What is Emotional Intelligence and How do you Build it?
It's so much more than Empathy
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Listen on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
Chapters:
0:00 Cold Open
0:43 Show Intro
2:15 What is Emotional Intelligence?
20:15 What does emotional intelligence or the absence of it look like?
54:04 Can you be too emotionally intelligent?
55:57 How do you build more emotional intelligence?
59:49 Wrapup
What do you mean when you say Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?
I’m serious. When you say those words, what do you mean?
Your answer is probably hazy. That, or you reach for related terms (empathy, compassion) that don’t capture the full picture.
We love to talk about EQ, yet we rarely slow down enough to pin down exactly what we mean when we say it.
In today’s episode of No Clear Answers, Corey, Rikki and I talk everything Emotional Intelligence:
What emotional intelligence is and why it isn’t empathy
What it means to be emotionally regulated versus dysregulated
Why emotions are like crayons, and how you can build EQ by expanding your box of colors
What emotional intelligence, or a lack of it, looks like
Why having clear agreements around emotions is essential to inter-relational emotion intelligence
The the core skill of emotional intelligence is the capacity to be in conscious choice when emotions show up in yourself and others, versus being in automatic responses.
Each of us have different automatic responses to different emotions. Sometimes we go into avoidance and run away from them. Sometimes we let them have us and use their energy to try and “fix” the stimulus that’s causing the emotion (this is basically high-functioning emotional reactivity). Either way, these aren’t emotionally intelligent responses. They’re about making the emotion go away (which, p.s., doesn’t work) as opposed to being with the feeling and sourcing all of it’s intelligence.
Which is my definition of emotional intelligence: All emotions are intelligent. An emotionally intelligent person gets all of the intelligence their emotions have to offer.
So how do you come out of automatic responses? You have to feel those feelings!
You need to literally feel the physical sensations of emotions without making meaning about them. Notice if, as you feel them, your body wants to do something. Let it! This is called matching and helps move the energy through. Stomp your feet, cry, jump for joy.
Think of the process of feeling and matching like downloading a file from a computer. It helps you get all of the information. If you don’t, you only get part of the picture.
After feeling and matching, you can hold the wisdom the emotion has for you and choose what to do with it.
There’s another clip I couldn’t help but pull from the episode. If you ever wondered how emotions are like crayons, you’ve got to watch this one. It’s too good.
Some of my favorite quotes from the episode:
“Emotional Intelligence comes down to your ability to identify, label, and regulate/respond to emotions. Either your ability to regulate your own or your ability to respond to the emotions of others.”
”When you are emotionally dysregulated. It means you are not in control of your experiences, expressions, or responses…. You are being controlled by you emotions. Your emotions are running you.”
”Emotional regulation isn’t the denial of emotions. It’s choosing how I want to respond to this emotional state that I’m currently experiencing.”
”Taking 100% responsibility for my emotions. When I’m feeling an emotion it’s no one else’s job to fix the emotion or help me handle it. That’s on me. My job is I’m feeling an emotion… feel into it, let it be here. What is it telling me? I’m wanting something different. Then going out into the world not run by the emotion, but in conscious choice around what it has.”
”One thing that helps to an insane degree with inter-relational emotional intelligence is having clear agreements around how we’re going to handle emotions with each other. It gets really messy if I’m playing the game of 100% responsibility with my emotions and [project that] you should with yours, and you as my partner are like ‘no no no I want you to play the game where you help me dissipate and pacify my emotions’.”
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
Hope you enjoy!
-Justin
If you enjoy reading the Leadership Lab, consider clicking the ❤️ or 🔄 button above so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏