Improve Your Emotional Intelligence to Communicate Better

Improve Your Emotional Intelligence to Communicate More Effectively

Contributed by: Curtis Newbold, PhD

Difficulty level: Easy

You’ve got all the smarts, credentials, experience, and accolades to qualify you for the project and job, but do you understand emotions well enough to actually succeed? Does your emotional intelligence make you a better communicator and, by association, better at building relationships, closing deals, and leading people? These are curious questions that beg for answers. Let’s dive in!

Emotional intelligence (EQ) became a popular buzzword in the late 1990s after Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ made its mark on all the national bestseller lists. Since that time, professionals around the globe have been trying to master its principles. But what is emotional intelligence, really? And can it be taught, practiced, and learned?

Yes! Let’s start with an example to get us warmed up:

It’s late afternoon and Ethan’s boss begins to deliver feedback on a project for a client he’s poured his heart and soul into over the past month. He’s proud of his work. He’s invested a great deal of time and expertise, and he feels he pushed the project to creative and innovative heights that will greatly benefit the company and the client. But to his alarm, his boss, Sylvia, doesn’t seem pleased. She draws attention to gaps in research, notes inconsistencies in strategic processes, and points to typographical and design errors in ...