I make a living as a leadership consultant looking at organizational culture, employee engagement, and customer service. I work with leaders on both the right and left brain, both emotion and logic. I call this training your Social Emotional Intelligence (Social EQ).
Recently I came across a great reminder of the value of Social Emotional Intelligence in our lives, which I want to share with you.
I was riding as a passenger in a car. As a passenger, one gets to see a lot more than just the road and obstacles in front of them. While riding shotgun you truly see the highs and lows of human behaviour.
It is amazing to me how some people become a different person when they get behind the wheel of a 1500 kilogram high-powered machine. They behave in a way that their friends and family would not recognize. They become an anonymous personality, apparently oblivious that the other drivers inside their own hunks of steel, glass, and composites are human beings too. All values and courtesy that one would exercise in a face-to-face interaction are gone. I asked myself; “What the heck is going on here?”
Simple. I call it Social Emotional Intelligence; some have it, some do not.
The leaders of top cultures have social intelligence, and so do the members of their teams. They actually hire for it. Social Emotional Intelligence can best be summed up as the way we behave when others are watching. Some drivers behave badly because they lack the emotional intelligence (or even the cognitive intelligence) to recognize that, even though one might be behind a windshield, we can still see you!
Those with Social Emotional Intelligence know this, and recognize that the person that just cut them off possibly didn’t realize they did it. In addition, that person probably doesn’t have anything against them. And even if they did, those with Social EQ don’t take it personally. They just smile and move on.
Nurturing one’s Social Emotional Intelligence takes work. It is like getting physically fit; it’s hard at first, however, once it is brought to the level of one’s consciousness, it becomes a habit. The payoff of Social EQ is lower blood pressure, and just as important, better relationships, better culture in your business, and better results.
Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, partner at Incrementa Consulting Inc., #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.
Tags: Communication, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, Happiness, Leadership, Management, Respect, Robert Murray, Robert S. Murray, Self-Awareness, Social Emotional Intelligence, Social EQ, Success, Vancouver BC
