Not just anyone can pick up and be an entrepreneur. There are a number of valuable skills that are needed to grow a business from nothing to something. However, as a budding business owner, improving your emotional intelligence (EI) will help sharpen your existing skills to make your more successful. There are four areas of EI, all of which will be beneficial to your business.
Self-Awareness
When you are fully in tune with your own emotions, you can understand how it impacts, you, your business and the people around you. As a successful entrepreneur you need to be able to overcome obstacles, maintain business relationships and make new ones as you go. Being aware of how your emotions effect your actions and thoughts will be vital to the success of your business.
- Read yourself: When you can read yourself, you can better traverse difficult situations that come with starting your own business.
- Understand your emotional influence: How do you respond to a negative client or bad news from your business partner? Understanding how your emotions will affect them is vital to maintaining important business relationships.
Self-Management
When you’re starting a business from the corner of your living room on a cluttered desk, with distractions all around, it’s critical that you utilize your ability to self-manage. However, managing yourself doesn’t only mean at the desk; managing your emotions, your work ethic and life balance will be integral to succeeding.
- Controlling your emotions: Controlling how you react is an important aspect of entrepreneurship. Maintaining a positive outlook and keeping calm are necessary.
- Managing yourself: Without a boss in the corner office across from you, your success is fully dependent on the discipline you have.
Social Awareness
While entrepreneurship lends itself to a lot of solo work, it’s important that you develop a successful social awareness, as well. From listening to those around to, to understanding the dynamics of business and community, TechCrunch.com explains, “Entrepreneurs are accused of not listening, but the best ones are listening and learning all the time.”
- Number one, and then some: The most important aspect of being a successful entrepreneur is remembering that other people have valuable knowledge.
Relationship Skills
Final aspect of your entrepreneurial emotional intelligence is being able to understand and recognize the emotions of others on a one to one basis. This will be beneficial to you in a number of ways including handling conflict and potential employees.
- Managing: When the time comes to hire on employees, your EI will be crucial to maintaining an open and welcoming demeanor. Being able to understand the emotions of the people who work for you will allow you to manage conflict in an appropriate and positive manner.
- Relating: When you understand the emotions of others you can better relate to them. This makes you a well-rounded leader who is approachable and successful.
Developing your emotional intelligence is beneficial to the beginning entrepreneur. While it’s important that you recognize your emotions – what they’re saying and how to manage them – it’s critical that you can understand the emotions of others as well. A well rounded entrepreneur is not only focused on the business, but on the well-being of those around them, as well.
About the Author:
Sara Fletcher writes for an emotional intelligence website and is interested in understanding the results of her emotional intelligence test online. She loves to explore psychology, business, and sports in relation to becoming a motivational speaker.
