Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence

At this week's staff meeting, we are going to be talking about our individual Emotional Intelligence (please complete these questions if you haven't done so already: Emotional Intelligence).  In the book, The Art of Coaching Teams, Emotional Intelligence (EI) is defined as the knowledge and awareness we have about our feelings.

Emotional Intelligence has four components:

• Self-Awareness - recognizing your own feelings and the impact of your emotions.  It's about knowing your strengths, and your limits, and how these impact the things you are involved in.
• Self-Management - the ability to make conscious decisions about how to respond to emotions, including self-control, transparency, adaptability, and initiative; anticipating the consequences of your choices and responding in a way that aligns to your values
• Social Awareness - the ability to recognize and understand the feelings that other people experience, to include empathy, understanding perspectives, and organizational awareness.
• Social Management - the ability to manage conflicts with others, to form healthy relationships, to collaborate, to offer feedback and guidance, and to motive and inspire others.

So why are we talking about Emotional Intelligence?

The Art of Coaching Teams goes on to say, "You can't manage your emotions effectively if you're not aware of when you're experiencing them, and it's challenging to navigate other relationships when you aren't clear about and managing your own feelings."

Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of successful job performance and that 90% of top performers are high in emotional intelligence.  So we are going to spend a little bit of time on Tuesday getting to know ourselves a little better, as well of developing an understanding of how "who we are" impacts "what we do".  My hope is that our conversations will be about recognizing our emotions when they arise and making choices about how to respond.

Emotional intelligence allows us to act in integrity, to experience joy, to build strong connections with others, and to create communities of resilient educators and children.  Seems like kind of a big deal!

Please complete the Emotional Intelligence checklist before the staff meeting, 

so we can get to know each other even better!