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What’s your EQ?

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE CHECK IN

Emotional intelligence is a frequently overlooked tool that can help you not only better navigate healthcare but also lead to a better physical and emotional wellness, performance and resilience that will positively impact all areas of life. Consider this a starting place but understand there is no definitive endpoint. Just continued progress.
Let’s get started!

Review each situation or setting and rate how you would respond or how it reflects your typical reaction as
1-never; 2-rarely 3-sometimes; 4-usually; 5-always

Interpreting your score

Now that you have reviewed, reflected and scored your personal response to each statement you know are able to better understand what this means for you. For each question place your score into the box into corresponds to. For example, If I gave myself a score of 5 for #1, I would place a 5 in the #1 in self-awareness and do the same for #5, #9, #12 and #15. Then add up the scores in each of the emotional intelligence dimensions to characterize how you find you are doing in each of these 4 areas. Any dimension where your score is less than 18 highlights a growth opportunity and area of focus that you can build upon.

Emotional Intelligence can develop with purposeful effort, feedback from others and resources directed at the domain that can improve. Even if you are above 18 in all areas there is always an opportunity to grow. Consider this a wild card and you get to choose your area of focus.

Adapted from govloop.com and Emily A. Sterrett, Ph. D., in The Manager’s Pocket Guide to Emotional Intelligence, 2000, HRD Press: Amherst, MA and from The Handbook of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership by Daniel E. Feldman, 1999, Leadership Performance Solutions.

The concept of emotional intelligence and an individual's emotional quotient (EQ) was first presented in 1990 by Salovey and Mayer and since that time more than 40 different tools to measure it have been developed. So, if you have taken prior measures or future measures of your EQ there may be subtle variations and even potentially additional dimensions considered. Irrespective they probably share similar findings of strength and opportunity. I personally have found that the 4 domains of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social management are most foundational and perhaps simplest to convey and consider in any situation, medical, personal, professional or otherwise.

Self-Awareness can sometimes feel like a misnomer because it is not only the ability to recognize and interpret your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but also how they reflect your perceived position in the world and how it impacts your behavior with others.

Self-Management is how you choose to respond internally and externally. Do you choose to feel like a victim when a situation or result is not what is desired, or do you choose control? Control can be demonstrated by acknowledging a difficult situation and looking at what the opportunities to redirect are, lessons learned, or decision to not let the results define who you are or what you are capable of.

Social Awareness
is the ability to be recognize and interpret real time significance and meaning of your environment, other individuals present and the verbal and non-verbal communication that is occurring. This may be represented by emotional content, social cues, body language, tone and volume of spoken words, location of interaction or change in location to have the interaction. Developing strengths in this area can not only improve real time interactions but also allow for improved empathy and understanding, relationship building and communication.

Social Management
involves a combination of self and others and is focused on effectively navigating interactions through understanding, effective communication and developing connections.