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HsuanHua
Seattle Business Coach / Seattle Leadership Coach / Seattle Personal Coach
Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
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Growing Your Business by Growing Your Emotional Intelligence
Want to grow your business? Know anything about Emotional intelligence? Yes. They might be related!
Written Mar 21, 2008, read 349 times since then.
For small business owners, an important job is to constantly attract clients. It takes self discipline, self confidence, self awareness and relationships. That’s where Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays a role.
Daniel Goleman defined EI as follows
- Self-awareness: our ability to know our own emotions and their impact to our behaviors.
- Self-management: our ability to control our emotions; especially under stress.
- Social awareness: our ability to sense, understand and react to other’s emotions.
- Relationship management: our ability to inspire, influence and develop others.
When we were born, our EI started to be developed . It's impacted when our needs were met or not met, when our family was at peace or not at peace, when our environment was safe or not safe, etc. We perceived all of the things and people around us, learned to interpret them and cope with them, and formed the best way we knew to protect ourselves emotionally.
Therefore, some people are very self-reliant since they felt they couldn’t trust others from a very young age. Some people can trust better since they had good experience from trusting others. Some people stay in a non-working relationship longer than they should because they didn’t learn how to set the boundary. Some people see “half cup full” and some see “half cup empty” in the same situation. Emotions (anger, anxiety, fear, shame, joy and love) drive us to do certain things or not to do certain things.
People with high EI can grow their business better since they have good self-awareness. They know how to motivate and discipline themselves. When their emotions are triggered, they know how to manage the emotions instead of being emotional hijacked. They have clear mind to make decisions when under stress. When they are with others, they can tune in other’s experience and build report. They have self-confidence and don’t spend too much time and energy to prove to others or doubt about themselves. They have compassion about people and build good relationships easily. When they are in relationships, they know when to trust, when to lead, when to let others lead and when to resign. They create win-win in relationships.
Are you one of them? If you are not sure, it’s time to reflect and be an observer of yourself.
The good news is that EI can be improved through training. It takes time, practice and support.
Only when you know where you are at with your EI, you know what area to improve upon. So, first of all, you need to know your EI by self observation or by taking an assessment. And then, you can design a plan to improve the area(s) that needs growth. It’s like to look at the mirror and decide which part of the body you want to improve and design the exercise to do it.
When you grow your EI, your business will grow accordingly since you know how to move forward without being stopped by your emotions.
The research on EI has exploded since the mid 1990’s and continue to grow and be refined. There are a lot of literature published.
A few good books to read on EI are
1. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman
2. Learning in Relationship: Foundation for Personal and Professional Success by Ronald R Short.
3. Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence by Dainel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee
4. Parenting From the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel
5. The Mindful Brain by Daniel Siegel
Learn more about the author, Hsuan-Hua Chang, PCC, MS.
Comment on this article
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Posted by Hsuan-Hua Chang, PCC, MS, Seattle, Washington | Mar 24, 2008 -
Posted by Jessica "Superball&quo..., Seattle, Washington | Mar 25, 2008I found this useful in light of my work on myself in regard to jealousy and insecurity. Are there any free online assessments I could do to determine my EI, sort of like the ones for IQ?
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Posted by Hsuan-Hua Chang, PCC, MS, Seattle, Washington | Mar 25, 2008
I haven't found free ones. I did a cheap one ($35) and it gave me very little information. The one I am certified to do is EQ profile. That was designed by a local company www.learninginaction.com. It provided a very rich set of information with 20-page report. I highly recommend it.
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Posted by Hsuan-Hua Chang, PCC, MS, Seattle, Washington | Mar 25, 2008
I got an inquiry that if leadership can be learned. I would say "yes". I was in Leadership Coaching program in Georgetown University last year to sharpen my leadership coaching skills.
Not only did I learn to coach leaders in various domains, I also became a stronger leader. It took a lot of self-observations, reflections and practices. It's the same process as growing EI.
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Posted by Melissa Wadsworth, Seattle, Washington | Mar 26, 2008Hsuanhua, this article is a great reminder that we're not just growing our businesses. To be our most effective, we are also developing ourselves to be more aware, emphathetic and generous in our relationships with others. I also, love Daniel Goleman's book "Social Intelligence." I lead dream board seminars so participants can actually see the person they want to be in the world and what they want to do and accomplish. This seems to help keep them focused on acting in a way that is in sync with their business goals, while being a fun inspirational visual they can reflect on daily.
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Posted by Kelleen Griffin, Seattle, Washington | Apr 09, 2008Hi there,
Just a quick comment on whether leadership can be learned. Recently, read the book Leadership, the Annapolis Way. The Naval Academy is one of the outstanding institutions predicated on the belief that leadership can be learned. The book reads like a how-to and is very focused on Navy experience, which means that some of the cross-over attempts into the corporate world, etc. are a bit weak. I'm a 20 year veteran of the corporate world and found much in this book that has the potential to help clients. One example that I think is particularly useful: first learn to be a follower. How 'bout that for some cool insight? Followership has been around for awhile but they do it justice in this book. Good read, highly recommend it.
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Posted by Hsuan-Hua Chang, PCC, MS, Seattle, Washington | Apr 09, 2008
Kelleen,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and the book. I will check the book out. The leader I am at work is to create team work to accomplish tasks. It takes a lot of listening, following and giving credits to the team members. Team works well when situational leaders take turn to be in charge and others can follow and cooperate. Learning to be a follower is critical!
HsuanHua
Article tags
- business growth
- grow business
- emotional intelligence
- self-awareness
- relationships
- self-confidence
- training
- personal development
Hsuan-Hua's other articles
- Growing Your Business by Learning in Action
- Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say - about Your Business
- Five C's in Success
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