Boost Your Emotional Intelligence: Skills for Better Communication and Relationships

We all have moments where our emotions get the best of us, whether it's a hard conversation at work or a hard conversation at home. If you want to have more effective communication, you have to increase your emotional intelligence. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything. If you enjoy learning tools to improve your communication, I'm going to ask you to follow this podcast, and please leave a review. If you have any questions or topic suggestions, just throw them in the comments. Emotional intelligence isn't just a buzzword. It is something that can transform the way you communicate, how you understand the other person, and more importantly, how you understand yourself. Emotional intelligence— I like to think of it as emotional fluency. In other words, I'm fluent in the language of my emotions. I can recognize my emotions. I can speak my emotions, and I can better identify those emotions in other people. And by increasing your emotional intelligence, you take more control over how you feel and how you can guide the interaction in the conversation. And I'm going to tell you how to do that in 3 easy steps. Number 1, use the phrase, I I need. It's as simple as that. Begin your response with I need. It's a very entry-level way of being emotionally intelligent. Number 2, have something to learn, not something to prove. Too often we're fighting over who has the right answer rather than fighting to ask the right question. And number 3, what triggers you teaches you. So instead of focusing on what the other person is doing and why they're doing what they're doing, It's asking the reflective question of what is about what they're doing that is making my emotions feel out of place. Too often we think about our needs, our emotional needs in a given communication. We think about how we're feeling because we feel it bubbling to the top. I feel my emotions starting to rise up. I can tell I'm getting stressed out. Maybe my eyes are starting to water and things are starting to rise and ignite within myself, and I don't know how to voice it. Instead, when you don't voice your needs and use the phrase "I need," like, "I need a moment," "I need to take a moment to digest what you just said," "I need to take a break," "I need to understand what you said"— when you put out the words "I need," it makes it to where you are voicing your emotions out loud instead of you bottling them all up, which increases that ignition, increases that tension in your body. You are saying it out loud. Say, "I need to understand what you're saying because it's making me feel a certain way. By putting out your needs or saying, I can tell I'm not ready for this conversation, I can tell I'm not feeling myself, or as easy as saying, I feel sad when you say that, I feel upset, or I feel defensive when you make that kind of comment, or when you talk about this topic. Whenever you put these kind of statements out there, it's becoming much more emotionally intelligent because you're recognizing what is happening within your body. You're not just keeping it all in. You are voicing it to where you're able to share exactly what you need. It's okay to assert your needs in the conversation. To always feel instead like you're having to be walked on, that you have to cater to everybody else and the people please? Absolutely not. You are somebody that can voice their needs at any time in the conversation. So I want you to feel confident, and I want you to feel firm, and to be able to say, I I need you. I need this. I need to talk about this. When you say I need, it makes it much more reflective and you emotionally more intelligent about how you're feeling in that moment. I use the phrase I need a lot in my communication when I need to add time as a variable into the communication. Often people rush things. They rush conversations when I'm not ready, when you're not ready, or I can tell my the way I'm feeling is starting to bubble up and my heart's starting to beat faster. Whenever I feel that happening, you can increase your emotional intelligence, your emotional fluency, by saying, "I need a moment." That's probably my most often. "I need some time to think on this, to chew on this. I just need a pause for me to add some distance to help my body regulate and make sure my analytical is not aligned with my emotional." to take over. And that leads really to the second part, is having something to learn, not something to prove. This is— let me tell you why that's important. When you are focused solely on proving something to somebody, that means you, you see this all the time, people feel like they have to, or you have to, change their mind. That's, that's trying to prove something. I'm trying to win against you. I need you to see things exactly the way I see them. I need you, I need you to agree with the exact type of way that my mind is thinking in this moment. When you're trying to prove a certain position against them, they often will tighten up and believe something even more. They become even more convinced that they're right the more you push to try and prove that they're wrong. So instead, you become much more emotionally intelligent when you realize that's happening within you, and you kind of become, you know, water off a duck's back is what the phrase I grew up saying, is water off a duck's back. In other words, you just let those kind of problems and emotions bead off of you to understand that you are much more concerned about what to ask them, the question to ask. And that means you have something to learn. When I can go into a conversation with somebody, especially when it's heated, and I can say to myself, am I trying to prove something or am I trying to learn something right now in this moment? You see how I can even tag that together? Hey, I need, I need to pause for a moment, even 5 seconds. I can talk to myself and say, am I trying to prove something or am I trying to learn something right now? And too often it's me trying to prove something, and I can flip the whole dynamic of the conversation when I focus on what's something that I can learn about them, something small, rather than me trying to force-feed them my opinion and then getting upset that they don't take it hook, line, and sinker. Instead, you have something to learn, not something to prove. And number 3, lastly, what triggers you teaches you. Now, this is one of my favorite phrases to talk about because it is so true, as much as I sometimes wish that it wasn't. And that is, when somebody has triggered you, in other words, they've done something that is raising, bringing up this negative adverse reaction to you and you feel triggered by what they've done. Often the first place we point the finger is at them. They say, "I can't believe you did that." "How do you dare do that?" "Why would you do that?" "You should know that what you did is going to affect me that way." Emotionally intelligent people point the finger at themselves first. You know, having something to learn, not something to prove. And they ask the question and they get curious and say, "What is it about what they did?" that is causing this reaction within me? So we all have triggers. In other words, we all have a button that somebody can press, and the people that are closest with us, they're the ones that know these triggers the best. But too often we don't ask the question ourselves. Now, yes, there's a trigger, and yes, there's a button, but why is there a button there in the first place? So why is there a button? What is it about this behavior that triggers me? What is it about what they said that is causing me to feel I feel so out of place with my emotions. And we just don't ask that question. If you want to be much more emotionally intelligent, you have to know your triggers. In other words, you have to know your buttons. And the reason why that's important is because you don't put yourself in positions for somebody else to press that button. You don't talk about things where you invite people to press that button. That's the hard part, is that you don't put yourself in a position to where you aren't going to be emotionally intelligent. Emotionally intelligent people prevent themselves from being in situations where you're going to be triggered. That's, that's the hard part of it. Once you know your triggers, you know the areas to avoid, and in a circular fashion, it makes you much more emotionally intelligent. Okay, we're at the part of the podcast where I get to take a question from the audience. I have an email newsletter, and when people ask questions, I'm able to respond to to them, and some of them I'm able to talk about in the podcast. It's in the show notes, but if you want a weekly communication tip right into your inbox totally for free, all you need to do is sign up, and it's a way for me to communicate with you, and it's a lot of fun for me. All right, I got a question, and this is from— I pulled this one from Simon. He lives in London. Simon says, hey Jefferson, your stuff is bloody brilliant. Thank you. I don't Is bloody a bad word? And I honestly have no idea. I hope it's not. Uh, he says it's brilliant. Thank you very much, Simon. I appreciate that, brother. Um, I have a problem. My— one of my co-workers that I work with, who's very— also has— is a flatmate with this person, and often they will do something that makes me emotionally, um, overwhelmed with their behavior, and I'm not sure how to handle it It's always the same person. I don't know whether I should continue to work in this job. This is a person who used to be their flatmate now, uh, or what I should do at this point. Any advice would help. Simon, if I understood your question, it is difficult when there's that one person in your life who always seems to get under your skin. Uh, here where I'm from, they'd say get your goat. I'm not sure why that is. I'm sure somebody can inform me, who's listening to this podcast, why we use that phrase. But it's somebody who knows you and can push your buttons, and it doesn't matter what they do. This is a type of person who just— they grind your gears. They always bother you. And you find those people everywhere. You find those people wherever you work, in the workplace especially, because you know that you like where you work perhaps, and it's this one person, this one obstacle in the way that you're not sure what to deal with. Here's some tips on to be a little bit more emotionally, uh, intelligent about it that I want you to try. The next time that this person is coming to you in an argument or an argument's being created, be careful that the other person doesn't push your time frame. That would be my first thought for you. Often in communication, we allow other people's time frame to dictate ours. When we're not ready. Emotionally intelligent people know when they are not aligned, their emotions are out of place. Maybe your mind's a thousand miles elsewhere, maybe you're thinking about something else, you're stressed about work, and you're not ready to talk to this other person. Instead, they come in, say, hey, do you got 5 minutes? And they start imposing on you. In that moment, you need to, number one, make sure that you don't operate on anybody else's timetable. At the same time, you don't put your time on somebody else. In other words, don't push your schedule on them. You make time, separate time for the discussion. Number 2, use that phrase "I need." Another is that if you don't feel comfortable to you is to say, "I can tell. I can tell I'm not ready for this discussion. I can tell that's upsetting to me." Or just, "I feel. I feel defensive when you say those kind of things. I can tell that's making me upset." Or, "I need you to stop doing that. It's upsetting me." When you put your needs out place, out in front, Simon. It's going to make it to where they're not guessing. You're being much more upcoming and upfront with what you need. Because if they don't respect it, then that's where you put a boundary in place, and they do not have a choice to continue with that kind of behavior once you put up a boundary. But you can't set up a boundary unless you're being upfront and telling them what's happening out loud. When you claim it, you control it. All right, Simon? And number 3, another thought that I've would have with this person is limit the interactions. It sounds like you used to be roommates at one point in time, and there's probably a reason why you aren't anymore. But now that it's just working relationship, I would be very mindful of how much interaction that you have with this person. And more so, be careful about characterizing a whole person versus a specific behavior. Often if I think about, oh, I don't like this person It's usually based off a very minor interaction, and anybody who's listening has had this experience where you go, "Oh, I don't like this person." Usually when you say that kind of thing, you know very little about this person. You're basing that sentence on maybe 3%, 8%, 20% of what you know about this person. Instead, what you're really saying is, "They have a behavior that I don't like. They do something that I don't like." Maybe they— it's the way they talk. They Maybe they cuss a lot. Maybe they talk bad about their parents. Maybe they did something that was dismissive towards me. Be really careful about characterizing a whole person based off of one minor behavior. And here I'm going to go to the number 3 that we talked about earlier, which is what triggers you teaches you. So ask yourself the question, what is it about that specific behavior that is getting underneath my skin? And use that in a way that's going to to increase your emotional intelligence, to make you smarter in the way that you communicate. Thanks for the question, Simon. I really appreciate it, man. Okay, if you want to increase your emotional intelligence, meaning you have a greater understanding of the language of your emotions, you're going to: Number 1, use the phrase "I need." Begin your sentence with "I need." Number 2, understand that you need to have something to learn. Not something to prove. Instead of trying to find out who's right or wrong, it's simply the question of, "What can I understand better about you?" And number 3, what triggers you teaches you. Every time there's a button that somebody can press to make you upset, make you lose control over your emotions, the better question to ask is, "Why is there a button there to begin with?" When you find that answer, you're going to be much more emotionally intelligent. Thank you for listening to the Jefferson Fisher Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to ask you to follow this podcast wherever you like to listen to your episodes, whether it's on Spotify, Apple, Amazon. It should be on every platform. And if you have any questions or topic suggestions, just please just put them in the comments. I personally read them, like them, accept them, and I learn from them. So anytime you have a suggestion or feedback, on the episode. It's just me talking in my car, so I very much am appreciative of all the feedback that I get. Really means a lot to me. And as always, you can try that and follow me.