Building Emotional Intelligence – Relationships

Social intelligence is one aspect of emotional intelligence. We are social beings and much of our emotions are related to other people. You love them, you hate the, you name it, but they can evoke emotion from us at really high intensities. Social emotional skills and social intelligence are the topics concerned with managing our relations with others in family, friendship, work and other type of interactions.

Being around a person with high social intelligence feels really good. They make us feel valued, respected, accepted. Developing emotional intelligence, is not only about theoretical, thinking exercises, but there is a practical part to it when you actually go out and mix into the social web. Social anxiety is a based on beliefs and fears that can be overcome and you can learn the skills to open up to people, to be willing to collaborate, to co-create with them and live a more fulfilling and joyous life.

This is Step 4 – developing interpersonal skills and good communication skills. 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 communication skills and improve interactions with others ?

• Open yourself up. Stay accessible and approachable
• Learn to communicate effectively. Stop complaining and criticizing
• Assertiveness skills. Be willing to resolve conflict but set compassionate boundaries.
• Collaborative skills. Maintain your relationships & social support networks

Open yourself up. Stay accessible and approachable

Being open and approachable is necessary to engage in interactions with others. Overcoming your social anxiety is not easy, we know, but interacting with others can be a rewarding, good experience. Emotional intelligence includes making friends, going to the parties that you are invited to, chatting with other people about the weather and making other people feel comfortable around you.

The feeling of being trapped in an unreasonable, dumb, unbearable social maze is blocking a lot of people from experiencing life fully. Often these are high IQ (intelligent) people who are labeled having low emotional intelligence (EQ) because they find it challenging to get involved socially. However, they actually do have a high social intelligence and understand the social apparatus, the emotional dynamics, the group hierarchy they just don’t like it. It is not that they are not able to be involved, it is that they do not want to be involved and feel stressed, because they think they are obliged to. This is true for work, family and friendships as well.

Being open and friendly doesn’t mean that you have to say yes all the time. You can learn to say ‘No!’. It is just a matter of learning how to communicate. It can be beneficial to step back and chill out about this. You don’t have to force to be a social butterfly.

The first and most important thing to learn is to interact in good feeling and empathy or don’t interact at all. When conversation seem awkward, leave it and continue some other time. Networking is so popular today, but it is not for everyone. You can build your connections, friends base in other ways and you do not need 6000 friends and followers to feel satisfied and fulfilled. Being a nice person, being authentic, having integrity , being there for others but valuing your time is what real emotional intelligence looks like. Numbers on social media and popularity are not necessary a sign of happiness, emotional wellbeing and EQ. A lot of very popular people suffer deeply from loneliness and discontentment. You are not obliged to do social self-marketing. It is some peoples good channel to get what they want, but it might not be yours. Let yourself free from the social peer pressure and you’ll find your ways, your people, your tribe.

How to make friends type of articles are mostly about manipulation. How to manipulate people into liking you. Although techniques are working really well, but doing that won’t lead you to deep emotional connections and satisfying relationships. First of all, because doing that enforces all your insecurities on so many levels. If you feel good about yourself, you are empowered and you think you are living in a nice universe where good things can happen for you, than it makes no sense to manipulate. You know that if one person doesn’t like you they are free to do so and you can have what you want from others. They are just a channel, a conduit and there are others channels for the same things, for feeling the same emotions.

You don’t have to trick and force them into likin you. When you feel that it is necessary to prove them how valuable you are, and how wrong they are for not liking you, even if you win you will be basically enforcing an insecurity instead of empowering yourself. People with high emotional intelligence are not inclined to get involved in emotional competitions, love triangles and situations where you have to work hard to prove your worthiness to be liked. Manipulation leads you to a lot of dead ends, because the starting point, the starting program is wrong. It can get results but not real satisfaction. The tricks and techniques of communication are a tool like a hammer. You can use it in many ways for good or for bad. Be mindful of your intentions and whys.

There are people who like and accept you. There are people who click with you, who are resonating with you. When you don’t like those who resonate with you, change the vibe you are emitting, don’t blame them for the discomfort. It will be easier for you to click with people who like the same things you like. Go out and socialize with them, and let others be who they are. Clarify for yourself what you like, but don’t cement yourself in that. Avoid criticizing and judging those outside of your circles.

Stay flexible. Be open for the different and the new. You can join a new dance club in your area or start a new hobby. You can travel and move to a new environment (a new country, city or workplace) and see how you feel there. It is helpful to be adaptable and to be open to new ideas and experiences. Stay open and you’ll be surprised how much you can learn about yourself, about the layers of your emotions and personality.

Learn to communicate effectively. Stop complaining and criticizing

Good communication skills mean you are aware of the different ways of communicating and the different ways of responding. When your emotional intelligence is not well developed, you may assume that everyone else knows what you mean and feel. When we are little babies everyone around us does their best effort to understand what we want, what we feel. They hold us in their loving attention and try to guess if we are hungry, thirty, sleepy or bored.

Some people remain emotional babies and they expect others to interact with them accordingly. Although their survival is not in question, they still expect others to watch them, pay attention fully to them and understand how they feel without having to communicate. They associate this with being loved. But life doesn’t work this way. Things are efficient around here or seriously tending to improve in efficiency. Communication is efficient, makes understanding each other easier and quicker. Expecting unreasonable amounts of attention from others just because one doesn’t want/ isn’t able to communicate is inefficient. Willingness to communicate your needs and wants is already a sign of emotional intelligence. It is another aspect to learn to do that in a nice and productive way.

Avoid being judgmental. It is not about exchanging critical, logical thinking with illusions and pink positivity. It is about the way you express the things. Criticizing and judging a lot is not the sign of intelligence, but the sign of emotional challenges, emotional hurts. In many cases the topic of the criticism, the fact that you are talking about is right and realistic, but criticism is framing that fact in a negative context. It is possible to express your opinions without having to put others down.

It is interesting to spend time on understanding the nuances of how man and woman communicate differently what they want and how they express themselves emotionally. If you find yourself in situations where you are often misunderstood by your partner, it is good to read and learn about the communication differences between man and woman.

Assertiveness skills. Be willing to resolve conflict, but clarify your boundaries.

Assertiveness is halfway between the compliant, passive behavior and the rude, aggressive behavior. Being assertive means being confident without being aggressive, being able to stand up for your own rights in a positive way, without being either aggressive, or passively accepting ‘wrong’. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines assertiveness as :“Forthright, positive, insistence on the recognition of one’s rights”.to express personal rights without denying the rights of others. Being able to express feelings, wishes, wants and desires appropriately.

Resolve conflict. Don’t hold grudges for long. Marshall Rosenberg, a conflict resolution expert, has come up with what he calls the “giraffe language’, that is intended to address conflict without accusations, assumptions and attacks, and make good communication and finding mutually beneficial solutions more likely. As opposed to the big hearted giraffe, there is the Jackal language, which is all about judging, criticizing, analyzing, moralizing and accusing. We talked in more detail about taking responsibility and not blaming others at STEP 2. Don’t hold grudges for long, but don’t let them walk all over you. Assertiveness is a skill that can be learned and improving communication skills can surprise you with new friendships.

Collaborative skills. Maintain your relationships and social support networks

Collaborative skills came last on this list, but this is one of the most important skills we can develop. Collaboration is key to our survival and it is a cornerstone of being human. The mass media took an uninspired turn toward idolizing individual success. Movies, advertisements, but also schools, create the glorification of individually succeeding. And this approach makes so many people suffer, that it is really time to snap out of it.

Individual success is much less individual than it seems. Systems and networks of collaborative people are operating and working to ensure that travel is safe, buildings we live in are stable and so on. How can the amazing F1 driver drive his car if there where no people, without fame and maybe even without schooling, who are taking care of the roads. How could we live in cities without people doing the public maintenance and cleaning tasks. The big brokers wouldn’t be able to do their job, if the office buildings where smelling and full of garbage. Simple tasks like this are often overlooked and down-looked. We can live in this comfortable social structure and this quality of lifestyle, because we are willing to collaborate with each other. Appreciating and being grateful for the collaboration is a big step toward improving emotional intelligence.

Being the star of the team means that one is more efficient, talented, skilled, practiced in doing certain things. It doesn’t mean they are that good at everything. Ronaldo can’t win a football championship by himself no matter how talented he is. Even the solo marathon runner or iron man competitor needs a team of nutritionists, coaches, medical support, people organizing races, technical officials and so on, and so on… The star of a movie can’t get to fame without all the other actors playing in the background and directors, make-up artist, sound effect studio teams collaborating with them.

Appreciating talent is important, but talent cannot shine without collaboration. Huge teams of ‘average’ people are working in consensus behind talents. Talent and extreme amounts of hard work by themselves are rarely enough to succeed and unfortunately, that is not really mentioned on the American dream kind of personal success posters. Many people see themselves not worthy enough, not good enough because they think others are succeeding by themselves and they aren’t. When the truth is that coming with talent from uncollaborative backgrounds, lacking social support networks will make it almost impossible for people to succeed. Knowing about the importance of collaborating, accepting and appreciating collaboration can free us up, can make us to ask for help when we need it more often and releases the pressure of having to do things alone, with effort to be respected.

Some talented, gifted people (and kids) tend to think that they are entitled to being served. They mix up social collaboration with service. They see their talent (or money, or social status) as entitlement and look on collaboration as a means to enforce their superiority. They see themselves high above others, on the top of the pyramid, but that is usually a little dot kind of lonely space. Loneliness and weak relationships are one of the major sources of stress, health problems and depression. Open up to collaboration and appreciate your friends, your partner, your family, your collogues more often. Tell them nice words and say thank you when they help you out even if it is their job to do so. Realize how much you benefit from them being around you and being there for you on so many levels in life.

All this leads us to realize the importance of maintaining our relationships and social support networks. Spending quality time with your friends and family is much more important to your overall wellbeing, than spending your time on trying to prove yourself by exceeding others financially for example. At the end of the day it is all about how you feel and if you don’t fill yourself up with love, appreciation, collaboration, joy daily you can have a huge house full of shiny things, but your emotional warehouse will be empty.

Developing the skills -Communication and Interpersonal Skills

• Smile more often
• Ask people questions, listen actively and show curiosity
• Say No! when requests are unreasonable.
• Pick Your Battles
• Demonstrate assertiveness
• Be part of teams, invest in your core relationships.
• Don’t take people for granted.
• Spend quality time with family, friends

Want to know more about emotional intelligence ? Read Anchor to Bloom’s guide : Getting Started with Emotional Intelligence

References /Credits : Assertiveness – An Introduction, Social intelligence,