Five Keys to Developing Personal Power

Working on Emotional Intelligence Skills Can
Open the Door to Achievement

Personal power is a core skill that everyone needs to develop before they can lead others. In fact, personal power has to do with being able to lead yourself.

“Personal power is the ability to achieve what you want,” according to Frederick Mann, a successful entrepreneur and author of The Economic Rape of America. “More than anything else, it is personal power that brings you success and happiness. The biggest barrier to success in almost any endeavor is powerlessness, negativity, helplessness, and inertia. They belong together. The problem is not only our own powerlessness, but also the powerlessness of those around us.”

How do we develop personal power? We can help harness and learn by understanding and working on our Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills.

Not long ago, when I worked in a corporate environment, there was a strong push to incorporate EI into the organization’s leadership training curriculum as an array of skills and characteristics that drive leadership performance.

EI is “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions,” say psychologists John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, who co-developed the concept and were two of the three authors of the Emotional Intelligence Test.

My EI training and its practical applications to my work team environment still resonate. They became skills I now methodically apply to current situations in both personal and entrepreneurial pursuits.

There are several EI models, but the one to which I ascribe is the mixed model introduced by Daniel Goldman, which provides a combination of ability and traits. Here are Goldman’s five main EI constructs, plus my views on how each of us can develop them:

1.  Self-awareness: the ability to know one’s emotions, strengths, and weaknesses drives values and goals plus recognizes their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions.

In order to become self-aware, we need to conduct an honest self-assessment to determine our strengths and weaknesses, such as powerlessness and inertia, and determine the root causes. We then need to create a plan that will help overcome fears, which are barriers to courage and stand between our successes. While I am a big proponent of using my intuition to guide my decisions; I need to caution that unless our gut feelings are often more right than wrong, we cannot make decisions solely based upon intuition. We need to use a balanced combination of intuition and logic.

2.  Self-regulation: involves controlling or redirecting one’s disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.

Simply put, we need to exercise self-discipline; know how to control our emotions and be flexible in order to adapt to changing situations. Let’s not continue on the same trajectory or keep the same plans when the circumstances or facts have changed. Sometimes plans need to be modified accordingly.

3.  Social skills: managing relationships to move people in the desired direction.

Social skills refer to our interpersonal skills or the ability to relate and connect with people, which can motivate them to arrange discretionary efforts to help achieve goals that are best accomplished via partnership and collaboration.

For example:
a. Pay attention to the feedback of friends and co-workers; good and bad. Train ourselves to repeat the behaviors that get positive feedback and work on eliminating those that make people react negatively.
b. View constructive criticism as just that. When we become defensive, we tend to not hear what can be very helpful feedback.
c. Learn to handle conflict and confrontation from a perspective of compassion and caring.

4.  Empathy: considering other people’s feelings, especially when making decisions.

Some people believe empathy cannot be learned, but I believe just the opposite. Let’s put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and try to see situations from their perspective. Might there be feeling fear? Shame? Guilt? How do those emotions make us feel? Understanding and addressing the concerns of others is essential to EI. Always consider intent versus impact, and how our actions or decisions may affect the individuals or groups involved.

5.  Motivation: being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.

Simply put, what motivates you? What are your benchmarks for success? Once we achieve certain levels of success, we need to consistently set new benchmarks to keep chasing personal excellence!

Why don’t you practice your EI skills on yourself first? I have a good feeling you’ll develop greater personal power that can lead to achievements you may never have dreamed possible.

By Lynda Chervil