The last couple of blogs have been about everyone’s favourite topic – You!  Of course, when seeking to achieve your desired outcomes from social and business interactions, controlling who you are is the easy part.  Influencing others is far harder.

Before trying to influence them, it’s important to go through the exercise of understanding them by identifying their emotions just as we have done our own.  How can you influence something if you don’t know what it is?

We all see the emotional responses of others on a daily basis.  The people watchers amongst us are probably slightly more tuned in to identifying emotions in others.  Nonetheless, it’s a skill that is completely coachable and the best coach is you…

Many common places in our modern world are hotbeds of emotional responses – hospitals, airports, freeways, schools, kindergartens, boardrooms and courtrooms to name a few.  All these play host to intense human emotional responses.  People die in hospitals.  Loved ones depart from airports.  Egos are trampled in boardrooms.  These may provoke anger, sadness, grief, negativity, frustration, confusion, distrust, hurt, anxiety and more. 

Reflect on the raw emotions you have seen in these places.  It will help you to identify the often more guarded emotional responses people tend to offer in less stressful circumstances.  Often, it’s the eyes, arms and feet that give these away.  But don’t be thinking that because Betty has her arms folded it means she’s negative.  She could be cold…

Everyone can spot tears.  But are they tears of joy, sorrow, pain or is there an eyelash on an eyeball causing the flow?  Emotionally intelligent people will detect the cause sooner.  They will piece together the clues we all emit that indicate the true source of the tears. 

It is said 70% of communication is non-verbal.  A person with high EI will be a rigorous student of body language able to more quickly and accurately interpret the cause of emotions.  Knowing the cause of the emotion will assist in influencing an interaction to a mutually beneficial outcome. 

We’ll discuss that next week.

From those in Heels