Emotional intelligence is the hot skill every employer is looking for right now. In this episode, Michelle Dittmer speaks to the Founder of Entry Learning, Morgan Toane, about how to develop emotional intelligence.
Morgane Toane is an emotional intelligence practitioner who helps leaders, individuals and groups connect, explore and grow through experiential workshops, keynotes and coaching.
As a teen, Morgan spent his weekends going to group workshops on emotional intelligence, where participants were encouraged to express their emotions, communicate their desires and manifest their purpose.
What is emotional intelligence?
In a nutshell, it's about being smarter with your feelings. It's about continuously asking yourself; "how self-aware am I, how intentional am I and what's my purpose at this moment?"
Why are we so scared of our emotions?
Historically in western society, an ethos exists especially in men where our purpose is to conquer all obstacles and once someone has that control or is a master at something they have achieved success.
The need for control shows up in being on top of day-to-day tasks and trying to control emotions to the point where someone is invulnerable.
This ethos is so common because it's not taught in school and families have a hard time talking about it because emotions are taboo in our society.
Through the pandemic, our emotions have taken over as we lost control over our everyday lives and future. Through challenges like this, there is an opportunity to develop emotional intelligence. Emotions act as signals when something is important to you and they can help lead you on the right path.
Learning emotional intelligence on your gap year
Similar to the downtime we've had this year, gap years give people an opportunity to slow down and focus on what's important to them as normal distractions aren't present.
Morgan spent a few years solo backpacking and said it was informative because he had the opportunity to get to know himself and discover what was important to him. Most of the major decisions he's made today have been a result of what he learned about himself during his travels.
Through his travels, he had different jobs that taught him what he did and didn't want to do, which eventually lead him to find his purpose as a coach who helped people develop their emotional intelligence.
Morgan has worked with people who have done everything they were "suppose to do" - go to university, get a good job, get married, buy a big house and have kids. Even though they followed the script of life and have all these things, they feel empty.
People rarely sit down with themselves to figure out what their values and strengths are, what energizes them and what motivates them.
Employers are looking for people who are self-motivated, who are energized by their work and who are self-aware. If you're not motivated and energized by your work, you're going to burn out and if you aren't self-aware, you probably won't work well with other people.
Reflection exercise:
6seconds, an emotional intelligence network uses this model for emotional intelligence: knowing yourself, choosing yourself and giving yourself which is a fancy way of saying how self-aware am I, how intentional am I and how purposeful I am at this moment.
What are you feeling right now?
Listen and accept those feelings
What's important to you about that feeling?
What options do you want to do with this feeling?
How could you reach out to someone right now?
How can you be empathetic to someone or yourself right now?
What do you want to contribute to the world?