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Take This EQ Self-Assessment

1-Self-Awareness

  • What are my thoughts and feelings?
  • What causes those thoughts and feelings?
  • How can I express my thoughts and feelings respectfully?

2-Self-Management

  • What different responses can I have to an event?
  • How can I respond to an event as constructively as possible?

3-Social Awareness

  • How can I better understand other people’s thoughts and feelings?
  • How can I better understand why people feel and think the way they do?

4-Relationship Skills

  • How can I adjust my actions so that my interactions with different people turn out well?
  • How can I communicate my expectations to other people?
  • How can I communicate with other people to understand and manage their expectations of me?

5-Responsible Decision Making

  • What consequences will my actions have on me and others?
  • How do my choices align with my values?
  • How can I solve problems creatively?
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Mirroring Emotional Intelligence for Your Child

It’s helpful for parents to understand the meaning of mirror neurons and how to use them to the best advantage of your children.

From the web:

“A mirror neuron is a brain neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate species. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron)

Mirror neurons allow us to learn through imitation. They enable us to reflect body language, facial expressions, and emotions. Mirror neurons play an essential part in our social life. They are key for the child development, as well as relationships and education.” (from https://blog.cognifit.com/mirror-neurons/)

What this means for parents is that whatever you do–how you speak and what you say, your body language and your style–are being implanted in the memory stick of your child’s brain thanks to mirror neurons. There your example remains, for your child to replicate in many ways.

To raise children with the capacity of emotional intelligence is to model best practices for them in your life and particularly in your exchanges with them. 

What is Emotional Intelligence? It is the ability to manage your feelings and behaviors and relationships in a caring, productive and responsive way. 

Here are some basics.

Modeling Self-Awareness and Emotional Transparency (Rather Than Acting Out)

  • Parents are humans who experience frustration and at times irritability.  But instead of acting frustrated and cranky, you can “mirror” for you children coping by taking a few deep breaths and telling your kids that it’s been a long day and you’re a little tense. In this way, you model how to manage frustration in a positive way.  Kids need to learn to name their feelings rather than act them out.
  • We all want to be seen and appreciated. Model it by openly sharing why you love, admire or appreciate your partner – this to your partner in front of the kids. Do the same with your kids every day – note the qualities in them you want to show appreciation for. 
  • Make it a norm to discuss your day and ask your kids about their days at school, to encourage open communication.
  • When your kids act out, empathize and encourage them to talk it out. This teaches your child that her emotions are valid.

Self-Management

  • Patience takes practice. From early childhood, kids gradually learn to manage strong emotions and to wait for gratification. Parents can teach and model patience and poise for kids.
  • Emotions are normal. To be punished for negative ones is experiencing the opposite of a parent who is emotionally intelligent – and you can expect your kids to model that. As much as possible share your feelings conversationally and encourage them to do the same.
  • Emotions run high when we are tired or hungry. When you help your kids understand that they’re extra frustrated because it’s close to bedtime or mealtime, you are helping them understand that their feelings are temporary and this frustration will abate.

Social Awareness

  • Through their childhood, kids do best when they learn to put their experience in perspective. Parents teach and reinforce these lessons in an empathetic way by sharing your own wider and empathetic perspective on events. You can also reinforce lessons by reading stories that reflect these values and through creative play.
  • Throughout the day, talk out recent playdates and other events with your child.
  • The height of social awareness is understanding the point of view of others in a non-judgmental way. So, when you talk about others, seek to explain the forces driving them, including the societal impediments as you understand them such as race or poverty.

Relationship Skills

  • Learning to maintain friendships and to get along with family is vital. Kids learn that building and maintaining relationships takes work at home.
  • Good listening rather than shutting others down is a superb relationship skill to model. The reminder for this is almost biblical: “Seek first to understand and then be understood.” Apply it with kids as well.
  • Every time you mediate a fight with siblings, you are helping kids learn relationship-nurturing skills such as conflict resolution.
  • When you help your kids plan a party with the goal of what would create the most satisfaction and connection for party goers, you are modeling consideration of others.
  • When you contact a friend who is upset, talk your partner through a tough day in front of the kids, or make sure you keep social plans with the kids, you are also modeling good relationship skills.

Decision Making

  • Deciding among a series of good or bad choices is challenging. Kids learn this well – or don’t– from their parents.
  • When you allow your preschoolers to pick from among three outfits or let them pick one toy to bring on an errand, you are providing them an opportunity to practice making a decision.
  • When you are having a hard time deciding what to order at a cafe and verbalize this, you are letting your kids know that decisions can be hard for grown-ups too.

All this can be hard work. Parenting is a tough but important job! Mirror neurons are one way to use biology in your favor. Learn more about the benefits of Emotional Intelligence your child will enjoy because of your hard work.

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Huffington Post Delivers New EQ Package

This recent Huffington Post article speaks for itself:

Our kids have had an exceptionally bad hand dealt to them the past few months. They’ve been separated from their entire social structure, their classrooms and all sense of normalcy. And parents have certainly struggled (to put it mildly) to keep up. So how can parents use this time at home ― whatever that looks like ― to teach their children other important life skills and foster their emotional intelligence?

HuffPo answers that question with a package of resources.

One part of the package outlines seven habits of highly emotionally intelligent kids. Those habits include

  • Fluency with emotions, theirs and others
  • Perspective taking
  • Gratitude

The package includes links to other relevant HuffPo articles kids’ emotional intelligence.

Also, don’t miss the gallery of 35 children’s books that teach empathy and kindness.

Read the full article

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The Connection Between Business Success, Mindfulness, and Emotional Intelligence

Our ability to pay attention is a finite resource. By instinct, we tune out anything that isn’t either food or a threat. Even our field of visual attention is usually limited to what is currently and immediately in front of our noses. Want proof of our limited attention? Watch master pickpocket Apollo Robbins at work. If our attention is so scarce, how do we even make it through life?

With such a scarce resource as attention, we must spend it wisely. Business leaders and coaches love to talk about focused attention. At the drop of a mouse, you can find online articles about being more focused at work from publications like Forbes, Business Insider, Men’s Journal, and Lifehack. Using your attention to focus more on the job should mean your productivity goes up and mistakes go down.

But focusing intently also means you are less aware of the environment around you and the bigger picture. People might joke about “the vision thing” but seeing connections between people, events, and concepts is crucial to innovation and success. And wider awareness can keep your pockets from being picked.

Joe Stafura, CEO of Thrive, frames focus and awareness as two ends of a spectrum. The more you focus on a specific item, the less aware you can be of multiple things around you. Conversely, the more things around you that you are aware of, the less you can focus on any particular item.

Matching your balance of focus and awareness to the task at hand is what Stafura calls Mindfulness. Thrive’s ability to help people strike the proper Mindfulness for a given situation is achieved through the Thrive Program’s structure as an ongoing conversation. The conversation involves the stakeholders who reveal what they really feel is important over time. This happens more easily during a conversation than an interrogation in the moment or trying to recall in the moment.

By allowing everyone the space and time to consider the various factors influencing the situation, everyone can see what others are concerned about and start to see hidden problems and possible solutions. The micro-message format of Thrive helps keep the conversation going, ensuring high retention and lower survey fatigue. Each participant spends just a couple of minutes to update their views, with no travel time or Zoom calls.

So, it’s not just focusing your attention that leads to success. Shifting the balance of focus and awareness to meet various demand throughout the day is key to performance at work, at home, and throughout life.

Managing your attention doesn’t just happen. It is a skill. Training your emotional intelligence or EQ is a great way to acquire this skill. EQ training builds self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness. Within these competencies are competencies such as

  • Recognizing emotional states such as bored or distracted
  • Managing impulses
  • Setting goals
  • Organizing tasks
  • Identifying problems
  • Understanding different perspectives

Teaching these skills in schools helps kids be more mindful in learning. It also helps them be more mindful after the graduate and join the workforce. So it’s no wonder that both Apollo Robbins and Joe Stafura count major companies, nonprofits, and government agencies among their clients. They’re all looking for more mindful ways to pay attention. 

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Jay Levin on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

BigEQ Executive Director Jay Levin was recently interviewed by leadership blogger Adam Mendler.

The interview covered many topics. Below are excerpts pertaining to leadership and emotional intelligence.


Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts and your advice. First things first, though, what is the Big EQ Campaign all about? How did you come up with the vision and what do you hope to achieve? 

Jay: When I was young, I was fascinated by the question of why do humans do the painful things to each other we do and have so much emotional pain in life. Life seemed to be full of pain, conflict, disappointment, heartbreak, and depression. Couldn’t we do better? How come society could often be so dysfunctional – and could it be changed for the better?

As a young journalist, I followed these questions into covering the human development movement. That work taught me that people need two kinds of skills to live a successful and positive life. One skill is the ability to transform your own and other’s emotional and mental reactiveness. The other skill is creating more caring ways of relating to yourself and others–and life itself–no matter the circumstances.

Raising emotional intelligence is the key to a loving and peaceful world – and it can and must be learned if this species has any chance of survival in the nuclear age and when we seem on the verge of potential ecocide. The easiest definition of EQ is the ability to manage yourself, your emotions, your career and all your relationships with others in a caring and productive way. Manage your entire life this way.

Adam: How can CEOs and executives become more emotionally intelligent leaders? What are tangible steps they can take? 

Jay: The first, most important tangible step is deep and honest self-reflection and caring about how you affect others. If your workplace is not collegial and a warm cooperative atmosphere with loyal productive employees and based on healthy relationships,  you need to look in the mirror and take a deep self-reflective account of yourself. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and ask those around you what they need from you and the changes they would like to see. Then find yourself an excellent executive coach whose focus includes empathy training. At a minimum, go take a course in non-violent or compassionate communications. 

The start of emotional intelligence is acknowledging the dysfunction you might be triggering for others and that you developed along the way, understanding how you are wounded and when you are not authentic. Then you can start addressing how that impacts your relationship with yourself and with your colleagues. 

Basically it is about healthy relationships. I highly recommend Keith Ferrazzi’s book “Who’s Got Your Back” to every CEO who doesn’t already prioritize healthy relationships and hasn’t yet acquired the skills to manifest them.

Adam: More broadly speaking, what are your best lessons in leadership? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level? 

Jay: The best leaders understand that they are in service to the people around them with whom they share a common purpose or vision. Letting go of the ego of leadership, and the underlying fear of having to deliver success single handedly, helps leaders and aspiring leaders to unlock the collective, collaborative power of the organization to achieve what a single person can’t. After all, that should be why we work together in the first place. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? Who are the best leaders you have been around and what did you learn from them? 

Jay: Often, people are given the title of leader in an organization because they excel at execution, getting things done. No one tells them that leaders are those who get things done by working with and through other people, by building the organization that gets things done. That’s a completely different skill set than being proficient in your own personal, professional capacity. Building the organization doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and being a good doer doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be a good builder. 

Adam: What makes a great executive coach? What are your best tips for fellow coaches? 

Jay: Here’s what I would look for in a coach, and what I try to provide to others: A person who who straight talks with you AND at the same time is your biggest cheerleader because he/she really gets you. Someone who can show you the big picture so your view of the world and yourself is larger and your thinking is corrected. 

A great coach is a skills trainer, not a judge. You feel safe learning that your limitations are only a product of bad training and societal misthinking which you have been inoculated into, So the coach makes you feel like a happy learner rather than an asshole. Someone who presents as your best ally, maybe even as a best friend, because he or she is easy to be with and who is naturally caring and interesting.

Someone who can guide you out of stress and into a higher level of functionality.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Jay: Follow your strengths. When I needed a break from journalism and media, I signed up for a master’s degree program in spiritual psychology. It was a continuation of those burning questions from childhood about why we do what we do. The advice, the message that I got from that program, was to follow my strengths. In the program, I discovered that I had a surprising-to-me natural gift for coaching, so much so that other students started asking to come to my home to work with me. I said yes to the adventure that my strengths were revealing to me and within a year, with no promotion by me, I was seeing 25 clients a week, all via word of mouth.

Adam: What is one thing everyone should be doing to pay it forward? 

Jay: If everyone grew their emotional intelligence and shared that intelligence with those around them, that would build a more supportive, sustainable, and happy world for those who come after us. It is for me the single best way to pay it forward. Again, if we keep child development in the old paradigm then we constantly recreate a world that has nukes pointed at all our heads. Emotional intelligence in its broadest sense is the best tool humanity has to evolve itself into a survivable paradigm. 

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Jay: Sure: Everybody could memorize two thoughts. First, the world is an effect and the cause is how we learn to be with ourselves and others. Second, almost all life’s stress and pain–personal and social and in our communities–derives from lack of EQ and relational skills, not from bad character. 

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How Parents Can Increase Emotional Intelligence For Their Preteens

Being a preteen comes with numerous challenges, both physical and mental. These manifest into social challenges as preteens experiment with boundaries and begin to find their place in the world. They are growing physically, and this is accompanied by a lot of hormonal changes. The hormones that begin puberty will also start activating toward the end of the preteen stage.

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5 Examples of Emotional Intelligence That Start in Pre-K

Children are amazing. They may not know many book facts, statistics, great works of literature or accomplishments of science, but they do know things that help them explore the world around them. Just as some children have more talent for physical activity or for creating things, some children can be more talented than others at emotional intelligence, and it shows at a young age.