Building your Emotional Intelligence to ensure success and happiness

Building your Emotional Intelligence to ensure success and happiness

For professionals, cognitive intelligence comes naturally as it’s the driver of their functional excellence. Most professionals score high on IQ - Intelligence Quotient. As professionals gradually move up the ladder and take senior/ management roles, building emotional intelligence becomes essential. Emotional Intelligence - measured as EQ becomes a key differentiating factor for their future growth.

You may realize that with IQ being at the same level, growing your Emotional Intelligence enables you to become an effective manager, leader, and a better human being. This ensures work-life success and enhances your happiness.

Aspects of Emotional Intelligence:

Self-awareness and Self-actualization: perceiving your current strengths and weakness, learning to improve, and striving to achieve your objectives.

Assertiveness: confidently expressing your thoughts and views while being aware of the potential for causing a conflict or opposition.

Social-awareness and Interpersonal skills: being sensitive to other person’s situation, collaborating, and developing strong relationships.

Impulse Control: delaying or holding-off the temptation to speak or act, and patiently sorting out the most appropriate response.

Practical Thinking: assessing and checking the reality of the current situation while avoiding to be biased by any false imagination.

Problem Solving: connecting with the subjective and objective elements while solving problems and effectively making choices & taking decisions

Flexibility: assessing new conditions, being open to dynamically adapt to them, and accordingly adjusting your behavior.

Resilience: maintaining a positive attitude in hard times, and enduring challenges effectively with an optimistic view for a better outcome.

In certain situations, if you can’t control your emotions then there is risk that you could cause a negative effect on the outcome. When we let our emotions run out of control, they cause us to do and say some terrible things. Uncontrolled emotions in some settings change the perception of those involved. In a sensitive circumstance if you’ve had an emotional outburst, it might lead to disturbance and a distancing in your relationship with those affected.

They might say:

“I can’t remember what s/he did, but I remember how angry s/he got.”

“I can’t remember what s/he said, but I remember how hurt s/he made me feel.”

Choosing how you respond to a situation, problem, or challenge is more important than the actual occurring phenomenon!

Commit to a life of constant growth and become the master of your own destiny.

You don’t have to stride on this path all alone. You could choose to engage a coach who will walk with you on this journey.

Forgiving yourself from a big MIS-take

Forgiving yourself from a big MIS-take

All of us at some point in time realize that we have made a mis-take. It’s interesting how each of us assimilates the situation & events prior to the mistake, the actual decision & action, and the consequences.

The sequence might be somewhat like this:

1. Somethings happen, someone says something, you struggle to surpass an obstacle, you come across a negative experience etc.

2. You evaluate choices or come to a conclusion. Then you make a choice/ decision. Certain things happen due to your above choice/decision: actions, events

3. You live with the results/consequences for a while. Sometimes you think about your choice/decision and the subsequent consequences

4. Gradually you become aware or feel that you made a mistake. Initially you self-reason and keep justifying your choice/decision.

5. Then your mind starts swinging like a pendulum/ yo-yo; from thinking one end that it is your fault to the other end of thinking that it is not your fault. Also that it is someone else’s fault, or the circumstance was the caused for it. Finally you realize that it was your fault either in a major way or completely. That it was an error on your part!

6. You start feeling guilt, shame, remorse. Your sense of well-being is disturbed. If you continue worrying on the above then you risk the possibility of a lack of sleep, loss of appetite, dis-interest with current events, and detachment with the people around you. At the extreme end it may lead to a state of depression

7. You may continue in this chasm till you reach the state of having the courage to acknowledge your mis-take. You free yourself from the burden of denial and whole-heartedly accept the error on your part. Also the epiphany occurs that it’s a mis-take and not a sin!

8. At that stage you may choose to reach out to the person and express your apologies or you may visualize them in your mind and express your apologies. You may also request for their forgiveness in-person or in your mind

9. When you do that, somehow magically you are relieved from the guilt of the mis-take. You start realizing that it might have happened due to ignorance or limited information or a series of unforeseen events or inability to think clearly at that time. You stop feeling guilty and learn to forgive yourself

10.You regain the positive energy and vitality to move on with your life. You may also make a resolve not to repeat the mis-take or wrong doing

Forgiveness Poem:

Forgiveness is letting go of the pain and accepting what has happened, because it will not change.

Forgiveness is dismissing the blame. Choices were made that caused the hurt; we each could have chosen differently, but we didn't.

Forgiveness is looking at the pain, learning the lessons it has produced, and understanding what we have learnt.

Forgiveness allows us to move on towards a better understanding of universal love and our true purpose.

Forgiveness is knowing that love is the answer to all questions, and that we all are in some way connected.

Forgiveness is starting over with the knowledge that we have gained. I forgive you, and I forgive myself. I hope you can do the same.

- Judith Mammay

Some quotes:

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience, which leads to success – Denis Waitley

Mistakes simply happen because of lack of awareness. Once awareness dawns in you, then you realize that you made a mistake out of ignorance. By realizing this, you come out of the mistake and become innocent once again – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Next Level Coaching: why would you need it? what does it consist of?

Next Level Coaching

Why would you need next level coaching?

In today’s TNT (time-numbers-technology) world, to thrive you need to be:

Agile | Accretive | Assertive

Next level coaching is a:

Process to increase the momentum of your growth

AND

Catalyst to move you from your current state to your desired state

What does next level coaching consists of:

1.      Finding your differentiator

2.      Building a SMART goal

3.      Setting a realistic timeline to achieve your goal

4.      Understanding how beliefs drive behavior

“Working with a coach helps you amplify your unique strengths and enhance performance”

Building a performance culture in your organization

Building a performance culture in your organization

Owners and CEOs are persistently seeking ways to enable high performance and growth. This requires improvement in productivity of individual members and in team performance. Those who are ahead in their respective industry domain are building a coaching culture in their organization.

Coaching initiatives help employees perceive their unique strengths and encourage them to work on areas needing improvement. This builds a strong foundation for an organization to achieve excellence.

“Amplify your portfolio of unique strengths for achieving excellence”

How to choose GOALS

How to choose GOALS

Check the above chart for assessing, evaluating, and choosing your goals.

Goals which are:

• Good for me AND Good for others: WINNER/ FULFILLED
• Good for me AND Not Good for others: SELFISH/ SELF-CENTRED
• Not Good for me AND Good for others: MARTYR
• Not Good for me AND Not Good for others: UNFULFILLED

“It is vital to choose the RIGHT GOALS for well-formed OUTCOMES”

5 digital marketing modes for business lead generation

5 digital marketing modes for business lead generation

Digital marketing as a general term means using an electronic medium to engage with existing or prospective customers. It is also referred to as 'online marketing' or 'internet marketing'.

There are two forms of digital marketing:

In push digital marketing you (marketer) send a message without the recipient actively seeking the content. Whereas in pull digital marketing the viewer actively seeks your marketing content.

Different modes of Digital Marketing

Email marketing

Email marketing is a method used to broadcast a commercial or promotional message to a group of people. The purpose could be for you to acquire business from new customers, get repeat business from your current customers, build your brand awareness etc. Email marketing can be done to either a list of your current customers or a list of prospective customers. 

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is an online advertising service offered by Google. When a person visits the Google Search Engine to query using a string of words, your ad copy is displayed at the top/bottom/side of the list of results displayed. It uses a bidding method of pricing for appearance & placement which is based on Google’s determination of the relevance of the search query to your ad copy. The selection of keywords is the most important factor in determining the extent of exposure your ad receives and who sees your ad.

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads is an advertising solution that allows you to create and place ads on specific pages on LinkedIn’s website. You specify which LinkedIn members view your ads by selecting the target audience: by job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, or a LinkedIn Group. When a LinkedIn member among your target audience visits their own LinkedIn page, your ad appears on the right panel of the page. People who click on your ads would be directed to your web page. You control your advertising costs by setting a budget and only pay for the clicks or impressions that you receive.

Facebook Ads 

Facebook ads is a behavioral targeting tool that allows you to show your ad to exactly the people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. You can target people based on geography, age, gender, their personal interests, preferences etc.

Based on the creative content of your ad it would get ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘shares’ from viewers. When a viewer takes any of the above actions, their friends may see your ad. So it expands the audience for your ads and thus helps in promotion of your product or service. 

Another variation to the above method is to promote a specific post using ‘Boost your post’

Virtual Tradeshow

A virtual tradeshow is a type of virtual event in an online environment that stays live for a particular duration of days or time. It is the online equivalent of a traditional trade-fair or expo. In this case the exhibitors and visitors connect with each other via the Internet, regardless of their physical location.

For promoting your product or services, you take part as an exhibitor in a tradeshow by setting up an electronic virtual booth. Your virtual booth would typically have the imagery of a real-world tradeshow booth with desks and displays. It could have several icons which can trigger different responses upon the click of the mouse. 

Depending on your company’s type of products or services you can use some or all of the above modes for promotion.

3 Ps for pinpointing your company’s unique value proposition

3 Ps for pinpointing your company’s unique value proposition

Companies start with one or a handful of people who have experience in a particular profession or vocation. They initiate a new business upon finding a need in the market and/ or upon having a vision about fulfilling a market need.

Let’s use the below mentioned approach to find your company’s differentiation in the market in relation to its competitors. It will help in pinpointing your company’s unique value proposition.

Draw three intersecting circles as shown in the visual diagram.

Title them as:

1st circle: PROFICIENCY

2nd circle: PROMINENCE

3rd circle: PURPOSE 

In the PROFICIENCY circle: list your company’s professional competencies & core skills.

In the PROMINENCE circle: list your company’s awards, commercial success, industry recognition

In the PURPOSE circle: list your company’s mission, natural motivation, internal values

Analyze the items written in the above three circles to make further modifications/ changes if need be. 

Now in the intersection space of the 3 circles, choose and write 1 or 2 items that interconnect to these circles … aspects that have a connection to each of these circles.

This helps you pinpoint your Unique Value Proposition. It’s your niche in the market where your company has a natural flair to excel. Work on this ‘sweet spot’ to differentiate your company in the market.