Incredible truth about emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship

There’s a strong correlation between emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship. Keep to find out what it is.

For the longest, it was believed you had to be extremely intelligent to be an entrepreneur. The truth is that you don’t require a high quotient on the intelligence scale to become an entrepreneur. What you need is emotional intelligence which is completely different. This is more of a personality trait than it is something you possess. In the last couple of years, it has risen as more and more people are trying to become emotionally intelligent.

To become successful and an established entrepreneur you need to be emotionally intelligent or at least be willing to learn how to become one. That is a question many people ask? The problem is most people don’t understand what high emotional intelligence looks like. They are also people who fall in the camp of not understanding it’s importance. Highly emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs tend to be more successful than those who are not. Their companies run well like highly oiled machines. These are entrepreneurs who understand themselves well enough to understand the people they are dealing with.

High emotional intelligence is important if you want to start a company, but it’s also important if you are working for someone. Most people have no idea how to work on emotional intelligence or that it’s possible that it can be done. The question that I will answer today is how do I become more emotionally intelligent? In today’s blog post, I will share what exactly is emotional intelligence. I will also share what the correlation is between emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship. If you have always wanted to become more emotionally intelligent, but you have no clue how to do that, this blog post will share the light.

What exactly is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize your emotions and other people’s emotions. You can channel your emotions into something constructive and are easy to adapt. When you have low emotional intelligence you struggle to identify your emotions and channel them properly. This can lead to communication issues, relationship problems, and stress.

If you can’t recognize your emotions, you can’t identify others. Therefore, this can lead to misunderstanding and can impact your life. When you have high emotional intelligence, the opposite happens. Your relationships soar, you become a better communicator, you are more self-aware and you can handle stress better.

The link with entrepreneurship is that you can handle your situations better. Entrepreneurship is filled with numerous obstacles and hurdles. You have to communicate well to get things done and you need to be able to assess situations on the ground. Having low emotional intelligence won’t help with entrepreneurship. It is more of a deterrent than anything else and will push you back.

Below are a few of the benefits of having emotional intelligence.

Also Related: Is a Success Mindset Key to Success?

Self-awareness

As an entrepreneur, you need to understand what you are feeling. Keeping check of your emotions is a big thing in entrepreneurship. That is why you need to make sure you can tie emotional intelligence to entrepreneurship. If you aren’t aware of what you are dealing with it will be challenging to process it.

Entrepreneurship is already stressful. I’m positive you don’t want to make your life harder to deal with if you can’t understand your emotions better. As a person who struggled with my learning disability for the longest time, my emotional intelligence was low. I wasn’t aware when I was overwhelmed, stressed, or enraged. I had to learn. If I didn’t then I would struggle to deal with all the tasks I had to do along with my emotional stability.

Self-awareness is one of the benefits of having high emotional intelligence and it can help you process situations much quicker than you normally would have been able to. Self-aware people understand their emotions better than most people and they are able to figure out what steps to take. If you have no idea why you feel a particular way it’s difficult to solve problems. People with high emotional intelligence are great problem solvers. This is one quality that is needed for entrepreneurship. A lot of problems will arise when you are working on your business and that is why you need to be adept at problem solving.

Also Related: How Self-Reflection Can Change Your Life?

Understand people better

The reason why many people struggle to handle their relationships is due to having low emotional intelligence. It’s crucial to have a handle on your relationships and have social awareness as an entrepreneur. Having a high emotional intelligence is vital to closing important business deals and being able to put yourself out there in social situations.

If you can’t communicate with people in social situations then it will difficult to network with potential clients or partners who can help your business. Even if you want to be a sole entrepreneur, you still need to network with potential clients even if it’s on social media. One of the highlights of having high emotional intelligence is you are empathetic. People enjoy communicating with those who understand them. Your clients will appreciate it as well because you are willing to put yourself in their shoes. No one wants to feel judged or misunderstood. Being empathetic is a part of having high emotional intelligence.

If you can’t understand people, you will always struggle to connect in your relationships. One problem you will face as an entrepreneur is that you won’t understand your client base and won’t be able to take criticism. This is extremely important and those with low emotional intelligence are unable to accept constructive criticism.

Control over your emotions

Entrepreneurship isn’t easy. It’s said that 99% of people who start a business quit within a year or the business fails. The road to being a successful entrepreneur is filled with numerous hurdles and it becomes harder if you have low emotional intelligence. It is hard keeping a lid on your emotions, but you must do.

You can’t control every outcome, but it’s important that as an entrepreneur you handle situations carefully. For this reason, that’s why you need to have high emotional intelligence. Let’s say there’s a client who doesn’t want to pay you for the work you have done. People with low emotional intelligence can resort to putting their conversations on social media. This does the opposite of helping you. It will discredit your business. When you have high emotional intelligence you can use the situation as a teaching moment and grow from it. As annoying as it is, being calm about the situation is so much more important than arguing with your client.

How to increases your emotional intelligence

This post wouldn’t be complete with a how-to part so that you can increase your emotional intelligence. As entrepreneurs, it is important to have high emotional intelligence. There are a few ways you can achieve this and the tips listed below will help you to achieve this. No longer will you struggle to tie emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship ever again. One thing you need to note is that we all need to constantly work on our emotional intelligence.

Read books – Reading about other people’s success can help you understand how to cultivate similar results. This is one way you can build your emotional intelligence so you can become a better entrepreneur.
Journaling – Journaling can help you understand certain events in the day. It can also help you to look through a different rearview mirror. Many people speak highly about journaling because it can help you to understand what happened during the day. For example, if you got into a fight with someone by writing it down you can understand how it accelerated.
Speak to a counselor – You will never know how far you need to go until you speak to someone unbiased. You need to understand what you are missing or the problems that you are facing. A counselor can help you make links between certain past events and your present that you might not have realized.

There are numerous ways you can increase your emotional intelligence. One thing to note is that as long as you work on it, then with time it will grow. But if you don’t then it will remain the same and as an entrepreneurship you will face so many obstacles. It might be difficult to navigate those obstacles if you don’t increase your emotional intelligence.

What is your main takeaway from the blog post and how will you work on your emotional intelligence. Loved to know. Comment below.

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Vanessa