Five Components of Emotional Intelligence
In Daniel Golman’s article, “What Makes a Leader”, Golman argues the importance of “emotional intelligence” similar to the need for IQ intelligence or technical skills. Golman describes five components that make up the concept of someone being emotionally intelligent. These areas include: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill. For me, the area I feel is the most significant challenge for me is: self-regulation.
Self-Regulation
Self-regulation is defined by Golman as, “the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods”. Golman notes that our emotions and responses to situations are biologic responses that we cannot necessarily help… however, Golman notes we can manage them. Managing these responses and emotions is key in self-regulation. As Golman calls it, when we succumb to these responses without controlling them, we are “prisoners of our feelings”. The concept of self-regulation pairs well with a concept discussed in another tab on this website, “concept”, the concept of “assuming positive intent”. Golamn utilizes an example of an executive who observes a team of his employees present a problematic analysis to the board of directors. Golman notes that the executive may find himself angry or upset and wanting to display his anger physically or by going to the team and yelling at them. Alternatively, the executive could sit in angered silence, but with the “gift of self-regulation”, as Golman notes, a different approach can be had, a more positive one. With self-regulation, the executive could take a moment to acknowledge the failure but think about whether it was done intentionally or not. By doing this he would be engaging in assuming positive intent! The executive can explore what may have caused the failure, be it personal reasons on behalf of the employees or for some other reason. But by self-regulation, instead of jumping to conclusions, he can assume positive intent and explore the issue and figure out what can mitigate the problem in the first place.
In the “concepts” section of this website, I explored two concepts that have had the biggest impact on me, the biggest among the two was “assuming positive intent”. For this reason and the significant parallels between this concept and self-regulation, this is one area of challenge for me and one that I am actively pursuing to improve. Additionally, over the course of my self-evaluation journey that has recently begun as a result of my returning to school after five years since my undergraduate career, I have found my abilities in self-care are lacking which in turn directly effect my abilities to self-regulate. My first two years in the field of social work were riddled with excitement of having an actual job getting paid much better than some of the low-income type jobs I had before. I also was quite excited to put my new degree to good use and felt I had this invisible cape on my back that I was going to save everyone I worked with. After almost a full two years, this vision faded significantly. After completing many late night shifts, holiday and weekend on-call hours and what seemed like endless caseloads, I found myself “burned out”. It had only been two years and seemed such a short amount of time to be experiencing such a thing. But I found that I was not self-caring appropriately and my self-regulation needed serious improvement. I had poured all of my energy into the families I worked with only to be met with disappointment when the another removal had to occur or when a child could not reunify with his/her parents. At the time, it felt like my only option was to find other employment. There were other contributors to my leave including benefits, pay and given the hours, I was limited in the time I could spend with my family. But had I taken the time to understand self-care better and learned to self-regulate better, I may had lasted longer or, I may not had left with such a sour taste in my mouth.
After two and a half years in child welfare, I found myself moving to a different part of the field, but still within the child welfare sector. Little did I know at the time that I would run into similar issues that would lead me to the conclusion of the need for the improvement of my overall self-regulation. I must note, at this next job, which is also my current place of employment, my hours are much better and I am paid hourly as opposed to salary which has made coping with the high stresses of social work much more feasible. However, I continue to find myself in situations thinking there has to be a better way to cope or handle the situations. No matter what area in social work one works in, some form of stress or conflict will be present along the way. Self-regulation has truly been a learning curve for as I have a tendency to overwork myself and not take the time to really put thought into certain situations. I primarily notice this during times of conflict.
In times of conflict, I have a difficult time “separating people from emotion”, moreover, I have difficulty ascertaining when other people are trying to be productive in there criticisms or voicing of their conflict or if they are being vindictive. Unfortunately, I have experienced both sides, which I feel contribute to my defensive feelings. As a result, I can sometimes be impulsive in my responses to conflict situations, as opposed to assessing my feelings and assuming positive intent. If in these past situations, I assumed positive intent and evaluated the situations prior to responding off of emotion, my results and overall feelings would yield more positive results. Instead, I walk away feeling ashamed of my impulsive response and a feeling of not being productive. In some cases, I may leave the other people involved feeling defensive or confused. In speaking of others involved in these situations, Golman notes leaders who partake in self-regulation “can create and environment of trust and fairness”. As a social worker and leader, I want to create open environments for those I work with day-to-day to feel comfortable and feel as though they can trust in my abilities to be fair. However, in the course of my learning, I have found that I cannot foster an environment of trust and fairness without proper self-regulation.
Moving forward as I progress in my endeavors, I have explored plans to foster growth in this area. First, given my need for improvement in the area of self-care, this is the place I plan to start. As discussed elsewhere on this website, I explored the concept of mindfulness as a new activity for self-care. What I learned about mindfulness is when done so properly, one can become increasingly self-aware and “be in the moment”, furthermore, mindfulness allows for time for self-reflection and regrouping. BY continual practicing of these concepts I can create a solid base that can allow me to practice self-regulation. Also, re-framing my thought processes to be more positive in thought, reiterating the idea of assuming positive intent, can also over time be beneficial for me.
References:
file:///C:/Users/house/Downloads/What%20Makes%20a%20Leader.pdf
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