W3 Emotional Intelligence Self Evaluation

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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SELF EVALUATION 5

My Initial Post-Emotional Intelligence Self Evaluation

Emotional intelligence also referred to as emotional quotient (EQ) is a critical determinant of how individuals associate with others in their personal and professional life (Northouse, 2018). EQ can be understood from the perspective of realizing that human relations are built on emotions and feelings. These emotions and feelings have a significant influence on the behaviors manifested by an individual. Within the workplace setting, an individual demonstrates best outcomes when they can relate with others by recognizing their feelings and emotions rather than ignoring them to pursue organizational mission/vision alone (Northouse, 2018). The Emotional Intelligence Test (EIT) provides a standardized tool for recognizing one’s EQ status and identifying the areas of development across the four domains of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

My scores on the ETI indicated that my strongest domains are social awareness (10) and relationship management (10). The domains that require development include self-awareness (6) and self-management (4) (Global Leadership Foundation, 2004). My relatively good scores on the domains of social awareness and relationship management can be attributed to my ability to understand how others feel. Secondly, I do not shy away from discussing with others my feelings and their feelings towards a subject or issue. Upon sharing the feelings with others, I also tend to explore deeply those emotions to fully understand the underlying causes (Northouse, 2018). With this understanding, I am in the best position to work on social skills that are fully aligned with the underlying causes of the emotions of the people around me.

On relationship management, my strength lies in the ability to utilize teamwork and collaboration not only to attain organizational goals but to develop the individuals within those teams. The two domains where I demonstrate significant weaknesses that may need development are self-management and self-awareness with self-management being the lowest scoring domain. My weakness in these two domains can be attributed to my inability to control my emotions especially anger or when working under pressure. In these two types of moments, I tend to get overwhelmed by tasks, and my way to let out the pressure is via anger or frustration. It is such moments that sometimes force me to realign my goals when I fail to overcome the pressure instantly. The challenge with such a behavior is that I lose control of situations while allowing emotions to take charge.

To improve my scores on the two domains of self-awareness and self-management, I have devised a three-pronged plan. First, I will seek to work with a mentor-coach (Schneider, 2016). I will select my supervisor for this role since I need someone that can assess me within the actual work environment. The importance of real-time assessment within the workplace is to allow my mentor-coach to provide feedback that reflects my behaviors over changing tasks or workplace demands. My mentor-coach will further help me in utilizing the feedback to shape my attitude and behaviors in moments of pressure.

The second approach is to keep a journal. The significance of a journal is to provide me with a database of events that I have participated in during the day, week, or month. This database will be useful in self-reflection. The best attribute of self-reflection is that it allows me to assess my strengths and weaknesses based on my response to tasks performed over the period I am reflecting on (Cherry, 2020). The self-reflection task complements the feedback from the mentor-coach thus allowing me to determine whether what I perceive of myself is similar to what others think of me. From that point, I can find a common ground and pursue nurturing my strengths and addressing my areas of weakness. The third approach is to pursue self-learning activities with particular reference to using podcasts, webinars, and virtual leadership conferences to improve my methods of social engagement as a leader and a colleague within the workplace (Schneider, 2016).

References

Cherry, K. (2020). Habits of emotionally intelligent people. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/the-7-habits-of-emotionally-intelligent-people-2795431

Global Leadership Foundation. (2004). Emotional intelligence test - Results. Emotional Intelligence & Health - Global Leadership Foundation. https://globalleadershipfoundation.com/cgi-bin/eiscore.pl

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Introduction to leadership interactive EBook: Concepts and practice (4th ed.). Sage Publications.

Schneider, A. (2016). Professional communication: How’s your EQ? https://www.rn.com/nursing-news/professional-communication-how-is-your-eq/