this article useful, share it!, 

Becoming emotionally intelligent In business

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Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

from NYT Education Life (7th April 2015)

On 7th April 2015 you could have read a short piece about Daniel Goleman’s criteria for emotional intelligence applied to business or the work environment. It gives a list of four recommended attributes for attending and behaving while at work.

In the article, these attributes are described briefly and attributed to those people in leadership positions who are thought to be particularly able. As is often the case with short pieces taken out of context on what you ‘should’ develop to enhance your success in something, there is no clear instruction given, though Goleman’s definitions are sufficiently descriptive to allow you to draw on your own experience to make meaning.

The four attributes are, and I quote:

  1. “Self awareness
  2. Self management
  3. Empathy
  4. Relationship skills”.

“The, four, attributes of Emotional Intelligence: Self awareness, Self management, Empathy, Relationship skills.”

Before we consider what these concepts mean and how to acquire or enhance them, there are questions worth raising.

The original article is based on the assumption that you want to demonstrate qualities associated with leadership, progress, success and by extension, reap social approval. You probably do, but not necessarily, so these are questions to bring you awareness of exercising your choice and agency.

Does the idea of embodying this class of quality appeal to you, personally? Does it fit and enhance your own concept of who you are and who you want to become? Might you have been subscribing to assumed ideas about what is appropriate and useful in society and business without noticing? Would you like to be more aware of frames offered to you by others so you can choose the ones you want, knowingly?

Whatever your answers, you might want to read on in case some of the qualities themselves appeal to you. They could assist your endeavours in contexts outside work, too.

What We Have In Store For You

Over the coming days we shall explore each of the four attributes with reference to the frames and assumptions that promote them. Then, for the ones you choose, you can learn how to acquire, enhance and personalise them in keeping with your own values and preferences. If you find some of them worthwhile, you will derive far more utility from them when you know what you are choosing them for and how you anticipate their functioning in your own life.

Bringing new qualities to life and giving existing but previously unnoticed qualities some discerning attention, provides you with your own frames for applying them in the world and the capacity to notice what frames are being offered to you by others.

We live in a world of frames ranging from That is OK, that is not OK to This is how we behave and think at work to This is how we behave at a weddings to This is how we think about other people to This is how we are supposed to think about other people.

Start to notice what is being assumed in pieces of writing and in familiar contexts and what is being assumed in different places in your world will begin to become more noticeable. How much of it can you influence with your choices when you have that awareness?

In the next article, we shall consider Self Awareness as described by Goleman, what else it could be and how to develop and apply all or parts of it.

By Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

  1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
  2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
  3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
  4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
  5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

(Note: If you would like to learn more about NLP and Emotional Intelligence you can get a copy of  our latest Kindle book ‘AEGIS: Patterns for extending your reach in life, work & leisure’ by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer. For only $4.99 here).

Related articles

Learn more about NLP, read our Ultimate NLP Compendium of NLP

If you found this article useful, share it!