EQ –in- Action; Skills in Emotional Intelligence
By learning, growing and expanding your Emotional Intelligence competencies and deploying the same, you can increase the chances of a work life that’s more meaningful and enjoyable.
At this juncture, let’s look further into more concepts and competences within the EQ model that can aid in improving motivation levels at work. For the purpose of this discuss, we’ll simply focus on four items:
§ Engage Intrinsic Motivation
§ Own your progress
§ Take control of your emotions
§ Adjust your expectations
Engage Intrinsic Motivation: Your happiness is your sole responsibility. And this includes both within and outside of work. So rather than focus on how a certain business is so underserving of you and consequently [and incessantly] exploring and dispensing toxic emotions, you could choose to look for and focus on the positives in the midst of the chaos. Engaging Intrinsic Motivation is an EQ competency that helps you engage internal drivers to take risks and persevere where the going is tough. Intrinsic motivation brings the realization that there exists learning points to glean in any difficult situation. Where this is not readily evident, you can talk to someone who perhaps isn’t as ‘pissed’ with the system as yourself but is perhaps producing substantial/impressive results. Engaging Intrinsic Motivation will ultimately propel your love for the job, your contribution on the job, your enthusiasm, going the extra mile and even spreading optimism.
Own your progress: As mentioned prior, organizations often falter. They may not provide you with that perfect environment that you want or one that you truly deserve. Regardless, you owe it to yourself [and to your career progress] to make the most of your experiences and any opportunity your current job offers you. You spend most of your waking moment at work so you may as well make the most of it. Putting yourself in the bad book of people on account of your tasteless disposition and reaction to workplace issues is harmful to yourself and your future – not to the organization.
Job opportunities may be scarce but if you somehow set yourself apart with consistency and self-motivation you have a greater chance of moving ahead faster. I have worked with three employers in my paid employment days. Even after my exit from those organizations, all three of them at different points reached out to me to return to the business or to work in executing some projects. It’s the kind of reputation you want to leave for yourself not the contrary.
Take control of your emotions: ‘Know Yourself’ is the very first pursuit in the 6-seconds EQ Model. Within this is an important competency known as ‘Emotional Literacy’. This is the competency you require to notice, name and understand feelings which consequently gives you an insight into core drivers of your behavior. Another complimentary competency: ‘Recognize Patterns’ helps you to understand the recurring patterns in your behavior. Gaining full control of these competences helps you respond carefully in making optimal choices for a given situation as opposed to following your default and/or autopilot ‘configuration’. For example when an affected employee displays unrestrained passive aggressive behavior in reaction to a systemic problem, it is proof that they do not have self-mastery; that they’re not observant of their default behavior and are therefore unable to check much less proactively deal with the issue at hand.
In a similar vein, it might help to also consider your tolerance and/or anger thresholds with a view to adjusting those where work place conflict situations are concerned. Your goal is to consistently project yourself as that astute professional who’s in absolute control of her emotions; intelligent with feelings and can adequately navigate her emotions as a strategic resource for advancement in the work place.
Adjust Your Expectations: Inefficiency and ineffectiveness in any shape and ramification are huge turn offs for me. Perhaps on account of this, I experienced a high attrition rate with a cadre of employees – drivers to be precise. It took a chance repeat evaluation of the S.P.E.A.R assessment to reveal the fact that I had held unto a significant level of unrealistic expectation with respect to certain relationships – especially with respect to my drivers. I had to make some adjustments in this regard. The result of the adjustments on my stress levels was really impressive.
It is very important to be realistic with expectations in the work place. Either it is with respect to allocation of resources – human or material. This will do a whole lot of good to one’s sanity whilst fostering the channeling of energy where it matters most namely toward innovation, creativity and critical thinking endeavors.
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