Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes

Daniel Goleman’s, Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business

from NYT Education Life (7^th April 2015)

Self-management is the second of Goleman’s four recommendations for applying emotional intelligence in the workplace. To recap, he has identified self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship skills as qualities of leadership and attributes that lead to advancement in the workplace.

In the previous article, we considered the development of greater self-awareness and evidence to determine that or when it is present. Today, the topic is self-management.

Goleman’s Synopsis of Self-Management.

1. Resilience: You stay calm under pressure and recover quickly from upsets., You don’t brood or panic. In a crisis, people look to the leader for reassurance; if, the leader is calm, they can be, too.
2. Emotional balance: You keep any distressful feelings in check instead of blowing up at people; you let them know what’s wrong and what the solution is.
3. Self-motivation: You keep moving toward distant goals despite setbacks.

As with self-awareness, Goleman has provided a synopsis of what to look for as evidence that self-management is in place and working. The function of evidence is to provide feedback about the quality of your self-management strategy. If you try to learn directly how to do the characteristics of evidence, it will be hard work and take up all your conscious attention. This leaves a shortage of attention available for performing in your chosen context. If you are intending to demonstrate leadership, it will flat if you are trying to manage individual examples of behaviour.

“The state you are in at any time frames the quality of your behaviour, interactions and thinking capacity.”

Your state is the emotional, biochemical, and physiological gestalt within which you function, and contrary to popular belief, you can learn to change it quickly and smoothly. This is the basis of effective self-management.

Self Management In Action

Applying self-management strategically requires a modicum of self-awareness. This will give you information about your current state and context, as well as direction for choosing what you want instead. When you discover that you can choose and change your state, you can learn to maintain a set of resourceful, responsive states that allow you to set an example, think on your feet and have access to all your competences. This is possible instead of being stuck in a low-level state with inadequate resources and no patience with others.

People change their states naturally without necessarily being aware that it is happening. You can harness natural state-change processes when you are aware of the way they work. If you could be a fly on the wall at an exercise class at the end of the workday, you would observe participants coming in talking about their day, still in work-related states, and thinking about work. By the end of the class, they are more relaxed, animated, spontaneous, and looking forward to the rest of their free time. Their bodies are more symmetrical, and their movement flows.

Physical activity is one of nature’s state changers. The same thing happens with choristers who practise at the end of the workday. Singing requires a lot of breath, and deliberate breathing is another natural state-changing activity. If you want to change state by changing your breathing or moving your body with intent, a short, brisk walk around the block will be sufficient for most purposes.

As you review your context, with its people and tasks, your intention of being resourcefully functional and preferably able to enjoy the experience provides framing and search criteria for your unconscious resources to develop options for you. This allows you to engage a set of suitable states, which probably include competence, resilience, creative problem solving, and relationship skills, all at the same time.

The advantage of managing yourself through your state is that a single process provides the capacity to demonstrate a whole collection of resourceful behaviours, both naturally and spontaneously. Then your attention is free to concentrate on the matter at hand, and your quality of experience will be enhanced.

Daniel Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence in Business Articles Series

1. Goleman’s Four Components for Emotional Intelligence – Introduction
2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
3. Self awareness and Emotional Intelligence
4. Self Management and Emotional Intelligence; Three attributes
5. Effective Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

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