Increase your EQ at Work

At the start of a new month, and a new week, I wanted to share this article from the Harvard Business Review, Now Is a Great Time to Start Practicing Mindfulness. Although, it’s written for the workplace, the benefits of mindfulness are not confined to our professional or personal lives.

Mindfulness can seem touchy feely for a work environment. The reality is we all have feelings and they’ll impact how we interact with others, whether we choose to admit it or not. This was true before the pandemic but is even more relevant now. Many of us in the hectic and busy pace of life tend to ignore our feelings or suppress them. Being in tune with how we’re feeling, helps us to respond vs. react, increasing our emotional intelligence. This results in being a more effective leader, colleague, family member, and overall human. 

Some of the key take-aways are

·       Mindfulness helps us tune into the signals of our feelings. This allows us to identify them and make conscious choices in how to resolve them in productive ways, being responsive vs. reactive. When we can identify the signs of when we’re feeling stressed out, irritated, or frustrated, we can take actions to diffuse those emotions before taking them out on someone else, whether they’re an employee, colleague, family member, or even a stranger. 

·       With mindfulness, we can notice our triggers and the stories that we create to interpret these events. This allows us to focus on productive actions and apply strategies to manage the trigger. 

·       Starting meetings with a mindful moment and a check in allows participants to share their mindset going into the meeting.  I know this seems especially touchy-feely, but it allows thoughts to be shared in a productive way when people are reflective vs. when tensions are high. 

 All of these strategies can be applied to our personal lives. Noticing the signs of our emotions, identifying our triggers, and checking in with the people in our lives helps us to be more emotionally intelligent family members, friends and community members. 

If you’re interested in learning more, contact me for a discovery call to talk about easy techniques that you can begin implementing right away or how we can work together to develop a plan based upon your needs.