How many times have you driven down an unfamiliar road, especially in winter, and you hit nearly every pothole? A few days later, you drive down that road again but now you hit fewer of the potholes. Provided road crews haven’t yet repaired any of the potholes, the next time you drive down that road, you say to yourself, “Hey wait, I know there’s a pothole at the spot coming up and I’m going to avoid it this time.”
Do you ever feel as though you’ve been hitting the same potholes in your career? Perhaps, you find yourself in yet another dead-end, boring job, or you look back over your career and discover no definite career path. Nothing seems to link the companies or positions you’ve held.
Do you go from job to job, thinking the next one has to be better than the one you’re in? Maybe you’ve quit or been let go once or twice because of so-called “personality conflicts” between you and your boss or co-workers, or your boss said you had performance issues.
When these things happen, do you find yourself asking, “Why do I seem to keep making the same mistakes?” The good news is, while you can’t change the past, you can change the future by examining and improving your decision-making skills.
The first step to improving your decision-making skills and learning from past mistakes is to understand your emotional intelligence. No matter the size of your decision, large or small, your emotional intelligence influences the choices you make and the actions you take.
With my clients, I use a tool called the Emotional Quotient™, by Target Training International, to help individuals gain a better understanding of their emotional intelligence and how to leverage that knowledge to become more effective decision-makers. Your Emotional Quotient is the ability to sense, identify, understand, effectively apply, explain, manage, and control your emotions and that of others. Research shows that having a high EQ accounts for as much as 90% of success in top leaders.
The Emotional Quotient assessment measures five key areas:
Intrapersonal, the ability to understand yourself and form an accurate concept of yourself to operate effectively in life, which includes self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation:
- Self-awareness, the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and motivators and their effect on others.
- Self-regulation, the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and to think before acting.
- Motivation, a passion to work for reasons that extend beyond money and status and the propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence.
Interpersonal, the ability to understand other people, what motivates them, how they work, and how to work cooperatively with them, which includes social skills and empathy:
- Social Skills, a proficiency in managing relationships and building networks.
- Empathy, the ability to understand the emotional composition of others.
The EQ report helps pinpoint specific areas where you need improvement and outlines some strategies to help you. For example, if you score average or below average on intrapersonal motivation, you need to go beyond just developing a list of specific, measurable goals to include “why are these my goals?” Work daily on ways to achieve your goals, even if it’s just a few minutes a day. Find someone you respect whom you feel makes good decisions and is a goal achiever. Talk with him or her to learn how he or she overcomes obstacles to achieve success.
Another effective strategy is to maintain a daily journal. After several weeks or months of maintaining this journal, you’ll be surprised at what important, insightful discoveries you’ll make as you review your entries. Perhaps, you’ll find that you tend to make big decisions when you’re feeling particularly anxious about your job or important relationships or when you feel pointedly negative about yourself. For example, some clients have learned they tend to make job change decisions based mainly on what the job paid, not how or whether it would advance their long-term goals, provide new skill-building opportunities, or the potential negative effects on their family. If you find you have trouble articulating your emotions or making a link between your emotions, behaviors, and outcomes, a journal provides a way for you to write down your emotional responses to significant situations.
If you’re worried about someone else seeing your journal, you can always use an electronic journal and password protect it.
As you become more aware of what’s going on in your mind and your emotions when you’re contemplating important decisions, you’ll get better at making educated, sound decisions with your head, not just your heart. While it’s unrealistic to expect to avoid all the potholes in life, you can definitely learn to avoid the same ones and gain greater career satisfaction and success.
Download podcast
