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People are taught that there’s only one true mark of intelligence throughout the school. Our IQ, or our ability to perform well in math and science, is regarded as the emotive of achievement when we’re young. However, as soon as people emerge into the real world, it becomes clear that there are other ways to get ahead and to apply wisdom to your life both inside and outside of work. One of those measures is emotional intelligence (EQ), which many people have in spades. Here’s how to start leveraging this key trait in your career.
Career Matches
There are some careers that are particularly well-suited to people with a high level of emotional intelligence. That’s not to say that high emotional intelligence won’t be useful in every single job you ever perform. But there are clearly some jobs and roles that require you to apply your emotional intelligence to complex problems involving individuals and their emotional worlds. One of these is counseling, which is based around the careful, compassionate exploration of someone’s problems.
A brilliant example of a high-EQ job, counseling requires you to gain a degree certificate, given that it’s a high-stakes job that involves people’s innermost thoughts and feelings. You can earn this qualification by applying to the Touro University M.A. in Counseling course, which will equip you with all you need to make the most of this career path.
People Skills
As mentioned above, you needn’t apply for a job in counseling or a similar high-EQ position to leverage your emotional intelligence to advance your career. Actually, you’ll be able to use it in pretty much every situation you face that involves people – including in-person meetings, Zoom calls, and even emails. The key is to identify with how someone else is feeling, which is something that high-EQ people excel at.
In these situations, you’ll advance your career by solving problems, mediating disagreements, and finding ways for people to work effectively together. Emotional intelligence is a brilliant trait to bring to management, too, seeing as it’s a way you can motivate your workers and help them feel valued and cared for.
Dealing with difficult personalities
If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to deal with a truly difficult personality at work. But if you are unlucky enough, then one-day company might hire a person who’s long-winded or chronically late or someone who gets flustered easily. And when it comes time for performance reviews and raises, that poor performer could take advantage of your own good nature by crying foul play. As much as you try to avoid difficult people at work, it’s inevitable that some will slip through your hiring processes and land on your team. That’s why knowing how to deal with them is so important; just like fires and floods, they can happen to anyone at any time!
Promotions
Finally, if you’re looking to climb the ladder in whatever industry you are in, then emotional intelligence will be there to help you do so. By approaching the right people and integrating yourself into the right groups, you’ll be able to catch the eye of seniors, who will see you as the right person for the next big round of promotions in your firm.
This is not to say that you should be manipulative. It’s more a case of apt networking, which is something that those with people skills can perform with ease. While those who lack emotional intelligence might struggle in this regard. So leveraging your own skills in the environment of the workplace and especially with senior workers can help you progress in your career.
These tips show how your career can be advanced by leveraging emotional intelligence that may have at present been left untapped.
