Use these powerful skills to increase your emotional intelligence skills. Your IQ is your IQ. It is not something that has as a direct impact as your EQ (emotional quotient). Each unique person has three parts to them:

1. Personality traits (temperament)

2. IQ

3. EQ

Personal Development has two areas of development that have a huge impact on personal competence and social competence.

Why increase your emotional intelligence score?

1. Triggers

2. Working with others.

Triggers

Triggers are always going to exist. It is important to be aware of your triggers and navigate them.

Working with others

Others will always exist. Even working remotely in a pandemic, does not eliminate working with others. We can prepare our self to work in any environment and have our relationships with others thrive.

Building the case for the need for high emotional intelligence skills.

So if triggers and working with others will always exist, then it is worth investing our time to to help navigate the complexities that come along with both.

Have you discovered what is in common about both 1 and 2 listed above? The answer is that you do not have complete control over either. I would venture to say in most cases you have very little to no control of either.

Do you believe this statement? With high emotional intelligence skills you have "the upper hand" no matter the trigger or no matter the person you are working with. This statement is true and I can show you how. I will show you what I did and what a do (continuous learning) to succeed! Living this way helps you live by designed behavior, not fall victim to default behavior.

Many of the people I talk to and teach want to exercise more control in their life. Emotional intelligence skills are a necessary part of our life skills tools. It is somewhat apparent when our skills our high. People just know there is something about you when triggers arise or dealing with toxic people. But... I can tell you it is blaring and glaring when your emotional intelligence skills are low! People are repelled by your behavior, people must walk on egg shells, people do not want to entrust you or involve you. People are unsure how you will behave, because you are unsure on how you will behave. With low emotional intelligence skills your behavior will seem random. Frankly because when you have low emotional intelligence your behavior is random. The only predictor becomes your mood at that moment. This is considered unstable behavior and it can lead to a miserable existence for your and others around you. We have learned to accept this behavior from toddlers, but this behavior is unacceptable for adults.

Working on increasing your emotional intelligence skills

Let's break down " emotional intelligence skills" into bite-size doable chunks to see quicker results in your life.

Two categories

1. Personal Competence

2. Social Competence

Personal Competence

The collective power of your self-awareness and self-management skills. It's how you use emotional intelligence in situations that are more about you privately.

Personal competence has two categories

1. Self-awareness - Your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen. This includes keeping on top of how you tend to respond to specific situations and certain people.

2. Self-Management - Your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behavior. This means managing your emotional reactions to all situations and people.

Social Competence

The combination of your social awareness and relationship management skills. It's more about how you are with other people.

Social competence has two categories

1. Your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and get what is really going on. This often means understanding what other people are thinking and feeling, even if you don't feel the same way.

2. Your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the emotions of others to manage interactions successfully. Letting emotional awareness guide clear communication and effective handling of conflict

Steps to improve your emotional intelligence skills

1. Rank the categories 1-4. 4 most developed to 1 least developed. Use each number once for each category.

2. Benchmark your current emotional intelligence score - take an assessment.

3. Take the lowest scored category and be intentional on applying skills to improve that category.

4. Repeat step three with the next category.

Want a quick way to raise your score 5 points?

Jump start your EQ score with the Emotional Intelligence Skills Booster. 15 minutes each day, anytime of the day to elevate your score by applying the skills learned each day. These simple assignments will help each person apply these skills that will help you gain more control in your life.