Kit Prendergast, PCC
Kit brings you a wealth of expertise and experience as well as a wonderful spirit, energy, and a gift for inspiring you to create the life you truly want for yourself.Kit's Tips & Books
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Tag Archives: Emotional Intelligence
Three Tips to Increase Your Self-Awareness
How self-aware are you – really? During a typical day are you tuned in to your emotions (positive & negative) when they are actually occurring? Can you label these feelings and do you know why they are being triggered right now? And most importantly, do you take the time to learn from these insights and consciously use this learning to improve in your career?
Sounds easy . . . but actually this level of awareness takes constant practice. Here are three tried and true ways to “self-coach” yourself to increase your self-awareness a day at a time.
- Slow down! Give yourself permission to simply be in the moment. Focus on what you are doing right now, minimize the distractions and let yourself concentrate.
- Next check-in with your feelings each hour (or more frequently). What are you feeling physically, emotionally and mentally? Label these feelings in your own words.
- Ask yourself what these emotions are telling you – what personal values, concerns, hopes or worries are being triggered?
Now the important part . . . listen to your own intuition to gain some insight into how you might approach a challenging issue or situation at work. What is coming up regularly and why? Challenge yourself to be curious. Allow yourself to step back, think, and perhaps take another path to solving a problem. Be open to learning from the best teacher you know – yourself.
Posted in Inspirational Leadership, Kit's Tips
Tagged Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Relationships, strengths
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Emotional Intelligence 2.0
Emotional Intelligence 2.0, 2009, Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves, Talent Smart, San Diego, California.
This book is a bit different. Although, I have a whole library of books on social & emotional intelligence very few offer concrete action steps on how to improve the various elements of emotional intelligence. The Talent Smart team has done that nicely in this small purse sized book. It is filled with great and very practical suggestions on what each of us can do on a daily basis to practice these competencies. Pick it up and just select one area for yourself per day to practice. You will be delightfully surprised how well you begin mastering these skills.
Posted in Kit's Resources & Book Reviews
Tagged communication, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, strengths
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Put Emotional Intelligence to Work
Put Emotional Intelligence to Work: Equip Yourself for Success, 2007, by Jeff Feldman & Karl Mulle, ASTD Press.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) has been one of my favorite topics to teach and learn about for years. So when I saw this new book at the recent ASTD Technology Conference, it was a “must have”. Now I’m reviewing it in preparation for a big training I’m giving this month. It is excellent. For anyone in a leadership position (manager, supervisor, executive) this gives you a wonderful comprehensive guide to using your emotional energy and skills to influence others and to skillfully handle many workplace challenges such as change, conflict, team building etc. An excellent addition to your library.
Leave the Laptop Home!
It’s that wild moment before I dash out the door with family in tow for a long-awaited family vacation. We’re used to that last minute dash from our years of living in Norway and traveling all over for both work and fun. But it’s always a bit crazy trying to remember if you packed the toothbrushes, extra shorts, grabbed up the money and remembered all the bits & pieces of work that needed to be tied up. And this time . . . the laptop stays behind.
Giving Yourself Some Space
Sometimes I take the laptop and the technology with me on travel but more and more now I choose to leave it all behind. From experience I know that as soon as I log-in my mind clicks back to a “to-do” list and I’m back in the work mind-set.
But I need space to rewind . . . I love owning my own business and the joy I get from both coaching and training. But when I give myself permission to take a break I know that I’ll come back refreshed and wonderfully energized for work. So for now the laptop will sit here on the home desk getting a well-deserved break as well. See you all in a week!
Posted in And a Bit More, Inspirational Leadership, Your Time & Energy
Tagged Emotional Intelligence, energy, happiness
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Change & Transition: Knowing the Difference
Being notified that you are being laid off is a big change in your life. And it’s even a bigger psychological adjustment if you weren’t planning on a forced vacation quite yet. I just came back from giving a workshop on “Career Transitions” for staff in higher education facing layoffs. I always start with helping folks understand the difference between change & transition and then the three phases of transition. That foundation seems to be very reassuring because it shows people the path through their feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.
Change is a Challenge
Managing the many changes in our lives is an ongoing challenge. Hopefully, we get better at it as we get older. We’ve been around the block a few times and we know that yes, things do work out with a bit of patience and proactive effort. But it’s also important to recognize why sometimes a change (like a new job or a move to a new house) is relatively easy but then when the exact same change happens a couple of years later it is much harder. Why?
The Difference Between Change & Transition
William Bridges, author of Transitions, has written extensively on change and transition. I love his material and have used it in every workshop I give on change management. Bridges first explains that a “change” is an external event. Examples are: a move, new job, new baby, getting married, going to college, a death etc. And we may experience the same change several times throughout our lives.
That’s not the hard part. The challenge is the psychological adjustment to the change. That is the internal “transition”. And the psychological adjustment to the exact same change may vary greatly at different times in our lives.
Why Is It So Hard Sometimes?
Several factors make the difference. The timing of the change – is it “on-time” or “off-time”? Was the change expected or did it come “out-of-the-blue”? Does the change impact many areas of your life? Is it a temporary or permanent change? Do you have control over the change or not? These are some of the factors that directly affect how we psychologically adjust to a change in our lives.
Think about this for yourself. Look at several changes that you have recently experienced. How did you adjust to them? What seemed to make the difference? In my next blog I’ll tell you about the three phases of transition – it might surprise you how we often go through transitions “backwards”.