Would you rate yourself as an efficient or reliable decision-maker? Even if you do, there will always be a scope for improvement, right? In the course of life, you have to make decisions every day and some of them can be challenging and confusing. In addition to making decisions for yourself, you also have to make decisions on the behalf of others. That’s where an even greater responsibility comes into the equation.
At times you need to make decisions for your team or your entire organisation. In such situations, there’s often very little margin for error. Having said that, you should always be looking for ways to improve your decision-making skills.
Even your personal advancement and career success have a direct correlation with your decision-making.
If you fail to make the right decisions at the right time, you may lose some vital opportunities forever. Can you make a guess about how many decisions do humans make every day on average?
Research by Cornell University shows that an adult human makes around 35,000 conscious decisions each day.
All that you need for a successful and happy life is to get a handful of these decisions right. What can help you in achieving that is the prowess of emotional intelligence (EQ). Yes, with emotional intelligence you can improve your decision-making game a great deal.
From classrooms to corporate board meetings, emotional intelligence has become a buzzword. In fact, it is now rated much higher than IQ, which was seen as the sole trait of excellence for a long time.
What’s really interesting is how emotional intelligence enhances your decision-making. This blog looks at the various ways in which EQ can add value and efficacy to your decision-making skills.
If EQ is a promising way of making worthwhile decisions, why not leverage it to the fullest?
As per Forbes, Tasha Eurich, a renowned organizational psychologist, mentioned in her book Insight that no more than 15% of people are self-aware. She further added that although most people feel that they score well on self-awareness, the reality is different.
This is how most people make wrong decisions with utter confidence.
They don’t realise that their decision-making lacks the basic foundation of self-awareness. To make effective decisions, it is vital that you are aware of your strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and emotions. When you know yourself this well, you are able to filter and refine your thoughts. You will need this self-awareness to make the right career choices, even if you’re looking for freelancing jobs.
This lack of self-awareness can be mitigated by mastering emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is one of the most prominent dimensions of emotional intelligence. It inspires a better understanding of your own self inside you. Self-awareness will make you far more realistic and confident about your strengths, talents, and abilities. In other words, awareness is the key to decision-making!
At the same time, you will have a better know-how of how your weaknesses may impact your thoughts and actions. You will be able to analyze yourself through greater self-awareness and awakening. In the due course of things, you will feel empowered to make rightful and patient decisions. This is the reason why EQ is more in demand than IQ in the contemporary world!
It happens so often to us that emotions get the better of us. All of us are carrying the regrets of at least some emotional decisions inside us. This is because we lack control over our emotions and the ability to manage our emotions in a positive way.
We let our emotions consume our thoughts and then they override our rationality to lead us to impulsive decisions. However, this is exactly what emotional intelligence teaches us.
EQ is all about being able to manage emotions and feelings in a positive way.
With EQ, you will have better control over your emotions. You will be able to set aside the negative emotions and not let them interfere with your thought process. Rather than making emotional decisions, you will be able to make reasonable choices based on logic.
The thoughts will change from how you feel to what you feel is the right thing to do. If we could master this art of keeping negative emotions away from our decisions, we can attain greater success.
Critical thinkers often turn out to be the best decision-makers. This is for the simple reason that they don’t jump to conclusions without analysing the situation first.
They are open to looking at scenarios from all possible angles and draw rational conclusions.
Moreover, they welcome others’ perspectives and look to gather information from all possible sources with attention to each detail. They value the emotions of others and also look at how a certain decision would impact others. Now, why EQ adds to critical thinking besides self-awareness is the empathy that is integral to EQ.
People with EQ skills are empathetic and understand the emotions and feelings of others. They refrain from making selfish decisions that may bring pain or trouble to others. Hence, empathy will help you make more responsible decisions for the collective good. It will make you a critical thinker who is flexible enough to add others’ interests in decision-making.
As a critical thinker, you can make important life decisions with great precision and efficiency. It will lead you to make decisions that you can be proud of!
Emotional intelligence comes with a host of enhanced social skills. EQ makes you a better communicator and also optimises your ability to collaborate. The overall impact is that your decision-making becomes more interactive. If you work in a corporation, these social skills will prove to be essential for effective team communication and collective decisions.
You can interact with more people before you make an important decision or seek the feedback of others about a decision. You may not be able to do this in the absence of social skills that promote better interpersonal relationships.
EQ will make you an active listener and observer.
You can learn from other people’s experiences and crucial decisions when they share them with you. With EQ skills, you will attract more social interaction, since people will perceive that you’re open to others’ opinions. New interactions and relationships based on social skills will add more value to your choices. You will be able to add new dimensions to your decision making leading to refined and credible decisions.
Would you not love to include others’ experiences and insights into your decisions? Why ignore something that can be beneficial in real life? You’d better not!
People with high emotional intelligence are driven by overwhelming motivation. In fact, motivation is an innate component of emotional intelligence. Having said that, this motivation can add to your optimism in an incredible way.
Sometimes we make the wrong decisions because we’re not confident or positive enough about our thoughts or ideas. However, you can transform that for the better by working on your emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence can lead to a rejuvenated sense of optimism.
This empowered sense of optimism will overpower the negative influences in your mind. Sometimes, the best possible decision may be held back in your mind because you may not feel courageous enough to make it. You can get consumed by negative thoughts and apprehensions.
With emotional intelligence, you can fix this deficit of optimism in your mind. So, when are you switching the track of your life?
To conclude, each element of EQ brings a new vertical to your decision-making. You become more aware of your capabilities and the shortcomings you need to work on. Moreover, EQ ensures that your decisions are not born out of emotional outbursts or impulsiveness. When you hone your emotional intelligence, you’ll see the positive effects in your life and at work with efficient decision-making. With EQ you can tweak your entire personality and claim new horizons.
An ardent writer, Jessica Robinson works for The Speaking Polymath. She uses this platform to weave her magical words into powerful strands of content and share with her readers. It is with her power of influential writing that she has been captivating the hearts of multifarious readers for over a decade. Reach her on her blog or on LinkedIN.
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