I once received the following LinkedIn message from a longtime colleague: “Our leadership team is well versed and educated on EQ, being a coach, and a leader, etc. We don’t really need more education on what we need to do, we need help on putting what we already know into practice.” It was a perfect example of what we’ve all experienced as adults: that learning is the easy part, it’s the doing that’s really hard. And, of course, it’s a refrain we’ve heard a lot at Junto, especially when it comes to emotional intelligence and leadership, two areas where it can be hard to engage in self-directed practice. So here is a list of some shared experiences we’ve heard from our members over the years that they’ve used to put emotional intelligence into practice: choosing a specific skill/habit to work on focusing on one Building Block at a time teaching others on the team about EI and/or the skills holding lunch-and-learns in the office about EI and related topics “catching” other people practicing emotional intelligence journalling one thing to work on each day journalling how well we led our team on a particular day entering tips and notes into meeting invites as reminders before important interactions, thinking deeply about how to practice EI self-debriefing after interactions with team members As you can see, emotional intelligence is not just a body of knowledge…it’s a practice.
