Discover The Power Of Emotional Intelligence And Improve Your Professional Life | English Listening Practice
Learn English Through Listening podcast's latest episode on Emotional Intelligence (Emotional Intelligence) teaches you important skills for effective communication and building strong relationships. Listening practice is like a key that unlocks the door to Emotional Intelligence.
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward.
⭐ Maya Angelou
When we listen actively and empathetically, we gain access to a whole new world of emotional understanding and connection. With British English language practice and engaging content, improve your spoken English fluency while developing valuable life skills. Tune in to Learn English Through Listening today!
#EnglishListeningPractice #EmotionalIntelligenceforSuccess #ImproveEnglishSkills
More About This Lesson
Today's episode of the Learn English Through listening podcast is an English language listening lesson on the topic of Emotional Intelligence. This type of English listening practice is a great way to improve your English speaking fluency.
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We'll delve into a fascinating and valuable psychological concept that can significantly impact your work, career, and personal life. Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions effectively, as well as those of others.
Most Unusual Words:
- Psychological: Related to the mind or mental processes.
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ): The ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others.
- Self-awareness: Knowing your own feelings and behaviors.
- Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of others.
- Self-regulation: Controlling or managing your own emotions.
- Cognitive: Related to thinking or the process of acquiring knowledge.
- Motivation: The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.
- Mentor: A person who guides or advises another, especially in their career or education.
- Quotient: A mathematical result obtained by dividing one quantity by another.
- Trauma: A deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important?
- Improving your English listening skills and developing Emotional Intelligence, you can better connect with others, form strong relationships, and feel more comfortable in social and professional situations.
- By practicing your English listening skills, you can learn to understand others better and express yourself more clearly, helping you to overcome the fear of not being understood.
- Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. By embracing them and seeking feedback, you can learn from your mistakes and become more confident in your language skills and you emotional control.
This essential skill enables individuals to communicate more effectively, form stronger relationships, and make better decisions. By the end of this podcast, you'll have a comprehensive understanding of what Emotional Intelligence is, why it's important, and how to develop it to improve your personal and professional life.
So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and get ready to learn more about this powerful concept!
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
The mp3 audio and pdf transcript for this lesson is now part of the Adept English back catalogue . You can still download and listen to this lesson as part of one of our podcast bundles.Transcript: How To Boost Your Emotional Intelligence For Better Communication-Learn English Through Listening
Hi there. Today let's talk about a psychological idea, a concept.
And one which can help you in your work, your career, and in your life generally.
What do we mean when we say Emotional Intelligence or EQ? Let's find out in this podcast today.
Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.
Practise your English understanding with this and more podcasts
And while I'm talking about this interesting topic, you get to practise your English listening skills at the same time. What could be better than that? So use this podcast to practise your English comprehension, your understanding. I'll spell out any difficult words and hopefully it will be interesting in its own right.
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Introducing 'Emotional Intelligence'
So 'Emotional Intelligence'? Let's cover the vocabulary first. ' Emotional', E M O T I O N A L. That's an adjective and it means 'of the emotions, concerning the emotions' or your feelings, if you like. ' Intelligence', I N T E L L I G E N C E. The Cambridge Dictionary defines intelligence as 'the ability to learn, understand, and make judgements, or to have opinions that are based on reason'. So they're logical. Having intelligence means that you have a reasonable understanding of the world around you.
And 'Emotional Intelligence' is often shortened to 'EQ'.
More familiar with IQ or 'Intelligence Quotient'?
Now, of course, this whole idea was popularised or made popular by Daniel Goleman, who is an author and psychologist. That's G O L E M A N, his surname. And his book in 1995 was called 'Emotional Intelligence'. It was a best seller. That means it sold a lot of copies.
Prior to this, we were familiar, of course, with the idea of Intelligence Quotient or IQ.
And this is the more traditional measure of intelligence that you might be familiar with. It's been popularised by MENSA and other similar organisations.
IQ is defined by MENSA as being 'a measure of your ability to reason and solve problems. It reflects how well you did on a specific test compared to other people of your age group'. So you can take an IQ test and get a score for your intelligence.
So average IQ or Intelligence Quotient - 85 to 115. Anything above 130 is seen as 'gifted'. Only 2% of the population are that clever.
So why did Daniel Goleman decide that we needed another measure? Why did he write about and popularise this idea of EQ?
Well, it became apparent that if you want to succeed in your life and in your job, your work, your career, then you need a bit more than a good IQ. You also need something called EQ. Research would seem to indicate that often the people who are most successful in life, they tend to have a high EQ. They may have high IQ as well, but perhaps that's a little less important for many.
Listening Lessons
What does 'Emotional Intelligence' or EQ mean?
You can be very intelligent on IQ tests, but unless you have good EQ, you're unlikely to be as successful. So what is EQ and how is it determined? What does it mean?
Well, broadly speaking, if you're 'emotionally intelligent', then you are able to reflect on your own feelings and behaviour. You know yourself, you are aware of yourself, so you have what we call in English 'self-awareness'.
EQ means also that you can manage your emotions well, most of the time. We usually call this 'self-regulation'. That's R E G U L A T I O N. You have feelings, but you regulate or manage those feelings so that they don't become a problem. For you or for other people, they don't become destructive, for example.
If you have high EQ, then usually you also understand your own motivations well. You understand what motivates you, what drives you, in other words. What drives you to do and say certain things.
Another part of it is 'having empathy', E M P A T H Y. If you have 'empathy', that means you have the capacity to sense what other people feel, what people around you are feeling. Someone who has empathy is said to be 'empathic'. That's the adjective, E M P A T H I C.
And the last part of it, if you have high EQ then you have 'good social skills'. This means that you know how to talk to people, you know how to relate to people well.
Why does Emotional Intelligence or EQ matter?
So it's easy to see in a work or an organisational context, where you're relating to other people as part of your job, why this is important. You might need to manage people, ask for things, persuade people, promote ideas, resist pressure, help people be enthusiastic, perhaps. So those people who have a high EQ are going to be better automatically at doing this sort of thing.
Many jobs demand a certain level of IQ. You wouldn't get the interview or you wouldn't get the qualification unless you had a certain level of intelligence. But it turns out that that's not all that's needed.
Many people with high IQ, but lower EQ just don't get recognised in their professions, in their careers.
Daniel Goleman says, 'Many people who are book smart but lack emotional intelligence end up working for people who have lower IQs than they do, but who excel in Emotional Intelligence skill'.
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How do you get 'good Emotional Intelligence'?
While IQ is a product of your genetics and your education and the learning opportunities that you've had, there is little doubt in my mind that EQ is the product of the quality of the relationships that you had when you were growing up. Good family and good friend relationships and probably an absence of trauma as well, are what tend to create good EQ, good Emotional I ntelligence.
If when you grew up you had a happy family life and you were popular at school and had lots of friends and calm experiences and a good life, it's likely that you will end up with high EQ.
And if it's the opposite and there are lots of challenges, you don't have good relationships, you don't have good educational experiences, you're not well supported, or you live with trauma, then it's possible that your EQ will not be as high. That's tough.
And how can you work on your Emotional Intelligence?
So if you didn't have that good experience growing up, how can you make up your EQ?
Well, let's look at those five skills that Daniel Goleman identified as making up Emotional Intelligence, how might you work to improve them?
So the following are the components that Daniel Goleman would say make up EQ.
Self-awareness
Firstly, self-awareness. If you remember, this means 'knowing yourself, being aware of yourself, understanding yourself'. So being able to recognise your emotions, to know why you say and do what you do, rather than just going automatically with certain actions and not really thinking about it. There are, of course, lots of ways to increase your self-awareness. . As you probably know, I'm a psychotherapist, so I would really recommend therapy as a good way to increase self-awareness.
But there are other ways as well. You can learn a huge amount from reading books, from reading texts on psychology. I can recommend many of them if you'd like me to.
Self-regulation
Second, Daniel Goleman says, 'Self-regulation is important'. This means you have methods, ways, strategies for managing emotions, especially the difficult ones. So that they, don't get in the way so that they don't become destructive to you or to other people. Being able to recognize your feelings, the self-awareness comes first, but learning to manage them is important.
How to manage anger, how to manage anxiety, how to manage sadness. There are known strategies for this. It's quite 'cognitive', it's quite 'thinking' - you can access this information in books or even online - 'How to manage emotions?', 'How to regulate?'
Understand your own motivation
Motivation, says Daniel Goldman, understanding what drives you, understanding your priorities, and what's important to you - unless you have this, how on earth can you go in the right direction in life? How can you choose the right things that will bring you success and happiness, if you don't understand your motivation? The idea that sometimes motivation can be unconscious is an important one. Motivations are sometimes outside of our awareness. So there can be confusion about motivation.
Again, self-reflection and thinking about this might help you reveal to yourself, what are my true motivations? What's really important to me? Sometimes it's about what are my values in life, even?
Have empathy
Daniel Goldman talks also about 'empathy'. Remember, E M P A T H Y, that's being able to tell what other people are feeling, being able to understand other people's viewpoints. This is automatic for many people. If you've had that good childhood experience, you probably are able to have empathy. If you haven't, you can work at it. Practising 'stepping into the other person's shoes' as we say in English, is good. You can do this by watching good films and good series on television. Pause the film. Think about 'What's that character feeling right now? What is their motivation? What's the main emotion that they have right now?' If you practice, you can develop a sense of other people's feelings. Books are also good - fiction books. That means story books are also good for developing your empathy with other people, even with fictional characters.
Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript
Good social skills
Lastly, Daniel Goleman talks about social skills. So that's the ability to get on with and handle and engage with and talk to other people. Again, if you grow up in a busy family and have lots of good relationships, you tend automatically to have good social skills. But if you feel that this is lacking for you, then often practice makes up for what's missing. Also, having someone to mentor you, support you, guide you in the right direction. Point out the bits of your behavior which don't work, perhaps. Often people who've not had a good family experience are helped in school by teachers who might mentor them and guide them in the right direction.
Well, there you are. There are quite a lot of difficult words and subtle meanings in this podcast, but I hope it's an interesting one for you.
Goodbye
Listen to it a number of times as usual until you're happy that you understand all the words easily.
Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com
Links
- Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
- Why do high IQ people stagnate in their careers?
- How Can I Improve Emotional Intelligence EQ?
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