Top 5 Habits to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence

Today, I'm diving into the top five habits to boost your emotional intelligence, exploring how enhancing your EQ can be a game-changer for your personal and professional life. Join me as I unpack the essential components of emotional intelligence and how you can fine-tune and hone this critical skill.

Discover how self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills are pivotal in your success. Learn practical strategies to enhance these components, from reflective listening and stress management techniques to building empathy and improving your social interactions.

This episode is packed with insights to help you become more emotionally intelligent and a more effective leader.

Tune in as I discuss:

• The importance of emotional intelligence in leadership and career advancement.
• Five key habits to enhance your EQ.
• Practical tips for self-assessment and self-awareness.
• Strategies for managing stress and building resilience.
• How to cultivate empathy and improve your social skills.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, a manager, or someone looking to improve your interpersonal relationships, this episode will equip you with the tools to elevate your emotional intelligence. Tune in, take action, and start your journey toward enhanced EQ today.

Introduction (00:00)
Importance of Emotional Intelligence (00:25)
Defining Emotional Intelligence (EQ) (01:08)
The Role of EQ in Career Success (02:04)
Enhancing Your Emotional Intelligence (02:27)
Habit One: Reflective Listening (03:03)
Habit Two: Self-Awareness and Self-Assessment (04:40)
Habit Three: Stress Management (07:30)
Habit Four: Practicing Empathy (10:34)
Habit Five: Developing Social Skills (13:01)
Summary and Conclusion (14:43) 

Transcript

0:10

Welcome to the end game podcast, season two, where I bet you didn't know what you didn't know. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach sit back, relax, and tune into today's episode. Top five habits to boost your emotional intelligence. I want to thank everyone for joining today as we talk about another really important topic as it relates to, you know, your success as an entrepreneur and your success at home. Right. Again, many of the things we talk about on this podcast are relevant, not just for your professional life, but also for your personal life. Today we're going to talk about how you can boost your emotional intelligence or your EQ. We, we did talk about this once in the past, but it's such an important topic. I wanted to go a little bit deeper in terms of not just what is EQ because that's really what we talked about last time, but how do you really boost it or how do you really promote it or how do you really fine tune it and hone it in? How do you enhance it? Right? So as we think about Your, your EQ, your emotional intelligence, how can you enhance your emotional intelligence? And again, that could be critically important, both in your business life and your personal life. So just to go back to what we talked about last time, defining EQ, really EQ has multiple components. There's a component of your ability to self regulate. There's a component of your ability to be self aware. There's a motivational component to this, and there's an empathetic. Component. And finally, there's a social skills component. We're going to talk about kind of each of those components and how you might enhance those components of your own EQ on the move forward. One of the things we know is as we think about just who become great leaders, who really foster a great followership, who can navigate difficult situations or kind of knows when to speak, knows when not to speak, tend to be, you know, those not just with high IQ, but tend to really, if you were to think about an organization and some of the most successful folks in that organization. Those folks tend to have a real stronghold on enhancing their own EQ. So EQ really can be very important, not just in terms of being successful at your role, but really the trajectory of your career path. And, and again, which will be kind of tasked to do those who are not just those who don't just have a kind of. Standard or above IQ, but those who have a really strong EQ combined with an IQ tend to be able to achieve successes that most cannot. Again, they tend to be put into management positions, and they tend to become almost natural leaders within an organization. So honing or enhancing your EQ is really important if you think about your career path and how you might excel as a leader. Whether that's a leader or manager within a corporate organization, or whether that is your own small business and how you kind of gain culture and followership or as you are in maybe a rapidly growing startup or business, how you can maintain a culture and quality leadership and communication despite the stresses of growth. So there's a few habits. Again, we'll kind of each each of the components of EQ. We'll talk about some habits that that might help enhance that. And so habit one is as we think about communication is this idea of reflexive or reflective listening. And I say reflective in so much as, you know, a communication with reflective listening would. Be almost what we call a talk back or a teach back. So where you really take a moment before you even say what you're thinking, you take a moment to acknowledge what you heard from the other side of communication, right? Communication is two ways. And it's, it's not just two ways. It's two things. It is both the word spoken and in the listening. And so if someone is speaking at you and you're not listening to them then the chances that you're going to be perceived as having a high EQ or even be capable of having a high EQ in that setting would be very low, right? So reflective listening, you know, would be some sort of talk back, teach back just to validate what was said. And again, not just what was said, but what was heard there's, we have selective listening. Sometimes instead of reflective listening, which is, we hear the things we want to hear, we hear the things that are kind of strike our brain in a way when we're tuned out or our default mode network getting the psych, the psychopathology of it is overly dominant. So reflective listening shows that participant the other side of the communication loop. That you are in fact engaged that you, you are hearing them and that will naturally help to build empathy and rapport. And again, really creates that communication skillset and the culture that great leaders are always striving to build. So you know, suggesting the use of reflective listening is one really great habit as we think about how you might enhance communication and empathy skills. We talked about it before too, but this idea of self awareness or self assessment is really important to EQ. So if you are quote, unquote, clueless about the world around you, and you're just kind of walking through it in some sort of egotistical way and you are only aware of kind of yourself and you're not thinking about kind of how you play a role in the broader picture. You know, that can be problematic, but, but equally problematic is if you're just incapable of having your own self awareness. So if you're incapable of Kind of putting yourself in a position where you can understand you know, what's going on in a situation and how you play a role in that situation. So there's this idea of. Self awareness and situational awareness and then the ability to then take a step back after given a given situation or kind of in the middle of a situation and be able to self assess. Right? So not only what's your awareness, you know, is your, can you have an antennas up in a situation or, in a day to day or in a communication loop but also can you then later take a moment to reflect back on that situation and have some self awareness as to, you know, what body language you had or what a tonality you had and what did, what did you add or subtract? What did you contribute to or extract from that? Again, example being a communication diet or, or loop. So having the ability to be self aware situationally aware, and then the ability to both. Come back later and assess that will go a really long way in helping to build your EQ, helping to enhance your EQ. So anything you can do, and that goes back, we talked a lot, we have talked a lot in the past about journaling self reflection, you know, that ability, self assessment, that ability to take a step back and then, you know, jot something down or journal about a situation, but self assessment is also not about, you know, not just about the past. Self assessment is also about the future in order for you to be. Successful, we've talked before, you know, a, a hope or a dream or some goal without a plan or strategy is really just a dream. And so putting a plan against it, writing it down, holding yourself accountable to it with kind of timelines and strategy and, and a plan is, is really important to be successful. And that's where kind of compounding interest comes in. We've talked about that in the past. So self assessment is not just about self assessment from kind of past events. It's also your ability to self assess and then project yourself forward. As to what maybe do you need to work on or improve upon or do, you know, learn exercise, whatever it might be to then be successful in the move forward to achieve these goals that you've put out there or on paper with a strategy against it. So self assessment really goes in both directions. The third habit is stress management. And, you know, we, we've talked a lot about this as well. I'm, as you know, I'm a firm believer. You get out of your body, what you put into it that, you know, what you eat matters, which, you know, the positions you put yourself, your body into matters. So exercise really matters. Deep breathing and mindfulness really matters. So how you might calm the brain or, or really enhance your parasympathetic nervous system, you know, cause we run around all day, just overly sympathetically toned, right? So our. Our natural state at this point, not everyone has PTSD, but just the world around us and the kind of chaos and social media and all the distractions, you know, humans these days live their lives a little with a little bit too much adrenaline, a little bit too much nor up enough, right? And so anything we can do for stress management to help reduce the sympathetic tone and or enhance the parasympathetic tone. And haven't talked a ton about that when I've talked about exercising or deep breathing exercises or mindfulness or cold plunges there, but there are a number of things that can either help reduce sympathetic or enhance parasympathetic to try to reach a homeostasis and reestablish a balance. And you know, again, those are the things we talk about, but we haven't really talked about it in the setting of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. But all of those techniques mindfulness, candidly to self awareness and kind of reflective of. Okay. Thinking exercises, deep breathing, again, cold showers, cold plunges, all of these things can enhance your stress management skills, can create more resilience, you know, if you're, one of the things you can do is use like an aura ring or a whoop to look at heart rate variability, heart rate variability, or HRV is tied very closely into this idea of kind of your capability of handling stress. Are you, are you sleeping well enough and kind of doing all the right things in a way that your body not only builds resilience, but actually has that. Kind of, you know, has plenty in the bank, so to speak, so that as you hit stress that day, you're not, you know, getting down to zero or in the red in your bank account. Right. So kind of building up that resilience, having it on reserve and therefore being able to manage through stress in a way that, you know, you just weren't capable of before. And doing all of those things helps to enhance your EQ. It probably doesn't shock you that if you are in a constant straight of stress and sympathetic overtone, And a situation comes up that you're likely to be more reactive and less proactive. You're likely to not think before you talk, you're, you're more likely to do something you otherwise maybe shouldn't have done or say something you otherwise shouldn't have said. If you're in a state of hyper reactivity or again overly sympathetically toned as compared to one where you've built up resilience and build up kind of that's that stress bank account or the anti stress bank account, and are able to kind of manage through, you know, dancing in traffic. On a day to day. So building the resilience and having stress management skills and enhancing your parasympathetic systems go a long way in helping you to be a better leader especially under pressure. So that would be a really great habit to make sure that you're introducing into your day to day life. We talked a little bit already about this, but empathy is, as we think about EQ. Again, you have to be able to be self aware. You have to be able to do self assessment and you have to be able to effectively communicate. But you also have to be able to effectively communicate in a way that is, in fact, empathetic. And so if you are perceived as being a robot, and you're doing a teach back or a talk back and, you know. In that conversation, you know, you, you say back all the things you heard, but you say them in a monotone and very robotically in such a way or very kind of off putting. Then obviously, you know, yes, you, you demonstrated you can reflectively listen but you've not actually demonstrated the capability of empathy, right? So understanding empathy, you know, I honestly, the, the best way to kind of describe this best exercise for me has always been this idea of. No matter how thin you cut, you know, just using this kind of term or this phrase or mantra, which is no matter how thin you slice it, there's always three sides, right? So literally there's, there's always something in a communication or in a story. There's always something that I probably do not know. In fact, I will say that differently. There is always something I do not know about a given situation or communication or conversation. And that is, do I know how, you know, the other person on the other side of the communication is doing? Woke up that day. Do I know what stress they're dealing with today? Do I know what physical or mental health issues they may be dealing with? Do I know every possible thing about the situation? Is it possible that I know every possible thing? And the, the answer to that will always be no, right? The answer, if you believe the answer to that is yes. And it's yes more than it is no, then you more than anyone need practice with empathy, which is putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Right? So is it possible that I don't know everything? Is there possible there's other pieces to this puzzle? And just introducing the question will go a long way to helping you envision yourself in someone else's shoes. And then there in by have a much stronger EQ and be much better with interpersonal relationships and your leadership skills. So empathetic practice, you know, putting yourself in someone else's shoes can go a really long way in helping you to be more understanding, more empathetic. And again, just really lead by example with your team. The final habit we'll talk about today as we think about how we might enhance EQ is this idea of social skills. So again, in order to have. In order to really demonstrate that you've enhanced your EQ, you can't do that in a vacuum, right? Or you can't do that with just one person. You have to be able to enhance your EQ as it relates to all your communication, even with an employee or a family member or a person who otherwise gives you kind of a negative reaction, right? So true mastery of EQ or true enhancement of EQ would be your capability to Be self aware and self assess your capability of be reflected for capability of being empathetic and rapport building your capability of doing all of these things in the setting or with individuals who may not be your usual your usual folks may not be your best friends may not be your wife or your spouse. Being able to do that in a social situation is really where you are starting to get to mastery of how you can hone your EQ. And so networking events are important or putting yourself out there, even if you're an introvert. Again, how do you derive energy from a group of people? One way could be through this kind of social skills building and enhanced EQ. But developing the capability to be connected, to be social, to be face to face, and to be able to do that with kind of all spectrums of individuals is really where you will note true gains in your ability to enhance your EQ. So thinking about how you can put yourself in the social situations, if those are things you avoid today, you know, kind of be a yes person without taking that overboard, but getting in a group of people and being able to. You know, do all the things we just talked about with someone who may otherwise be a stranger. That's when you know that you're truly building upon your kind of foundational EQ. And that is once again, a skill that will serve you very well, both personally and professionally, you know, in your life. So those would be the key, or that would be another key habit. To make sure that you're working on just to kind of go over this one more time. There's a, the reflective listening, there's the ability to be self aware and self assess. There's this building up of your anti stress bank account and building resilience and what techniques help to do that, including those that enhance your parasympathetic tone. There's the idea of communication can be reflective, but that doesn't mean it's report building or empathetic. So really working on the, put yourself in their shoes, always other pieces of information you don't know, always other sides of the story, you know, that kind of mindset, that kind of question asking, and then finally, not just being able to do this with one person or, you know, the most common people, but being able to do this with a group of people, or frankly, strangers is what ultimately helps to get you to that next level. Of kind of refining and enhancing in maturing your emotional intelligence. Thank you for listening. Please like subscribe or share this episode. Once again, I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. I'm here to teach you how to exist today so that you may expand tomorrow and create the ultimate end game of your wildest desires. Talk to you soon.