The twelve competencies of emotional intelligence

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According to Daniel Goleman, internationally known psychologist and author of Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, and Working with Emotional Intelligence; Emotional Self Awareness is the ability to know your own emotions and their effects on your performance and it involves 12 competencies:

• Self-Regulate is the ability to keep your disruptive emotions and impulses in check in order to maintain your effectiveness under stressful or even hostile conditions. 
• Positivity is the ability to see the best in people, situations, and events so you can be persistent in pursuing goals despite setbacks and obstacles. 
• Achieve means that you strive to meet or exceed a standard of excellence by embracing challenges, taking calculated risks and looking for ways to do things better.
• Adaptability means you can stay focused on your goals, but easily adjust how you get there. You remain flexible in the face of change can juggle multiple demands, and are open to new situations, ideas or innovative approaches. 
• Empathy means you have the ability to sense others’ feelings; have a desire to understand how they see things; and take an active interest in their concerns. 
• Organizational Awareness is the ability to read a group’s emotional currents and power relationships, identifying influencers, networks, and the dynamics that matter in decision-making. 
• Influence refers to the ability to have a positive impact on others and meaningfully engage people in order to get buy-in or gain their support. 
• Coach is the ability to further the learning or development of others by understanding their goals, challenging them, giving them timely feedback, and offering them support. 
• Inspire is the ability to bring your best and motivate others around a shared mission or purpose in order to get the job done.
• Teamwork is the ability to work with others toward a shared goal; build spirit and positive relationships; encourage active participation; and share responsibility and rewards among members of a group.
• Conflict Management is the ability to work through tense or highly charged situations by tactfully bringing disagreements into the open, seeking to understand multiple perspectives, and searching for common ground in order to find solutions people can agree to.

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Inward conflict resolution

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The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.” If you win the battles there, if you settle the issues that inwardly conflict, you feel a sense of peace, a sense of knowing what you’re about. And you’ll find that the public victories—where you tend to think cooperatively, to promote the welfare and good of other people, and to be genuinely happy for other people’s successes—will follow naturally.

– Religious leader David O. McKay

Changing the other person’s mind

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We live in an age of polarization. Many of us may be asking ourselves how, when people disagree with or discount us, we can persuade them to rethink their positions. Some are so sure of themselves that they reject good opinions and ideas from others and refuse to abandon their own bad ones. But, Adam Grant, Author, Think Again, writes, “it is possible to get even the most overconfident, stubborn, narcissistic, and disagreeable people to open their minds.” He offers four approaches that can help you encourage a know-it-all to recognize when there’s something to be learned, a stubborn person to make a U-turn, a narcissist to show humility, and a disagreeable one to agree with you.

The first barrier to changing someone’s view is arrogance. We’ve all encountered people who are overconfident: They don’t know what they don’t know. If you call out their ignorance directly, they may get defensive. A better approach is to let them recognize the gaps in their own understanding.

A second obstacle to changing people’s opinions is stubbornness. Intractable people see consistency and certainty as virtues. Once made up, their minds seem to be set in stone. Research shows that asking questions instead of giving answers can overcome people’s defensiveness. You’re not telling them what to think or do; you’re giving them some control over the conversation and inviting them to share her thoughts. Questions like “What if?” and “Could we?” spark creativity by making people curious about what’s possible.

A third hurdle in the way of changing minds is narcissism. Narcissistic leaders believe they’re superior and special, and they don’t take kindly to being told they’re wrong. But with careful framing, you can coax them toward acknowledging that they’re flawed and fallible. It’s often said that bullies and narcissists have low self-esteem. But research paints a different picture: Narcissists actually have high but unstable self-esteem. They crave status and approval and become hostile when their fragile egos are threatened—when they’re insulted, rejected, or shamed. By appealing to their desire to be admired, you can counteract their knee-jerk tendency to reject a difference of opinion as criticism. To nudge them in that direction, affirm your respect for them

A final and the fourth impediment to persuasion is disagreeableness, a trait often expressed through argumentativeness. Disagreeable people are determined to crush the competition, and when you urge them to reevaluate their strategy, that’s what you become. However, if you’re willing to stand up to them rather than back down, you can sometimes gain the upper hand. Because disagreeable people are energized by conflict, they don’t always want you to bend to their will right away; they’re eager to duke it out. You can win them over if you kept fighting for your views by refining and repeating pitches, acknowledging and addressing weaknesses, offering proof of concept, and enlisting supporters.

In a turbulent world, success depends not just on cognitive horsepower but also on cognitive flexibility. When others ack the wisdoml to question their convictions, we need the courage to persuade them to change their minds.