If you caught our last newsletter about achieving success in 2023…
You may remember one of the secrets was Good Communication and Interpersonal Skills.
Well, today, I thought I’d give you actionable tips to improve your Emotional Intelligence.
Because when your emotional intelligence improves, so do your communication and interpersonal skills.
This in turn makes you more successful financially.
Personally, I believe Emotional Intelligence (EQ) eats Intelligence (IQ) for breakfast, and in a moment, you’ll see why.
THE BAD NEWS: Emotional Intelligence is made up of 4 elements.
Self-awareness, Self-management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.
THE GOOD NEWS: When you work on one of these areas it helps you improve others.
My best advice would be to work on self-awareness first, as I believe this will bring you the biggest results in your life, and relationships, both business and personal.
But if your self-awareness is already at a decent level, then you’ll have other areas you can work on if you wish.
How To Improve Self-Awareness
Personality Tests
Companies often ask prospective employees to do a personality test before their interview.
This gives the company a good idea about how each individual works and whether they’d be suitable for the role.
So, if you’d like a deeper insight into your personality, you could try the DISC Test and the GEMS personality test.
You can find these online, via Google.
Seeking Feedback
Very often we’re in our own world, and we have little clue as to how we’re perceived by those around us.
Seeking feedback from friends, family, and work colleagues is a great way to gain others’ insights.
If they provide honest feedback, it may not always be what we want to hear, but it’s necessary for our growth.
Practice Mindfulness
Being aware of your emotions and thoughts is another way to improve self-awareness.
Ask yourself, where your thoughts are coming from.
Because behind each thought is likely a long-held belief.
When you’re aware of your beliefs, often they may limit your success, and this gives you the power to change any beliefs that don’t serve you.
Journal and Reflect On Past Events
Writing down your thoughts allows you to process them and understand them better.
You can also use this chance to reflect on how you acted in the past and what you would do differently the next time a similar event arises.
Tips for Improving Self-Management
With improved self-awareness, your ability to manage yourself and your emotions improve…
And personally, I believe what most people call time management, is really self-management because time can’t be managed.
To see what I mean, click here to watch this video for 3 “time-management” tips >>
Better self-management will greatly improve many areas of your life.
3 Ways To Improve Social Awareness
Social awareness is all about understanding others and social and professional situations.
It’s important to keep an open mind in social situations.
With that said, here are a few ways you can improve social awareness.
Listen Actively
Focus on what the person is saying and do your best not to speak until they’re finished.
Ask insightful questions to dig deeper and add value to the conversation.
Pay Attention To Nonverbal Cues
55% of communication is done through body language, and vocal tone makes up 38%, which means the words you speak only account for 7% of communication.
So it pays to notice facial expressions, posture, and tone of voice, to gauge how the other person is feeling and what they really mean when they say certain things.
I think you’ll agree, it doesn’t matter what someone says, it’s more about how they say it and what their body language looks like.
Practice Empathy
Put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
This allows you to better understand their thoughts, feelings, and their situation.
When you do this, it gives you immense power over the situation and allows you to come to a mutual agreement.
How To Improve Relationship Management
By now, I hope you can see how self-awareness is the building block for improving your Emotional Intelligence.
So, as success in life and business is built on relationships, to finish off, we’ll briefly discuss how to better manage relationships.
Effective Communication
Strong relationships are built on trust and effective communication.
In order to communicate effectively, you must clearly express yourself to avoid misunderstandings, and practice active listening as discussed previously.
To be trustworthy, you must be honest and upfront with people, as well as reliable and respectful.
If you can’t be honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with others, and this is where self-awareness plays a vital role.
Here are 12 ways to improve your communication skills instantly >>
Conflict Management
The best way to resolve and manage conflicts is to first understand why a conflict exists.
When you can understand the other person’s perspective, this makes the conflict easier to resolve.
People with low self-awareness lack empathy, which makes it difficult for them to understand another’s point of view, which in turn means conflicts are rarely resolved.
If you want know how to deal with conflict, here’s a quick 2-minute video >>
Practice Forgiveness
If you find it difficult to forgive others or find yourself holding grudges often…
This automatically puts a wedge between you and the individual in question, which in turn makes the relationship difficult to manage.
For 2 quick tips on how to forgive others, click here >>
In conclusion…
The tips I’ve listed are not exhaustive, but they’ll give you enough of a leg up to improve your emotional intelligence, so you can see vast improvements in your business and personal life.
As I mentioned, business and life success is built on relationships, and it’s impossible to have good relationships without high emotional intelligence.
And self-awareness is the foundation on which emotional intelligence is built.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s newsletter.
Be sure to stay tuned for our next one.
To your success,
Dan Lok
P.S. – If you want to be more productive, you may like to check out my short training, Millionaire Productivity Secrets.
Inside, you’ll find my best productivity hacks to achieve maximum results in minimum time.
