Despite being published in 2005, Adele B. Lynn’s ideas and strategies for improving your emotional intelligence are still extremely relevant. She starts by laying the foundation of the importance of emotions, the wiring of the human brain and defines emotional intelligence.
Her explanation of EI describes 5 areas vs the usual 4 components – being more descriptive of behaviours and skills rather than just labels:
The most powerful part of the book for me was her urging to train your self-coach. The idea being an individual needs to become aware of their thoughts, feelings, triggers, motivations, reactions as the foundation for EI.
To train your self-coach she outlines a 7 step process of:
If everyone learned how to operate their self-coach and used it consistently I’d be out of a job!
She suggests many strategies for each of her 5 areas of EI – questions and simple tips to try covering many aspects of human interaction. It is focused primarily on applying EI at work and with some imagination you can apply it to any human interaction.
Her purpose for sharing this information is her belief that quality of life is defined by one’s emotional wealth; that investing in our interpersonal relationships can help sustain us through physical health or financial wealth challenges.
What could you do to train your self-coach?
