Goleman discusses four dimensions of Emotional Intelligence in the
article Leadership that Gets Results which
are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social skills. Each of these dimensions is defined by a set
of competencies (Goleman, 2000).
Interestingly enough, Goleman tells us that women are better at demonstrating
empathetic emotions and have a stronger ability in handling relationships. I personally am very empathetic and generally
can feel what others are feeling. I also
am overwhelmingly compassionate and sometimes feel that this can sometimes
hinder my intellectual judgment because I can become overcome by sentiment. I think because of my natural tendencies
towards intuitive thinking and empathetic behaviors that I have a significant
amount of general emotional intelligence on a social level but not necessarily
on an internal level. Boyatzis and McKee
separate these 4 domains into two groups (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005). The first two domains self-awareness and
self-management, determine how well we can manage, not only ourselves, but our
emotions as well. The second group
encompasses social-awareness and relationship management (or what Goleman
labels social skills), and characterizes how well we manage other people’s
emotions, how we build relationships and how we interact in different social
settings. Oddly enough, I’m better at
reading and dealing with other people then reading myself and dealing with my
emotions. I have very little
self-awareness and tend to be completely disconnected with my own emotions. Also, I am not very adept at dealing with and
managing my own emotions, and find that I am easily overcome by my emotions and
have a hard time rationalizing my feelings when for example, I become heated,
angry or distressed. I believe that I
need to strengthen my self-awareness and self-management to have a more
balanced control of my emotional intelligence.
Some of the competencies that I could improve on are self-confidence,
accurate self-assessment, emotional self-awareness, optimism and self-control (Goleman, 2000).
While I have lacked in self-awareness and self-management, I have
triumphed in my social awareness and social skills, these of which have allowed
me to achieve more success in the workplace. A lot of my success is due to working in the
service industry. I have very strong
customer service skills and have had years of experience dealing with every
type of person. This exposure has
allowed me to become very flexible when working with people. Because of my strong empathetic skills, I have
strong relationship building skills and am a great collaborator and team-player,
which makes me easy to work with.
I think a great starting point to begin strengthening my inner
awareness would be to do self-assessments on a regular basis. This type of exercise would force me to start
looking internally and see what is going inside.
References
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