Who is Responsible for Improving Emotional Intelligence?

Quick answer… if you don’t know who is responsible for improving your emotional intelligence then you may have just discovered you have little or no emotional intelligence.

Obvious answer… it is the person you see every morning in the bathroom mirror who is responsible.

You are the only person on the planet responsible for nurturing and improving your emotional intelligence (EQ).  Not your mother.  Not your wife.  Not your husband.  Not your boss.  You!  When you are able to develop your EQ, you will find the world as you see it, changes for the good and you will start getting marginally better results in virtually every aspect of your life (business, personal, financial, spiritual, physical and love).

How then do you improve your Emotional Intelligence?

It is both easy and hard.  Easy in that there is help. Hard, because this isn’t something you can hire someone else to do! I have found that the very best resources for my EQ journey have been:

1. Wanting better results and better relationships. Pretty self-explanatory.  Don’t want better results and better relationships?  Then you don’t need to read any further.
2. Coaches and Mentors. A good coach will push you and hold you accountable for development.  A good mentor will do the same, except with a kinder approach.
3. Be a Coach or Mentor. Coaching and mentoring have been a huge eye-opener for me and my own EQ journey.
4. Have kids. Children are the very best teachers of EQ because, after all, by nature, they make it all about themselves, not you.
5. Don’t have kids? Get a pet. Nothing improves EQ like having to care for and nurture another living thing.  Having to get up in the middle of the night to take them outside or to clean up a mess they make is a true test to how you handle difficult situations.
6. Read. Leaders are readers.  Get your hands on everything you can find about EQ, self-improvement, meditation, gardening, etc.  Currently, I am chewing through some of Brenè Brown’s books on vulnerability, shame, guilt, and belonging.  Powerful stuff!
7. Observe. Watch yourself as if you were having an out-of-body experience.  Observe how you feel and how you react in certain situations.  Don’t beat yourself up for something that you observe that you don’t like.  Learn from it and change the outcome next time around.
8. No magic wand. There is no time machine.  You can’t go back and undo what’s been done.  There is no wand someone is going to wave and ‘Poof!’ you have EQ.  It takes a tremendous amount of practice, work, persistence, and feedback.

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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