by Sara Ring
Quick Summary
The Digital Initiatives & Metadata Education (DIME) unit and others at Minitex recently had the opportunity to take a half-day workshop on Emotional Intelligence (EI). Each year, as a group, we explore ways to better understand ourselves and each other. I learned that Emotional Intelligence is not "being nice all the time" or "being emotional." Rather it's "being honest, aware, and smart." It's your ability to identify, manage, and express your emotions effectively and to handle interpersonal situations empathetically and wisely. We spent some time exploring why emotional intelligence is important in our lives, whether in a work or home context.
The Digital Initiatives & Metadata Education (DIME) unit and others at Minitex recently had the opportunity to take a half-day workshop on Emotional Intelligence (EI). Each year, as a group, we explore ways to better understand ourselves and each other. I learned that Emotional Intelligence is not "being nice all the time" or "being emotional." Rather it's "being honest, aware, and smart." It's a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.
We spent some time exploring why emotional intelligence is important in our lives, whether in a work or home context. It was really telling when we did an activity that asked us to list what we thought were three qualities in a leader, and then group those under 3 categories: IQ, Emotional Intelligence, or Subject Matter Expert. Many of them fell under either Emotional Intelligence or IQ. And yet, we do not seek our degrees in these areas or necessarily take classes on the subject while we're seeking library science or other advanced degrees where we will almost certainly be in leadership roles. Emotional intelligence represents an estimated 85-95% of the difference between a "good leader" and an "excellent leader." If you play a role in your organization as a leader or plan to lead or manage other staff, emotional intelligence is a topic to explore.
At the workshop, we explored how to handle when we are triggered emotionally (in particular when an emtional situation triggers a stressful takeover that prevents one from accessing higher level brain functions), but we spent a large segment of the workshop learning more about how to build up our emotional intelligence. Building up emotional intelligence means becoming aware, and then taking action. Part of that entailed taking an evaluation that ranked our emtional intelligence into 5 composite scales (parts):
- Self-Perception
- Self-Expression
- Interpersonal
- Decision Making
- Stress Management
Each area contains 3 subscales. For example. looking at the Interpersonal composite, this part is is defined as developing and maintaining relationships based on mutual respect and understanding. The 3 subscales include: interpersonal relationships, empathy, and social responsibility. A low rating on the social responsibility subscale would mean that you are hesitant, self-reliant, and dislike groups. A high rating would mean that you are cooperative, have genuine concern, and are giving. Each subscale has the potential for overuse. Overuse in social responsibility would include martyr behavior and rules-focused behavior. It's not surprising that libraries as an organization would be high on the social responsibility subscale.
We each received personal reports with our scores, which listed the impact it has on our work (emotional, social and behavioral implications), as well as examples of strategies for action. Our unit will be continuing to delve more deeply into our results in the coming year.
Cover photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
