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| Volume 12 Issue 4 Summer 2005 |
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What's Your EQ Score? (and how to discover it)
by James Terrell
When you buy a new car, you want to know what kind of mileage the vehicle will deliver. When you get a physical exam you want to know your blood pressure. When you go into a difficult negotiation with a customer (or your boss, or your spouse!) would it to serve you to know how effectively you are utilizing your Self-Regard and Assertiveness?
You bet it would!
But it would serve you even better to have first gauged the strength of your skills in Empathy, Social Responsibility, and Flexibility, because, believe it or not, those emotional competencies are even more critical to your success as a negotiator!
So when was the last time you were personally involved in negotiation? Communication experts tell us that every conversation we have is actually a negotiation. We are constantly working with each other to determine what our level of agreement is about the nature of reality. We are always seeking to ascertain not only what the price of the new car should be and how much exercise we need to stay healthy, but also living questions such as: How funny was that joke?, How do I look in these new clothes?, Is this the right moment to ask for a raise?, Can I trust you to say what I'm really feeling?
We build our reality by negotiating the answers to these and similar issues which may at times even seem insignificant. We use our emotional skills and competencies to add context to the facts, color to the shapes, inspiration to our actions, and meaning to our lives.
When you understand where your strengths lie in the 15 emotional skills measured by the EQ-I (the Emotional Quotient Inventory) you begin to understand how Empathy supports Assertiveness and how Social Responsibility validates Self-Regard, and how Flexibility strengthens Independence which facilitates more accurate Reality Testing and thus better Problem Solving, which paves the way for Happiness.
The US Constitution declares that the pursuit of happiness is one of our inalienable rights, and while that is true, and genuinely remarkable, why just pursue it? Why not actually enjoy some??!
You cannot do so without Emotional Intelligence! Happiness itself is one of the 15 EQ competencies, which means there are ways to increase it directly without having to increase the size of your paycheck, or the number of things you control, or the number of people you influence (although all of those might result).
Further description of this feast would only diminish the experience.
I have set up a way to take the EQ-I online so you can discover through your own self evaluation how you score in each of the 15 competencies. When finished, you receive a 10 page printed report and a personal debrief session to put all the pieces together and answer any questions you might have about your profile. Armed with your new knowledge and enthusiasm you're off on a six-month adventure of self-improvement and/or professional development . At the end of your journey you take the measure once again and marvel at your accomplishments! (Actually the part about marveling is not completely accurate, because you will have already seen the remarkable difference it makes when you specifically apply yourself to the objectives in your Emotional Development Plan.)
Please check out WhatsYourEQ.net, and see for yourself.
Thank you.
©2005, Collaborative Growth
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