Daniel Goleman: Your Brain at Home and at Work

Darnell worked as a Clinical Director at a large hospital. He was also a recent father of twins with his wife, Emma. During a difficult period of turnover at the hospital, Darnell lost his temper and began shouting at a nurse in front of a patient and her family. Later that week, when their twins wouldn’t fall asleep, he had a similar outburst at home. The root of relationship problems in our work and life are often the same. In this case, brought on by mounting stress and a lack of self-awareness. Emotional intelligence isn't just for the workplace. The brain doesn’t distinguish between our personal and professional lives. Of course we have learned repertoires of how to behave in different situations: there are jokes you’d tell your besties at a bar that you would never tell in a meeting with top brass at work. But overall, our weaknesses tend to remain the same at home and at work, emerging in similar ways despite different contexts. Therefore, when we develop emotional intelligence competencies, the benefits permeate all aspects of our lives. Emotional self-awareness is a critical first step in improving EI and initiating positive behavioral change. This will help you recognize patterns in how you react to stressful situations, or how you handle unexpected challenges. With self-awareness, you might say to yourself, “I’m about to make a scene with my anger by blowing up. But I sense discomfort or fear in the person I’m speaking to. Perhaps I should take a breath and reassess the situation.” This awareness is a catalyst for beginning to balance your emotions more regularly, for preventing outbursts, and ultimately for being more effective and compassionate in your communication. Think of emotional intelligence in a holistic way. Just as a self-assessment alone won’t give you an accurate EI profile, only accounting for your competencies in the workplace won’t give you a full picture of your emotional intelligence. Conventional executive coaching isn’t always as transformative as we might hope when it only focuses on performance metrics. Coaching that addresses the whole person, including our personal and professional goals, problems at home and at work, and our values and passions, is far more likely to yield productive insights and lasting change. Personal and professional development of emotional intelligence are one and the same. While some competencies (such as achievement orientation or organizational awareness) may be more exclusive to the professional realm, the following four aspects of EI are omnipresent in our lives at home, at work, and everywhere else:   ·     Self-Awareness ·     Self-Management ·     Social Awareness ·     Relationship Management By understanding emotional intelligence in terms of our experiences as people – spouses, parents, friends – not just professionals, we can more readily recognize patterns in our behavior and take steps for improvement that permeates all of our relationships.  If you are interested in coaching others for EI, I encourage you to apply for my Emotional Intelligence Coaching Certification. And if coaching isn’t for you, but you still want to upgrade your emotional intelligence, this fall I will be launching an online program for learning the fundamentals of EI. In the meantime, you can learn more about the EI competencies with the Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence, a collection of twelve primers that can be read as a series or individually.