IQ, EQ, PQ? What, why and how!

Most people I know want to improve their relationships by being able to manage conflict better, and thereby reduce their stress.
 A high EQ has been shown to help in this area.

By now most people know what EQ or Emotional Intelligence Quotient is and why it so important to succeed in every area of our lives.

In this episode, I talk about EQ and what it means, and about PQ, the Positive Intelligence Quotient, it's relationship to EQ and how it helps enhance and increase your EQ so that you can build better relationships, defuse conflict and reduce your stress levels.

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Transcript

0:14

I walk into the OR ready to induce anesthesia with a new nurse. He has just joined a hospital and it is his very first day working with me. I notice he's doing things in a way that I'm not used to, and I ask him. He gets defensive and starts questioning my anesthetic plan. Now I get angry and defensive and I start telling him how I'm the MD on record. It is my license, and the patient should be managed according to my plan. Internally, I'm calling him all sorts of names and feeling disrespected and victimized. Would he have said the same to a male physician or to a white female physicians? He's talking to me this way because I'm a brown immigrant physician. He walks out and tells my boss he doesn't wanna work with me anymore. An unpleasant situation all around, What could I have done differently? Here is where if I had been more emotionally intelligent, things could have been different. What is that and why am I talking about it? This is the Leadership Prescription podcast, and I am your host, Dr. Asha Padmanabhan.. I'm a full-time working anthes. A leader and a coach. I coach women Physicians in essential career and leadership skills like effective communication and conflict management so that every women physician can thrive in their career and feel fulfilled without sacrificing family life. So I'm sure most of you listening to this have heard about emotional intelligence or eq. Some may even have taken courses or classes. So I'm gonna talk about why it is important for Physicians to develop their emotional intelligence. Is it something that can be developed or is it something that we are born with? Why is it even important? Let's start with what is emotional intelligence. For those of you who have heard about it but are not really sure what it is, emotional intelligence is defined as the capacity to be aware of, control and express one's emotion. And to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. Emotional intelligence is the key to both personal and professional success. Now that I've told you that I'm sure you all understand why it's important because being emotionally intelligent or having a higher EQ helps you build stronger relationships at work and to achieve your career and your personal goals. We Physicians have very strong left brain analytical thinking Analytical thinking is important to us as clinicians and as Physicians. We have been trained very well in that. However, when it comes to managing our teams or working with our staff and peers, left brain skills may hinder us rather than help us.. This is where we need our right brain skills or eq, our emotional intelligence, which many of us haven't learned really how to develop. Daniel Goldman was the one who made EQ so popular by showing how people with high emotional intelligence consistently outperformed those with higher I. We Physicians work in highly demanding environments and the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships is a key factor in our success. And study after study has shown that Physicians with high EQ demonstrate better performance, better clinical outcomes, better teamwork, and greater professional satisfaction. And isn't that the goal? More professional satisfaction? On the other hand, low emotional intelligence leads to poor conflict management being more defensive and inability to manage your team, what I had demonstrated in that interaction with the nurse. EQ is important for doctor patient relationships, for doctor relationships, and even doctor to other healthcare worker relationships. So is EQ something you're born with, like IQ or Is it something that you can. Luckily for us, it is something that we can develop. So what are the building blocks of eq and how do you develop that? The four cornerstones, the four building blocks of EQ are One: self-awareness, which is the ability to know your emotions, know your strengths, weaknesses, your drives, and your goals Two: self-management, the ability to stay calm when emotions are running. The ability to be adaptable. Number three is empathy. Identifying with and understanding the desires, the needs and perspectives of others. And number four: social skills, managing relationships and resolving conflict to move people in a desired direction. When I'm talking about all of these skills, you can understand how all of this is important for managing yourselves, managing your practices, and to be getting better at conflict resolution, at communication at all those softer skills that we've never been taught. So how do you improve your EQ. The key steps are to work on those four that I just mentioned, which is self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and social skills. But how do you even start? You learn to identify your emotions. You learn to manage them, and you learn to develop empathy towards others. So there are 18 key competencies you need to develop to improve your eq, which fall into those four categories that I mention. there are tons of books and videos and courses out there that you can take, but one of the most effective ones I have found is coaching. And specifically, the fastest way I have found after my years of being coached and being trained is the positive intelligence framework. If you've listened to my previous podcast, you've heard me talk about positive intelligence, about mental fitness and about building your core mental muscles. You've heard me talk about your saboteurs, those inner voices in our brain that sabotage our success and that sabotage our sense of wellbeing and of our ability to feel fulfilled. And you've heard me talk about the opposite, the sage powers of empathy, exploration, innovation, navigate and activate. So if you haven't listened to those episodes, you can go back and listen to episodes 41 and 42 and maybe even. 39 and 40. But moving on, learning to identify our saboteurs helps us become very self-aware. Learning to understand which parts of our brain are sabotaging us. Is it the Avoider, The Pleaser or the hyperrational, the Restless, the controller, any of those saboteurs that I talked about. Once you learn to identify, It helps us then become very self-aware of what's going on in our brain. The mental muscles we develop in this work helps us know how and why we react the way we do. Once we learn to identify the saboteurs, the next step, the self command muscle that I talked about that helps us develop and helps us manage those negative emotions, especially in the moment they happen. So that's the second part, the self-management. And finally, the sage powers help us with the empathy part of EQ where we get to truly understand the perspectives and the needs of the other person. And as we employ the sage powers, we can manage ourselves better. And the fourth aspect, the social management aspect comes in where we can resolve conflict better and manage social relationships better. Now, this may sound very abstract, so let me give you that example. In that example of my interaction with the nurse here is how it now pans out. Now that I have developed my emotional intelligence through the framework of pq, So when I ask him why he's doing things differently and he gets defensive and questions my anesthetic plan, I don't automatically take offense and I don't go on the defensive. I do get angry, but momentarily. Because he seems to be attacking my expertise at this point. So yes, I do get angry, but I don't keep my hand on the hot stove. What that means is as soon as I have recognized that I am angry, I am now aware enough to know that my feelings of anger are because I'm feeling judged and disrespected, and because of that, I don't automatically lash out in retaliation. I can take a deep breath. And I'm using my self command muscle now to shift in the moment right away from the negative reaction into the positive approach with curiosity. I ask him calmly why he believes his plan is better and what his reasoning behind it is. So when I don't react to his defensiveness with my own anger and defensive, It automatically takes that confrontation down a notch. I am managing my own emotions better, and as a result, I'm deescalating the situation. Now, He could react angrily. He could react defensively, but whatever he says, I am now calm enough to listen without judgment, and that gives him a chance to speak and explain his rationale without having to confront my defensiveness. As a result, he feels heard and he is able to explain his rationale. Now, I may still not agree with what he says and insist that he follow my plan, but because of the way I've approached this without automatically attacking him and reacting to him, his reaction might be very different than what it was in the beginning of walking out. So I have learned to manage. myself, my own emotions to recognize it and to be able to manage it. And I have learned to feel empathetic towards this person, his first day here, interacting with a new attending and having his plan questioned and his judgment question. So with all that, I'm able to manage the situation much better and deescalate the conflict. So this is about one example of how improving EQ can have a profound impact on your relationships and your leadership, and how building your mental fitness muscles through positive intelligence can help increase your EQ here, If you'd learn more. You. Take advantage of my complimentary coaching call for which I leave the link below, or you can sign up for my wait list for my 12 week accelerator program that I will be using the tools of positive intelligence to help you increase your emotional intelligence. Thank you and see you next.