Build and sustain positive relationships by developing your emotional intelligence.

By attending a one-day training course – Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in the Workplace from pdtraining available in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and other cities, you can begin to understand and use emotional intelligence.

The following four steps provide the path to increasing your ability to self-manage in any situation.

Self-Awareness

Being ‘aware’ of one’s self is the ability to accurately perceive one’s skills and knowledge, value and responsibilities. It is being confident in what you have to offer, whether it is personally or professionally.

Self-awareness is not only important for one’s self-esteem, but it is also the first step to the process of full acceptance or change.

Without understanding why one thinks the way he thinks or why he acts the way he acts, he may never fully appreciate himself or see the importance of making changes to improve him, if necessary. Self-awareness gives power and a sense of peace or happiness. This newly found strength will more than likely carry over into your work life, how you perform your duties as well as how you interact with others.

The lack of self-awareness can cause you to not realise your worth in the company or even the quality of the work you perform. This can have an even more dramatic effect when you hold a leadership position. Not only will you have doubts about yourself, but the people you lead in Sydney will also begin to question your competence, which could ultimately lead to a lack of leadership effectiveness.

Self-Regulation

Self-Regulation is another term for ‘self-control’, which is defined as the ability to control one’s emotions, desires, and behaviors in order to reach a positive outcome. Self-regulation is sometimes difficult because of the phenomenon that it is important to ‘express how you feel’.

While this may be partially true, the art to finding the balance between expressing one’s feelings and avoiding unnecessary tension is self-regulation.

Self-Regulation is a direct reflection of the type of pressure one is experiencing. There are three types of internal pressures:

1. Good Pressure: This type of pressure is the result of an aggressive yet non-critical and non-harmful atmosphere. One aspires to be like the people around them. This motivation leads to the acquisition of self-regulation.
2. Bad Pressure: Bad pressure is the when the atmosphere is critical and harmful. One has no motivation and loses self-regulation.
3. No Pressure: When one is not experiencing any pressure, they tend to act based on emotion, since there is no one to compare themselves to.

Self-Motivation

Self-motivation is an essential part of excelling at life. You must learn to motivate yourself because you cannot depend on others to do it for you. You have to know how to encourage yourself regardless of how bad the situation.

There are several keys to building self-motivation:

• Work towards a cause.
• Don’t compare yourself to others.
• Make the conscious effort to not give up.
• Don’t live in your past failures or successes.
• Utilise positive thinking.

There are times when you may need motivation to get motivated. Positive thinking may not be doing the trick. What should you do? Consider these suggestions:

• Write down your plan for improvement.
• Briefly think about your past successes.
• Read books that promote self-motivation.

Empathy

Empathy is sharing in the feelings of others, whether joy or sadness is an admirable trait. In order for empathy to work, a person must first be able to recognise, classify, and understand their own feelings.

Empathy is most useful when the one empathising has experienced a variety of feelings.

For example, the boss who was once passed over for a promotion generally finds it easier to identify with another person who is passed over for a promotion. Not only is this comforting for the person who is going through the situation, but it’s also good for empathiser because it strengthens their ability to positively react to negative situations.

It is not as simple as it sounds.

The ideal situation would be for a person to express their issues and you empathise with them, but the fact is, people aren’t always as forthcoming with their problems, even though it is obvious that there is something wrong.

Since this is the case, you may be forced to ask probing questions or read between the lines of what is said. You can also focus on non-verbal cues such as body language.