Part 3: Essentials of Supervision - Emotional Intelligence

How do you handle pressure at work? Do you cram?

How do you respond to colleagues or supervisor who you think are watching your every move waiting for you to do something against what is the company's norms? Do you squirm? Are you defensive?

How do you handle conflicts between people? Would you point out mistakes or lapses of specific person?

How do you handle problems at work? Will you be irritated with colleagues that don't deliver expected results?

Well, I have listed here some pointers that I think would be of help to you if in case you've have answer 'yes' to most of the questions above:

1. Know your emotions

• When you're feeling that rage is building up, feel it. Be familiar with it. Name your emotions: is it anger? distrust? fear? anxiety? irritations? aggression?
  

2. Manage your emotions

• If management pointed out a fault in something that you've did, don't worry. Don't be defensive. Don't squirm. It is after all their job to spot imperfections. Best approach? Step out of your emotion then respond professionally.

• Manage your temper - get angry. That's unavoidable, you don't have to deprive yourself of feeling this kind of emotion. But don't let this get in the way. Feel the emotion, be familiar with it, get over with it quickly. Then get back to work.
  

• Channel your emotion away but not through other people. When you're angry, attribute them to the right sources. Analyze. Why are you angry? And AVOID ACTING UPON THEM IMPULSIVELY. Most people lost their professionalism because they react too much, too quickly and sometimes the reason of their rage is petty misunderstanding.

• Learn to differentiate what is 'problem' and 'irritation'. Don't get confused between the two. You might never know that the difficulty you're facing would have no solution at all because the source of your difficulty is you're irritation. Not a valid problem at all.

3. Motivate yourself

• Improve your self regulation and cope with frustration in a smart way. Learn to control your emotions would help one in reaching their goals.

4. Recognize emotions from others

• Be sensitive. Practice empathy. Know that when someone is losing his temper, there is nothing you can do to alleviate the person's feeling at that moment. Anything you will say will just fuel the fire. So better stop, think first then approach the person when you think the coast is clear

5. Handling relationships

• How good at you at managing emotions of others? You're done managing your own emotions. It is now time that you manage others. And leaders are skilled at this. When leaders are not calm, subordinates would become uncomfortable.

• In a conflict situation between two people, you have to recognize that both person are at fault. You don't need to point out mistakes of specific person. Remember, it takes two to tango. You also don't need the bring out the reason of dispute. Focus on 'now' and how to resolve the conflict, discuss how two people could still work together better. Be calm, assertive and straightforward when resolving conflicts.

Listed in numbers above are the 5 aspects of emotional intelligence or 'EQ' which I have learned from again attending the Essentials of Supervision training. Now, assess which of these aspects you need improvement on.

If I have to assess myself, I know I need to improve on no. 5 - to be calm under pressure. But you know, you can only achieve all of the other 4 if you have the power to control your emotion. Once you have that, learn to balance the other 4 and you would be successful in dealing with daily struggles of facing and handling difficult people, anywhere!