Why Emotional Intelligence Controls Your Profits [782 Words]

There are five key elements to Emotional Intelligence:

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-regulation
3. Motivation
4. Empathy
5. Social skills

The more that you, as a leader, manager, salesperson, manage each of these areas, the more influential you are.

In 2011, researchers from the University of Texas & Kentucky found that real estate and insurance salespeople with higher Emotional Intelligence generate higher annual sales revenue and are better at retaining customers.

Many other studies have confirmed similar results.

Upping your EI could be a key differentiator in business success whether you are looking to increase sales, gain a promotion or simply increase your day to day resilience.

Here are some tips to increase your Emotional Intelligence:

Tip 1: Identify thoughts and feelings correctly.

When you name a thought as if it were a feeling, it robs you of the opportunity to get in touch with the emotional environment you are actually swimming in.

Unless you can ACCESS the feeling, you can’t ADDRESS the feeling

Mis-categorizing a thought as a feeling leads to more thoughts that intensify the feeling. This is an issue if you are dealing with something troubling.

This miscommunication robs you (and anyone listening) of accurate information on your emotional state.

How spot thoughts disguised as feelings:

Feelings accurately expressed have no filler words.

Emotional: “I feel happy/sad/mad.”

Physical: “I feel cold.”

Thoughts have qualifiers aka conjunctions: like, that, as if…

“I feel like an idiot.” – That’s a critical thought

“I feel that you’re deliberately trying to upset me.” – That’s a blaming thought

“I feel as if you’re in a hurry.”

These are thoughts disguised as feelings.

Differentiating between thoughts and feelings will give you a better chance of being understood and of understanding yourself. That’s self-awareness.

Tip 2: Manage your emotional scale

When you want to level up to a better feeling the first step is to experience the feeling. Suppress the feelings and chances are you will eventually feel worse.

The AGFLAP/CAP chart is a great guide for the natural evolution of emotions. There are 9 emotional categories that go from low energy or heaviness to high energy and lightness.

L O W   E N E R G Y :

Apathy – We feel dense, heavy, and see no way out, no one can help. We think we can’t do anything right, so we don’t do anything at all. Positive: It gives your body and mind time to rest.

Grief – Our thoughts revolve around pain and loss. We notice how much we hurt.

Positive: Time to process sadness and loss.

Fear – Our thoughts are about things going wrong or getting worse. We focus on how we’ll get hurt, what we may lose, and how we can protect those around us and ourselves. We project our concerns into our future.

Positive: A sign for you to prepare. Protection from genuine risks. Fear can mobilize you into action.

A great trick is to take your fear and mentally place it behind you, to clear your way forward.

Lust – A form of neediness, we hunger for money, power, sex, people, places and things, but with hesitation. It can feel very creepy.

Positive: Gives you clarity on what you desire. Approach your desires without emotional attachment and from a place of wholeness with nothing missing and lust transforms into motivation.

Anger – The sensations can be very intense and explosive

Our thoughts are about what we can do to get even and how we are going to make others pay.

Positive: They say don’t get sad, get mad because anger has energy behind it and can propel you to take action and course correct.

H I G H   E N E R G Y :

Pride – We want others to see how great we are to cover our nagging doubts about ourselves. Pride can show up as stubbornness, ego, being uncoachable and not willing to change.

Positive: Healthy pride gives you confidence, self esteem. It can be empowering to express healthy pride in our work, culture, history…
Courage – The willingness to overcome the limitations of the earlier emotions. We are more energized. People expect courage to feel good but the truth is that courage can feel disconcerting: You move forward despite the fear and uncertainty.

Acceptance – We enjoy everything as it is. We have no need to change anything. This is the opposite of resistance.

Peace – You feel a profound sense of connection to life, the universe and everything. All is whole and complete.

Awareness of this progression will help you assess your own and empathize with other people’s emotional states making for more skillful interpersonal communications.

Upping Emotional Intelligence could be the tipping point that helps you and your teams sell more, retain customers and increase profits.

I hope you agree that there is a lot to be gained from tapping into your EQ.