How much you know may get you the job but what you do will determine your success. What and how you do what you do is greatly dependent upon how you do it. How we behave (what we do) is determined, in large part, by Self Management (how we manage our emotional self), one of the four pillars of Emotional Intelligence.
Self- Management seems simple enough. You just manage the way you act, right? Well, yes and no. You do manage the way you act, but what and how you do it determines your success.
While there may be other aspects to Self-Management, it is the management of emotions on which I want to focus. Reuven Bar-On, a pioneer in the Emotional Intelligence field suggests that there are six, key, emotional skills that impact effective self-management:
Assertiveness
Independent Thinking
Self-Actualization
Stress Tolerance
Impulse Control
Flexibility
A brief explanation of each will be valuable to those who are interested in honing their emotional skills.
Assertiveness – the ability to express and defend you feelings, beliefs, and thoughts and be able to defend the same in a positive way.
Assertiveness has two important parts: 1.) knowing what you feel, believe and think and 2.) being able to defend them, positively.
Knowing what you feel, believe, and think requires Self-Awareness (another of the four pillars of Emotional Intelligence). To be assertive, you actually have to know yourself and be clear about what you believe, think and feel. It is when you are not clear that assertiveness becomes aggressiveness.
Defending what you feel, believe and think requires courage and empathy. You must have courage to say what you believe feel and think but you must be able to say it in a positive way that can be accepted by others.
Independent Thinking – the ability to think for yourself without being unduly influenced by others.
Independent thinking, like assertiveness requires courage. It also requires self-confidence. Being confident in your decisions is, almost always, a prerequisite to independent thinking.
Self-Actualization – the becoming all of which you are capable.
Few people want to be less than they can. Yet, few believe it is within them to do so. Often, you see and hear people playing the “blame game,” blaming other people and things for their inability to maximize their talents, skills and knowledge. A person skilled at Self-Management will find a way to release their abilities and not only maximize it but leverage it.
Stress Tolerance - the ability to adsorb adverse events and stressful situations without experiencing physical and psychological setbacks.
Our environment is full of stress. Some environments are more stressful than others. Those skilled in the tolerance of stress know what brings stress, what the results of stress are and how to mitigate the negative impacts of it.
Impulse Control – the ability to resist or mitigate negative actions brought about by people or events
Know what “sets you off.” Guard against those people and things that do. If that is not possible, visualize yourself responding to negative people and events in a positive way. See yourself responding but in a thoughtful and positive way that is not an emotional reaction.
Flexibility – the ability to adjust your thoughts, feelings and behavior to changing situations in a positive way.
Flexible people are often described as calm, thoughtful, accommodating, supportive, and compromising. They are not weak or “wishy-washy.” They want and work to meet the needs of others as long as it does not compromise the success of the team or organization.
Few people are masterful at all six of these Self-Management tools. If you want to target one or all of these skills, my suggestion is to seek a coach that is knowledgeable and competent in the Emotional competency field and work with them specifically to become a Self-Management master.
No comments:
Post a Comment