How Does Emotional Intelligence Help You To Be More Assertive?
Discover the fascinating link between understanding your emotions and expressing yourself confidently
Emotional intelligence and Assertiveness are Core Interpersonal Skills
They are fundamental in helping you interact effectively with other people and they are essential for good communication.
They are also cornerstones of influencing in the workplace and successful leadership.
Unfortunately, emotional intelligence and assertiveness tend to be discussed separately, and not as the fundamentally linked concepts they are. Let’s examine the connection, and cover a few valuable tips on how to boost your emotional intelligence.
To Assert Oneself
Everyone has a right to be assertive. The human world would not be able to function effectively without it.
Put simply, assertiveness is being able to express your thoughts, feelings, and rights confidently and appropriately. Being too passive puts you at risk of people dominating you, and the world missing out on your ideas. In contrast, too much aggression could cause you to dominate others and stifle the value they bring.
Assertiveness sits between passivity and aggression, but finding the ideal halfway point has its challenges. This is where emotional intelligence comes in.
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Understanding Your Emotions
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your emotions, but this isn’t as easy as it may sound. Emotional reactions flow from our unconscious, so it can be all too easy to misinterpret why we feel as we do.
People with strong emotional intelligence tend to be more in touch with their feelings, and better at identifying the causes of them. To increase your emotional intelligence, try to be more conscious about your mood changes, and the intensity of your emotional reactions. Once you know how you feel, you can try to determine why.
Keep in mind that humans are purposeful creatures. Every action we take has an objective, from quenching our thirst to delivering a major work project. We experience positive feelings towards something we want and negative feelings towards something we don’t want. By identifying and exploring your objectives, you can better understand the nature of your feelings.
Managing Emotions
Monitoring your emotions will make you better at spotting reactions that are not as straightforward as they appear.
For example, if you know that certain situations trigger unwarranted feelings of anxiety or anger, and this has the potential to come out in your actions, then it may be best to tone them down so you don’t become too passive or aggressive.
Furthermore, bear in mind that it isn’t just negative emotions that can be problematic. For example, feeling excited can cause people to talk more, which puts them at risk of becoming a dominating presence in the room.
As you react, consciously compare your emotions with the specifics of the situation. This will help you identify any disconnect between what is happening and how you feel about it, which will enable you to reduce any unhealthy passivity or aggression.
However, don’t fall into the trap of simply masking your emotions as a matter of course. If you feel anxious or angry because you believe a project is being driven off-course, then expressing this professional opinion would be an important act of assertiveness to get the project back on track.
Identifying the Emotions of Others
Another key element of emotional intelligence is being able to identify other people’s feelings and intent. In other words, how are you at reading the room?
Our minds are constantly making assessments about other people based on their body language and the way they speak, and we unconsciously use this information to adjust our behaviour. The majority of this goes on unconsciously, which introduces the risk of reacting in a way that is too passive or aggressive.
Again, making this process more conscious will help. Learn about body language so you can become better at reading people’s poses and gestures. You can then make educated guesses about their feelings and objectives, which helps to guide your own interpersonal skills behaviour.
Communicating and Influencing
Putting all of the above together, it can help to think of emotional intelligence as a formula for assertiveness.
Understanding your own emotions + understanding other people’s emotions = optimising your behaviour and assertiveness for the situation
Using this formula, you will be able to choose appropriate words that convey your perspective clearly, but not in a way that other people find aggressive or inappropriate.
You will also be able to adjust your body language so it reinforces the message you wish to communicate. Making these adjustments is particularly important if you are suppressing an emotion that might undermine the situation.
Remember that you have a right to be assertive, and increasing your emotional intelligence will make you better at it. By understanding and managing emotions, you will be able to find the ideal halfway point between passivity and aggression that enables you to express yourself confidently and appropriately.
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