Building Emotional Intelligence – The Skills of Understanding Other People Emotionally

Healthy social-emotional skills are our compass when we navigate complex social situations. We develop these essential skills throughout our lives as we are continuously interacting with others. The foundation to human interactions and understanding others is surprisingly not outside, not in them. It is within us and we refer to it most often as our EGO, the interaction between our self-image and our social image.

The first step to constructing healthy relationships with others is learning to establish realistic images and expectations about ourselves, to develop realistic self-confidence and an accurate sense of strengths and weaknesses. Without this you will be sensitive to criticism, insecure, and worry about failure.

Another cornerstone of social emotional wellbeing is practicing empathy. Positive interactions with others requires the ability to empathize with people and to emotionally understand even those who may have come from different backgrounds or cultures.

In this Article

• What to do to increase realistic social awareness and empathy ?
• Establish realistic expectations and external self-awareness
• Improve your skills in recognizing personality types and emotional languages
• Improve your skills in empathy, non-verbal communication & body language
• Developing the skills -Social Emotional Awareness
• Benefits of improving your social awareness and empathy

This is Step 3 – developing social awareness skills and empathy. You might also be interested in our Complete Guide to improving emotional intelligence that gives a summery and overview of all the steps. You can find the other steps interesting too:

What to do to increase social intelligence and empathy ?

• Establish realistic expectations and accurate external self-awareness
• Improve your skills in recognizing personality types and emotional languages
• Improve your skills in empathy, non-verbal communication & body language
• Be interested. Be receptive to new ideas- new ways of doing things, new perspectives

Establish realistic expectations and external self-awareness

Expectations as we all know are many times the road to disappointment. Expectations mix us up emotionally and sometimes we decide that we should give up on wanting, desiring because they have caused us so much emotional pain and discomfort. But without the ability to want, desire and expect we kind of loose the salt of life. We loose the interest in people, in professions, in the world. Expectations and hopefulness are necessary emotions as they give the taste to life, they start emotional momentum so you’d better didn’t give them up.

Realistic is a key word here. How can we be more realistic when we experience all of life through a subjective and individual lens? I think the key to this is something very surprising and out of the field of of canonized psychology. It is more of a skill in mathematics called probability calculation. What I see most often happening is that people create illusionary expectations by miscalculating the probabilities. When some things have a 0.01% chance to happen the way they want it, they will tell the story to themselves that this thing CAN happen (as if it had at least 50% chance) and it is realistic to expect it. And so they don’t do anything to increase the chances and when nothing moves, things are not happening they get disappointed and start blaming and pointing fingers. When it was their measurements that were wrong in the first place. This is an interesting topic and more of a personal perspective so you can read about this in more detail in one of the Personal perspective posts.

Illusions however, are so sweet to the untrained mind. Un unrealistic expectation, even if we feel it is fishy, is better felling than facing the fact that we are further away from our desire than we thought. Facing reality is not that hard and becoming honest reveals its true powers and values for those who are training their mindfulness. It is part of the awareness, honesty, mindfulness training started at STEP 1 to develop our true sense of honestly assessing where we are.

This means that we are looking the disappointment right in the eye, NOW instead of postponing it. Illusions lead to disappointments when there are disappointments existing already now. It is more efficient to correct our chances now, instead of ruining them. Chances do not change by themselves, or by luck or by magic. When the chances are low it is better to recognize it and start improving from where we are. What people do instead is saying that all is well, chances are good so they are doing nothing but illusionary thinking and running right into the arms of escaladed versions of the same disappointment.

Correcting illusions is not easy but as we move from one to the next, to the next so will our sense of who we are become more clear and realistic. An accurate sense of self-importance isn’t possible in the field of illusions. We can give up, let go of the immediate gratification from postponing the disappointment and discomfort for developing on the long run the capacity of feeling true enthusiasms, interest, knowing and joyous expectation.

Improve your skills in recognizing personality types and emotional languages

How we see other people matters in how we interact with them. Improving the understanding of yourself can improve the understanding of others because we are not the same but similar in many aspects. We all tend to be more friendly to people who are like us, who seems familiar and tend to keep distance from those who are unfamiliar. We all have tendencies to behave more like extroverts or introverts.

When you feel like you are having trouble understanding others it is a good starting point to look for categorizations. You can develop a more nuanced understanding of characteristics by starting from the basic, broad categories. This can be as easy as reading about the 12 different astrology characters. Although there is not much science there, it still can serve as a good point to see how we are similar in some things and different in others. how we all have strengths and weaknesses.

We are like snowflakes having our own individual, unique personalities and luckily it is still possible to organize these personality traits into more scientific categories. The most popular categorization these days is the 16 personality type test. Doing the test can serve you also as a starting point in building a positive but realistic self-image. It helps you accepting your strengths and weakness ad it can be an eye opener to see that none is perfect. Everyone has room for improvement.

“Variety is the spice of life” and diversity serves you well. It is important to become aware of the fact that it is actually important for us to be different. A complex society like ours cannot function when everyone is the same. If we all liked only classical music there wouldn’t be the amazing variety of songs that we have today. And that is true for buildings, cars, decorations, hotels and so on. We create openness and open-endedness with our differences. The possibilities, the choices and opportunities multiply for you, because others are different than you are. Acceptance of differences and respect are key EQ skills.

Improve your skills in empathy, non-verbal communication & body language

Empathy begins when you gain awareness that others have feelings just like you do and they are free to feel different about things than you do. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is much more than just being compassionate, helpful and putting yourself in the shoes of others. Empathy is the ability that enables you to pick up, recognize and interpret the nonverbal cues others are using to communicate their emotional states with you. Communication happens on many levels and those people who empathize with others can see and understand the other person’s perspective even if they disagree. Empathy doesn’t mean that you have to think the same way or even share the emotion that is apparent, it simply means the ability to recognize the emotion in the other person and accept, respect where the other person is emotionally. Their feelings are valid and can be respected as such, even if you think that they are overreacting or that it isn’t such a big deal.

Emotionally intelligent, empathetic people know instinctively how to interpret facial expressions, gestures and body language. They will also have a relatively good understanding of what makes people tick. They also notice when someone’s tone of voice and mood changes and they have mostly correct ideas why this could have happened. These skills to understanding people and reading body language can be learned.

NOTE – Increasing only this aspect of emotional intelligence can lead to manipulative tendencies. It is important to do the other steps as well. People who lack accurate self-appreciation, self-esteem will crave the attention and appreciation of others so they might become charismatic, influential in order to get it. But that doesn’t make them emotionally intelligent people. They put their effort to excel in one aspect of the EQ but they wouldn’t get a passing grade for their whole emotional intelligence skillset.

Be interested. Be receptive to new ideas- new ways of doing things, new perspectives

Openness is highly correlated with high emotional intelligence. Openness is not about extroversion and how many social followers one has. Openness is more like interest, curiosity, imagination, creativity. It is what we see in kids. That honest, joyous interest in life, in people, in nature, in animals, in food, in the little things of life.

Developing the skills -Social Emotional Awareness

• Clarify how you view the relationship between Self and Others
• Do a personal SWOT Analysis and a Personality Test
• Learn when and how to accept and give feedback
• Practice an objective, realistic appraisal of situations
• Look for role models
• Practice Active Listening
• Look into the mirror and imitate body postures and facial expressions
• Engage in conversation with people who are from different background

Clarify how you view the relationship between Self and Others – This is a typical blind spot for emotionally intelligent people. Those who are good in the social aspects and manipulate easily often tend to be engaged in wishful thinking and overconfidence. Ego plays a huge role in how we perceive and react to different situations.

Do a personal SWOT Analysis and a Personality Test. Understanding what your real strengths and weaknesses are is key for your development. These tests can kind of give you a realistic feedback without having to ask others for it. You can have a clearer idea how they see you in general. Social intelligence involves a basic understanding of human nature so learning about personality types can improve your emotional intelligence.

Learn when and how to accept and give feedback – Most people appreciate an authentic, honest opinion when it is expressed in a non-judgmental, non-critical way. Accepting feedback from the wrong people causes a lot of unnecessary emotional pain. Developing a healthy personality image starts with learning not to accept feedback from bullying, negative, disillusioned, unsuccessful, painful people.

Practice an objective, realistic appraisal of situations -Objective here is meant as a logical perspective as opposed to an overly emotional outlook. Start viewing adversity as a solvable challenge, not as unbearable, unmanageable problem.

Look for role models – look for and remember the nice problem-solving. Some people have skills and you can recognize those skills in everyday life. Learn from seeing how others solve their challenges without idolizing them. Read the biography of people whom you look up to, who successfully managed to excel in fields that are interesting to you.

Practice Active Listening -Try to focus on what the speaker is saying and show that you’re engaged by paraphrasing and using other non-verbal cues like nodding. By actively listening, it will be easier to connect with others and truly understand their thoughts and feelings.

Look into the mirror and imitate an emotional expressions – Sadness, anger, happiness is expressed similar over cultures and personalities. We are not the same but very similar in many ways. Recognizing the core emotions and the subtle ones on your own face, can make you become attuned to how others feel.

Benefits of improving your social awareness and empathy

• More positive social interactions
• Opportunities for making new friends
• Trust and respect within your team and work environment
• Mutually beneficial relationships with friends, colleagues, and family
• Improved problem-solving skills

Credits/ Resources : Featured image designed by Pch Vector