It’s all in the body
I was negotiating with a business associate the other day and he was giving me mixed signals that made me very uncomfortable to say the least. On one hand he was telling me that every thing I was asking for in this particular transaction would not be a problem, but on the other hand he looked like he was saying, NO WAY STEVE, with his body language.
What to do? Well I decided to go ahead with the transaction to see how it would come together and low and behold it all fell apart over night. In retrospect I should have never of moved forward until I felt the body language was in sink with his words. By moving on I was only fooling myself and wasting time.
Being able to read others and even more importantly effect others with your own moods is a great skill rooted in Emotional Intelligence. Daniel Goleman,who is an expert on emotional intelligence writes about the benefits of being able to manage other peoples emotions in his book Emotional Intelligence, “Being able to manage emotions in someone else is the core of the art of handling relationships”. Emotional Intelligence is the #1 tool that we all have the ability to use and help us deal with every aspect of our life’s.
In the future I will write much more on emotional intelligence as I have committed my studies and my core beliefs to this approach in life. Daniel writes “At best. IQ contributes about 20 percent to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80 percent to other forces”. These other forces are skills such as emotional intelligence.
Quote of the day,
If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.
Daniel Goleman
Steve Whiteside is a consultant specializing in organizational development, leadership and motivational workshops. You can contact him at, 604-786-5677.
