Increasing Your Emotional Intelligence: More Self-Awareness
Daniel Goleman’s model of Emotional Intelligence contains many competencies. So where do we start?
There are a few different models of Emotional Intelligence (EI) out there. When I show Goleman’s model (above) to groups or individuals that I work with, their attention is generally drawn towards the competencies associated with relationship management. Skills like ‘inspirational leadership’ and ‘mentorship’ just sound cool and are undoubtedly super useful to have when working in a team. However, attempts to utilize these skill sets will show up as hollow or disingenuous when they are not built upon a foundation of self and social awareness.
So, what is Step 2 when it comes to increasing your EI?
Step 2: More Self-Awareness
In step 1, we worked on expanding our emotional vocabulary. This is more of a head-centered exercise requiring us to think about how we are showing up at any given moment and what to call it. To add to our toolbox here, we will now move out of our heads and into our bodies.
Tuning into your body - What exactly are emotions anyway? The French and Latin origins of the word refer to ‘stirring up’ and ‘moving out’ of bodily sensations. From this perspective, our emotions are simply outward expressions of what we feel in our bodies. Research has shown that the bodily sensations associated with emotions are shared by humans across different regions and even different languages (Nummenmaa et al., 2013). Learning how to interpret the messages our bodies send us everyday is the next skill we will build in our journey to increased EI.
Give yourself a moment. Stop whatever you’re doing and turn your focus inward. It’s time for a body scan. Direct your attention to the top of your head and begin to slowly move your focus through your body all the way down to the bottom of your feet. This process can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes or more. My recommendation is to try to do it as slowly as you can without losing focus on the task.
As you shift your attention toward different parts of your body, notice the sensations (or the lack of sensation) in each area. Are the muscles in your forehead and jaw tight or loose? Do you feel hot or cold in your chest? How fast is your heart beating? Is your breathing shallow or deep? Does your stomach feel heavy or light? Try to check-in with your whole body and use adjectives like these to describe what you find.
During this exercise, you will likely tune in to certain areas of your body that feel especially comfortable or uncomfortable. This awareness is so valuable! This is your body telling you exactly what emotions are stirring up inside of you. If it is not obvious to you what your body is trying to tell you, check out the image below to get a sense of where different emotions show up in your body.
Participants were shown pictures of blank human bodies and asked, for each feeling, to color the regions where they experience changes during that feeling.
- Courtesy of Nummenmaa Lab
Now that you have a sense of what is happening in your body and what it means, you can use that information to figure out your best next move. For example, if your head and hands feel hot, your jaw is clenched, and your heart is racing, you might be angry. Perhaps you should pause before sending that email or walking into that meeting. On the other hand, if you scan your body and feel almost nothing, you notice your legs and arms feel heavy or cold, you may be experiencing sadness. Investigate that. Determine where it’s coming from and work with it.
Emotional expression is an important capacity for us humans. If done well, it leads to healthy relationships, productive conflict, and an increased capacity for empathy (perhaps the most important of all the EI competencies). The skills of expanding our emotional vocabulary (step 1) and tuning into our bodies (step 2) can help us accurately understand our own feelings and communicate our needs others.
These aspects of self-awareness form the foundation of EI, but there is an additional avenue to improve our self-awareness that many of us find much more challenging. Giving, receiving, and soliciting feedback will be our next topic of exploration. Now, imagine you are about to give or receive some constructive feedback. Check in with your body and see if there is anything it’s trying to tell you about your relationship with feedback. Can you name the emotions that come up?
Dan Miller is the founder of Fifth Pillar Consulting and believes that developing our emotional intelligence is a good idea.