A trainer for developing emotional intelligence. The simplest exercises to improve your EQ level. What is emotional intelligence, how to increase it and how to use it in a business environment

“Emotions lead to delusions and this is their value, the value of science is in its unemotionality.”

"The Picture of Dorian Grey".

Have you ever noticed how emotions distort or transform reality? In psychology there is a special term “Emotional Intelligence” and it has a special designation - EQ. People started talking about him again at the beginning of the 2000s. Let's talk about what this concept is and how to develop it emotional intellect.

Managing emotional intelligence became of interest to me long before I heard this term. It was an intuitive understanding that the development of the situation, or the lack of results, is influenced not only by my thoughts, but also by my reaction to them, my emotional state. Rather, it is emotions that shape thoughts, and not vice versa. Negative thoughts appear precisely because a person does not have complete information about current events, worries, feels fear, resentment, anger and from certain expectations. Agree, most conflicts arise because our loved ones do not behave the way we expect them to. Psychologists note that clarification of relationships, or who is right, occurs because a person does not receive strong, bright, positive feelings from reality and the struggle is designed to compensate for this deficiency.

Stressful situations become a goldmine for a certain circle of people. This includes fortune tellers, magicians, and psychics. Various sessions act like morphine; they remove negativity for a while, leaving positive experiences and a feeling of relaxation. As a result, the client comes again to receive not the prediction itself, but the confidence that everything will be okay. This is the best case scenario.

Some psychics and magicians deliberately increase the level of anxiety of clients in order to inspire more greater fear and, in this way, lure large sums money. They cling to what is important to a person: relationships with a loved one, health, and so on. Emotional intelligence exercises helped me move away from constant feelings of fear and anxiety, think clearly and look for constructive solutions to problems without turning to third parties for help. I will tell you about several effective techniques.

Concept of emotional intelligence

Psychologists Kahneman and Smith conducted research in the field of behavioral psychology, for which they were awarded Nobel Prize. They managed to prove that most people, when making decisions, are guided by emotions, not logic.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to see one’s strengths and weaknesses and accept them in other people, the ability to separate personal feelings and facts. There are low and high levels of emotional intelligence. A low level of emotional intelligence is characterized by the following emotions:

envy;
criticism;
condemnation;
tunnel vision of the situation (a person sees only one possible scenario and, most often, in negative terms);
suppression of feelings;
a high level of emotional intelligence is characterized by:
flexibility of mind;
variability of thinking (a person can find many options for the development of events and work through each of them in detail);

EQ - intelligence helps you find mutual language with different people social groups and ages. Managing emotional intelligence is useful in business, sales, and any team work that requires organizing and inspiring people.

Why is this necessary?

Not everyone understands why it is necessary to develop EQ - intelligence. There are several reasons for this:

Adequate assessment of one’s own capabilities, acceptance of strengths and weaknesses of your personality, efficient use internal resources.
Understanding the causes of certain emotions.
Understanding and careful attitude feelings of surrounding people, family.
Understanding the needs of other people and building a line of behavior based on them.
Acceptance and understanding of the conditions of objective reality.
Managing emotions quick search decisions in a given situation.

You will gain not only emotional stability, but also the respect of other people, both in the team and from management. A person who can understand others can grow into a good leader. You can, for example, write your own book on managing emotions, or become the head of a company, or maybe in the future you will conduct personal growth training yourself? Today this direction is very popular, the experience of people who, without special education, were able to understand themselves and rise to the occasion is especially valued. new level welfare.

Such masters include, for example, Joe Vitale, who became a multimillionaire after several years of living on the street, or Niko Bauman, who wrote a series of books about the power of mental focusing without any special education. The young author founded his own online school, conducts webinars and intensive courses in which he teaches people to control their attention and direct emotions in the right direction.

Stages

Experts distinguish 4 stages of development of emotional intelligence:

Communicate clearly and clearly with others, listen well, and communicate expectations. The ability to motivate people to take active action, teamwork, leading a small group of people, the ability not to get involved in open conflict.
Feeling comfortable among large group people, regardless of whether you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, the ability to understand the emotions of other people, rare cases of misunderstanding with someone.
Knowledge and acceptance of all positive and negative aspects their personality, a comfortable existence with them, understanding their emotions and their influence on current events.
Skillful management of emotions, limiting them destructive influence, ability to fulfill promises and responsibilities, maintaining long-term relationships, acting according to circumstances.

Development methods

Let's look at 7 main ways to develop emotional intelligence in adults.

Refuse to share feelings. From an early age, we are taught to divide things into categories: this is good, this is bad, there is black and white. But such a division is very subjective, because in general you do not know what prompted a person to commit a not very good act from the point of view of society. Maybe if you found yourself in such a situation, you would do worse. What I mean is that there are halftones in the world. Anger, for example, is considered a bad emotion, but it contains a hidden desire for everything to become better than it is, and this is already a positive side. For many people, during an attack of anger, a source opens up. inner strength. Refusal to divide emotions into “good” and “bad” helps to understand the reason for the occurrence of those that are commonly called negative.
Write down the emotions you experienced during the day. By keeping notes in a journal, you can easily track what triggered the experience. In addition, over time, you will be able to track how your reaction to a similar situation has changed. Write down without limiting yourself and you will understand what makes you worry, how you react, for example, to fear, and what makes you move on.
Observe people and situations that make you feel a wave of strong emotions. Describe in your diary the physical sensations of the emotions you experienced.
If you find it difficult to track and write down your emotions, observe your preferences: what you prefer to watch, listen to, what you read about, what fills your consciousness day after day. What songs or films do you feel an inner connection with, why did you make this particular choice? Which characters do you have an inner sympathy for and why? Answering these questions will help you start tracking your emotions.
Sometimes our emotions and words are spoken by other people, in the lines of a song, in a performance, in a film. They experience the same emotions as you, which makes you feel a kind of euphoria. You can remember several catchy episodes.
The most proven way to understand another person is to put yourself in their place. Think about how you would feel in those circumstances or if another person said to you what you said.
Think through the worst-case scenario, what will you do in this case, how can you get out of the situation? This will help you calm down.

Own your emotions, don’t let them control you, you are the masters of your life. Even the most unpleasant situation can be changed simply by looking at it from a different point of view. By addressing what makes you uncomfortable, you can become strong personality, after all internal state does not depend on the money in your pocket, or on your position, or on the presence or absence of a partner nearby. You are the creator of everything that happens; you have the power to fly or fall.

Among other aspects related to the formation of social and emotional intelligence, we highlight ability to refuse requests and delegate tasks, and the ability not to dwell on problems and try to perceive failure as feedback , space for improvement and new opportunities.

For example, remember often that you you can't change the past, which means, instead of thinking over and over again about what should be done in a given situation, think about what to do now and how you can improve the future. Also remember that, in principle, you do not owe anything to anyone, which means you are not obliged to agree with everyone, even if this causes some inconvenience to someone. How paradoxical it may sound, but the ability to refuse is also a skill, and it can be learned. After a couple of rejections, you will realize that the world doesn't turn upside down when you say, “No, I can't.” If you feel guilty or remorseful, remember that after some time will pass and this. Thus, after several “exercises” you will understand that it is normal to refuse.

As we said, a person with a developed EQ is characterized by empathy, but such individuals are more likely manipulate themselves, which allows them to be manipulated. The main thing is that they accurately identify manipulators and decide for themselves whether to succumb to their tricks or not. If you feel like someone is trying to manipulate you, use an old but effective technique: imagine this person with a trash can on his head. This will change your attitude towards your interlocutor, and therefore your reaction to his words and requests. This technique is useful in other situations.

5. Emotions

Another direction - working on your own emotions. To learn how to control them, it is important to know what exactly you control. Observe yourself - what events cause what feelings; which emotions prevent you from concentrating and which ones make you more productive; which ones are easy to manage and which ones are not.
Don't be angry at your reactions, don't deny them, don't suppress them, don't judge yourself and, most importantly, don't lie to yourself: If you do all of the above, you will not be able to control them. You feel what you feel, but all feelings have a reason. It is important to understand it - and then you will be able to correct your emotions.

And finally one more helpful advice. Increasing and developing social and emotional intelligence, it is very important to remain who you are, and don't try to become someone else. The goal of increasing the level of EQ and SQ is self-improvement, that is, improving oneself, and not trying to put on someone else’s mask and walk around in it.

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of intelligence level or IQ, and many have probably taken IQ tests at school, university or at work. Thus, the first technique for measuring mental abilities such as memory, attention and decision making logic problems, created by Alfred Binet in the early 1900s, became very popular and spread throughout the world. Well, after refinement by researchers and scientists, this technique turned into the IQ tests familiar to all of you. And today, most psychologists use tests to measure intelligence and, based on the results, try to determine whether this or that job is suitable for him. And there seem to be no complaints about IQ tests, everything is smooth and smooth, and most importantly, it works. But is it possible, based on the results of such tests, to obtain an adequate assessment of human abilities?

One of the problems that psychologists constantly faced was that some people, although possessing a fairly high level of intelligence, were completely unable to manage their emotions. On the other hand, a person with a relatively low level of intellectual ability surprisingly showed a fairly high level of emotional stability and had good control over his emotions. Similar examples from life different people from all over the world made researchers think about creating an additional scale that would allow them to measure the level of a person’s emotional abilities. It was very difficult to do this, but already in 1990 the first attempt to define emotional intelligence was published by Salovyom and Mayer and it sounded like this: “Emotional intelligence is the ability to control the feelings and emotions of one’s own and other people, as well as recognize them and use this information for guidance in your thoughts and actions."

In more scientific terms, a definition of emotional intelligence might look like this: “ Emotional intelligence is emotional awareness and emotion management skills that provide the ability to create a balance between emotions and reason with the goal of achieving greater happiness in the long term." Having a high level of emotional intelligence means being able to recognize your emotions and change them according to at will. Thus, a good memory and the ability to solve problems are not sufficient to be considered truly reasonable person, but add here the ability to manage your emotions and we see everything in a completely different light. Emotional intelligence makes it possible to acquire and apply knowledge about your emotions and the emotions of other people and make your life more complete and rich in joyful events and vivid emotions. By developing emotional intelligence, we become better able to control our own life, and most importantly - to get more pleasure from it.

If you want to roughly assess your level of emotional intelligence, answer the following questions:

1. Do you know how to express your feelings?
2. Do you listen to other people's opinions?
3. When you are stressed, do you act intelligently?
4. Do you easily adapt to unexpected changes in your life?
5. Do you take responsibility for your actions and actions?
6. Do you know how to recognize your emotions as they arise?
7. Do you control your strong emotions and impulses?

Even one answer “no” to the above questions indicates that your level of emotional intelligence is not high enough, especially if you answer the seventh question in the negative. Many researchers tend to believe that the inability to cope with stress can not only harm a person’s well-being, but also reduce his emotional abilities, leading to the so-called temporary setback. Subsequently, if you do not take decisive steps to eliminate stress and manage your emotions, you may notice that your behavior becomes less and less appropriate. It is important that this process can be reversed, but this will require serious work on yourself.

You probably know about most of the mental skills required for a high IQ, but what skills does a high level of emotional intelligence include? Peter Salovey and John Mayer, in their definition of emotional intelligence, identified abilities in five main areas. So.

Emotional intelligence includes:

1. Self-awareness. This is emotional awareness, which includes the ability to identify the emotions present in us, identify connections between our emotions and the reasons that led to their appearance, and also predict their appearance in future situations and circumstances.

2. Managing emotions. This is the ability to promptly get rid of such negative manifestations as anxiety, anger and stress. It is also the ability to use the energy of negative emotions to solve your problems without getting stuck in them or attaching too much importance to them.

3. Self-motivation. This is the ability to focus on a goal, emotional self-control, in which you refrain from satisfying immediate needs for the sake of long-term gain, or go through unpleasant experiences for this if it is really necessary.

4. Recognizing other people's emotions. Empathy plays an important role in social life people, and is one of the components of a high level of emotional awareness. Interestingly, sensitivity to subtle social cues and the ability to determine how others are feeling are some of the most important skills for achieving success in your personal and professional life.

5. Relationship management. “He who knows how to manage other people is successful, he who knows how to manage himself is great” - this is approximately how one ancient truth goes. But let's rephrase it: by being able to manage your emotions, you develop the potential to manage the emotions of other people. This is how true leaders are born, and how the highest levels of emotional intelligence are achieved.

It is possible that you have already achieved success in any of these areas, but this is just the beginning and you simply need to further develop your emotional skills if you want to achieve a high level of emotional intelligence. Let it happen already achieved success will become the basis for a confident upward movement.

How to develop emotional intelligence?

In fact, no matter how much emotional intelligence you have, you have already achieved some success because emotional development each of us begins in early age and continues throughout life. And even if this does not always happen consciously, development still occurs. Of course, we go through most of the journey in childhood and adolescence, when most of our emotional habits, however, even if you are unhappy with your level of emotional intelligence and you do not like your character, you can still fix it. True, this will become more difficult the older you get. In addition, you will need to be prepared for the fact that you most likely will not be able to change some of your character traits, which means you will need to learn to accept yourself as you are, although if you have the desire, there will be a way.

What skills are needed for high levels of emotional intelligence?

Below are a few skills that will help you improve your emotional intelligence. We will look at three types of skills, namely emotional skills, cognitive and behavioral skills.

Emotional Skills:

Identifying and defining emotions– emotional awareness, that is, the ability to recognize the emotions inherent in us as they arise and predict their occurrence. This is also knowledge of what they are.
Expressing emotions– the ability to express one’s emotions without holding back or suppressing them, and, if necessary, expressing them in a safe way.
Assessing the intensity of emotions– how your emotions manifest themselves, brightly or weakly.
Managing Emotions– the ability to evoke the necessary emotions, or eliminate them as they arise, or change them if necessary.
Abstaining from momentary pleasure– the ability to control your desires in order to achieve your goals.
Pulse control– the ability to weaken the controlling influence of strong emotions and gain the upper hand over them.
Knowing the difference between emotions and reason– understanding when your actions are dictated by your emotional impulses, and when your actions are thought out and logical.

Cognitive Skills:

Positive attitude- to life, to surrounding reality to ourselves, understanding that being negative is extremely unproductive.
– the ability to direct thoughts in a positive direction - to solve problems without hanging on negative thoughts.
Reading and Interpreting Social Signals– recognition of social influence on your behavior, determination of your role in society.
Understanding other people's points of view– the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes.
Understanding behavioral norms– knowledge of what and where is considered acceptable and what is not.
Planning– step-by-step achievement of your goals, setting goals, identifying alternative paths, anticipating consequences.
Self-awareness– living in the present, the ability to think about the past or future only if it is necessary and benefits you.

Behavioral skills:

Nonverbal methods of communication– the ability to act confidently in any place, even if you don’t feel confident inside, that is, this presupposes excellent knowledge of body language.
Verbal methods of communication– development of speech skills - confident, clear and vivid speech.
Internal self-control– control of your body, identifying and preventing unconscious impulses and movements.
Healthy Habits– exercise, nutrition, everything that helps strengthen your body.

This seems like enough information to get started, and as you can probably tell, there's a lot of work ahead, but don't let that scare you, because as long as you move forward, you're getting closer to success. One of the good news is that the skills listed in this article will not only help you increase your level of emotional awareness, but will advance you in every other area of your life. By developing your emotional intelligence, you accelerate your step towards self-improvement, personality development and success. Best wishes to you!

Emotional intelligence is a phenomenon that, at first glance, contains a contradiction. Intelligence is usually understood as the thinking, cognitive sphere of a person, and emotions are something irrational that cannot be controlled by reason.

But emotions and feelings can be controlled by the individual, fully realized, and controlled by willpower. The ability to understand and manage one’s own emotional experiences, as well as the experiences of other people, is defined as"emotional intellect".

Developing emotional intelligence is useful for both inner harmony personality, and for harmony in relationships with other people, in the family and at work. Developed emotional intelligence helps maintain physical and mental health.

Emotional intelligence needs to be developed because it:

promotes awareness, understanding and self-acceptance, without self-flagellation and soul-searching,
develops intuition, the ability to understand non-verbal signals in communication,
balances emotional reactions in stressful situations,
develops stress resistance,
teaches you to better understand other people, their emotions and feelings,
helps resolve communication difficulties, find compromises,
promotes conflict resolution through cooperation,
protects from manipulation, does not allow the individual to become a victim of a manipulator,
promotes making thoughtful rather than impulsive decisions,
prevents emotional burnout at work,
increases sensitivity to signals own body, develops understanding of the psychosomatic aspect of the development of diseases,
develops the ability to relax and rest, turning off the “internal dialogue”.

Ways to develop emotional intelligence

For some people, emotional intelligence is quite developed already in childhood due to the characteristics of their upbringing, while other people experience significant difficulties and need tips on how to develop the ability to understand others and themselves. Emotional intelligence develops in the process of personality development, during socialization and the accumulation of life experience.

To develop emotional intelligenceyou need to systematically work on yourselfin the following directions:

Widespread simple technique control over emotions called “count to ten”. A person, before expressing his opinion and emotions to another individual, mentally counts from one to ten. The essence of this technique is not in counting, but in the fact that you should think first, and then speak or do!

The wonderful proverb “Measure twice, cut once” perfectly characterizes developed emotional intelligence!

It so happens that EQ is often associated with the ability to influence people. In fact, his role is broader. Developed emotional intelligence is a useful “background” skill that improves life in almost all areas. By investing in working with our own emotions, we take care of our well-being and success.

What is emotional intelligence

Sales specialists joke: “Ordinary intelligence will help solve a problem. Emotional - will help convince others to solve it for you.” IN in a broad sense intelligence can be described as our competence in something. If we operate well and freely with abstract quantities, think with formulas and algorithms, our mathematical intelligence is well developed. Emotional intelligence is also competence, but in the area of feelings and their expression.

In the 20th century, psychologist Richard Lazarus came to the conclusion that emotions are involved in the process of learning and evaluating everything that happens to us.

The raw data from the senses that we receive “at the input” is processed by the brain into sensations, and then evaluates what they should mean. John Mayer and Peter Salovey later described this system as “emotional intelligence.”

If our internal “logistics” are clearly organized, at the end we get an adequate picture of the world and our own reactions.

If not, we get confused in our feelings and desires, attribute fictitious intentions to others and behave inconsistently. Not the most pleasant situation, right?

Why is high EQ important?

Imagine that you work in a small company. The number of clients is still small, but business is going well, and management decides to expand. New divisions are opened, deals are struck with major partners, and all processes are organized as before. Problems begin.

The same thing happens to a person when he tries to take on more responsibility, but does not work with emotions. Constant communication is exhausting, stress and unanswered questions keep you up at night, conflicts constantly break out at home and at work.

The flow of tasks has become more intense, the experiences associated with them have intensified, but they are processed in the same way.

“A person who has high emotional intelligence knows how to regulate his state - let go of emotions that take away energy, and retain those that give energy,” explains Elena Mechetina, psychologist, coach and founder of the center for the development of emotional intelligence in children “D-A”. “. - This does not mean that he avoids conflicts and tense situations. But he quickly returns to a state of balance and does not give in to provocations.”

“Exhibiting emotional intelligence means focusing not on the reason, but on the goal,” adds business coach Elena Sidorenko. - Emotional intelligence is aimed at the future - as, by the way, is rational intelligence. Do you want to change distrust or hostility toward you to curiosity? This means that you should do not what your emotions tell you, but what will lead to the desired result.”

Is it possible to develop EQ?

IN in a certain sense intelligence level is a given, determined at birth. This reality is layered with upbringing, life and professional experience, and one-sided knowledge about the world. Is it possible to change the emotional “firmware” that dictates certain reactions to us at a conscious age?

What is important here is the belief that we can change. Psychologist Carol Dweck and her followers argue that our results are influenced by the initial setting - stability or growth. If we believe that we can change (and in any case we change measurably under the influence of new experiences), then we actually change.

“The style of emotions, like the style of thinking, is largely a matter of habit,” says Elena Mechetina. - The main beauty of our body is that it can adapt to the loads that we give it. If you can’t do the splits now, you’ll be able to do it after six months of training. It's the same with emotional reactions. It’s hard to believe in change because we’re not used to working with ourselves purposefully.”

Exercises to develop EQ

1. Reconsider your beliefs

Let's remember Lazarus and his colleagues: feelings are formed after we have assessed the event. This can happen at lightning speed because there is a habit of thinking and feeling in a certain way. And it is formed by beliefs.

Beliefs that are misunderstood, out of touch with reality, or outdated can become an emotional trap.

“I had a client, a doctor, who spent a long time building up her contact base,” recalls Elena Mechetina. “Her professionalism also took a long time to develop. The problem was that patients called her constantly, even at night, and she could not refuse: “I took the Hippocratic oath!” But does it say that a doctor should help patients at the cost of his personal life? This belief helped her at first, but then - in the new conditions - it became a hindrance and a source of suffering.”

An important part of working with emotional intelligence can be psychotherapy, where a specialist teaches us to be aware of our beliefs, understand the reasons for their appearance and their relevance to our lives. And - if necessary - reconsider these beliefs and abandon them.

2. Keep an emotional journal

Research by psychologist James Pennebaker has shown that those who have mastered the habit of regularly writing down their feelings find a solution to a complex issue faster and easier.

Here is one of the options on how you can do this. Step 1: Set a timer for 20-30 minutes. Step 2. Describe how you feel this moment or what you experienced during the last week (month, year).

Write whatever comes to mind, regardless of style, mistakes and other imperfections. Leave the entry or delete it - it's not that important.

The process of writing itself will teach you to systematize emotional thinking, “unstick” feelings that have stuck together in a lump and more accurately find their causes.

3. Practice expressing emotions

Who is the most masterful in controlling their emotions? Theater actors! Of course, this statement is not uncontroversial, but think about it: demonstrating a deep range of experiences for these people is work. An actor's skill has a lot to do with the ability to allow a certain emotion into oneself and release it without being imbued with it.

Elena Mechetina advises everyone who wants to develop their emotional intelligence to read Konstantin Stanislavsky’s book “The Actor’s Work on Oneself.” A writer or journalist masters the word as an instrument, and in the same way an actor masters emotion. And developed emotional intelligence presupposes the ability to control emotion, and not give in to it.

4. Expand your emotional vocabulary

Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Emotional Flexibility, advises not only listening to yourself, but also expanding your emotional vocabulary: learning the nuances of emotions, naming them, and finding a range of applications for each.

Language has amazing magic - it sets emotions a certain development scenario, and it obeys it.

When you have chosen a suitable name for a feeling, try to find at least two more words to describe its shade. What is experienced as sadness can be disappointment, depression, emptiness or regret. By unwinding these threads woven into the general fabric, you will reach the reasons and foundations of your reactions.

5. Remember the goal

According to Elena Sidorenko, the ability to manage one’s feelings is associated with such a quality as self-denial. If we are ready to give in to an impulse of anger or irritation, then we allow these emotions to control us. We follow the lead of those who caused these emotions, without thinking about our own interests.

While within a situation, develop an inner observer who matches intuitive reactions with goals. For example, if someone engages you in a conflict, think, “What are this person’s goals? What are my goals? Which emotional response will best align with my goals?” This is a challenging exercise because it requires good mindfulness practice and the ability to shift quickly. But over time you can master it too.