Recently, I embarked on an Emotional Intelligence (EQ) journey and discovered, that although I am a well-rounded person, there was lots of room for EQ growth and development.  I learned about the set of skills that are rooted in my emotions that could help me to manage myself effectively and to build and manage my relationships around me. I am so grateful I took the time to see my blind spots and in turn, I have mastered EQ techniques and skills that are most certainly helping me to flourish. I am getting better at being me.

I love the Mygrow CEO, Mark Baker’s definition for EQ: “I t is a set of skills that make people great at managing themselves and interacting with others, leading to more effective leadership, relationships, stress management, decision making, productivity and individual well-being .”

Emotional Intelligence is key to dealing with daily stress, relationships and decisions. It leads to an increase in happiness, well-being and we will flourish in almost every aspect of life because of it. It also leads to far more productive working environments and higher success rates.

Here are some interesting EQ statistics:

• In 2002, Bradberry noted that staff who developed their EQ were 25% more productive and when the entire team developed their EQ it improved the group cohesion and job performance
• He also found that people in all levels of management (from line supervisors to senior executives) with a high level of EQ, were 20% more productive than leaders with a low level of EQ
• In 1999, McClelland discovered that the leaders who had high levels of EQ outperformed their targets by more than 15% and the leaders who had low levels of EQ were found to have missed their targets by 15%
• In 1996, Pesuric & Byham proved, within a manufacturing plant, that the supervisors who were high in various EQ competencies reduced their lost-time accidents by 50% and the formal grievances were reduced

One of the aspects that I needed to work on most was my self-perception. I learned about all the aspects of self-regard and it changed my life completely. It begged me to learn how to respect myself while I accept and understand my strengths and weaknesses and the associated feelings of inner strength and self-confidence.

Then I learned about self-actualization. The willingness to persistently try to improve me and to engage in the pursuit of personally relevant and meaningful objectives that could lead to a rich and enjoyable life. The workaround emotional self-awareness changed my life the most, recognising and understanding my own emotions. I had to develop the ability to differentiate between subtleties in my own emotions while understanding the cause of these emotions and the impact they have on my thoughts and actions, and those of others.

In this day and age, it is critical that we differentiate ourselves from the rest. One way of doing it successfully is to invest in emotional intelligence (EQ) development. You can develop your EQ on your own or you can develop the entire team or organisation’s EQ collectively. It produces much more powerful results.

With EQ you can replace awkward and restricted behaviour with new skills that allow you to grow, develop and flourish. When you flourish you are flexible with self-regard, you can express your self emotionally with self-awareness and you can solve problems and test reality with assertiveness.

Through the Valueneurs platform, ByMarriet can offer personal and business-team EQ assessments to get the ball rolling. The return on investment will be priceless.

Connect further with ByMarriet on our Valueneurs platform.

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