Women Leaders that expand their Emotional Literacy will increase their Emotional Intelligence

Emotionally Intelligent women leaders are more effective, stronger and more impactful than their less emotionally intelligent counterparts. How did they develop their emotional intelligence? By increasing their emotional vocabulary. The more accurately you can name your emotion, the quicker you can move through it. You get control of your emotions by getting clear on your emotions. Clarity is the ticket. 

In this blog, you'll begin to understand how to gain that emotional clarity thus giving you back emotional control and increasing your emotional intelligence.  

Here are some trivia questions to get you started...Do you know...

• How many notes are there in musical scales?
• How many subject pronouns in the French language?
• How many different emotion or feeling words are there?

I don't honestly know either 🙈however, Wikipedia says the chromatic scale has 12 notes, there are 6 types of subject pronouns in the French language, and there are 4, 6 or 8 basic emotions depending on who's theory you follow. Newer research is suggesting there are close to 30,000 emotional words.

Do you know what French, musical notes and emotion words have in common?

Here is what they have in common. They are all ways of communicating.

• I can sing: You are my Sunshine, as I often do to my granddaughter showing her how much I love her.
• I can ask you: Où se trouvent les toilettes
• I can tell you: I'm angry, annoyed or irate

Each time I am communicating. But just as easily I can miscommunicate and ask for something totally different than the washroom, completely off tune annoying my granddaughter or use the word angry when I really mean hurt.

How often are you miscommunicating your feelings?
Miscommunication is one of the biggest challenges in relationships, at home and at work.

• We don't say things clearly.
• We assume others know what we mean.
• We don't check to see that we were heard.

The first one, saying things clearly, means we must first know clearly what we want to communicate. That's the problem, many times we don't specifically know what we are feeling and so we can't clearly communicate it.

• We don't know if we are mad or hurt or jealous.
• We haven't sorted out if we are nervous or excited.
• We don't name feeling insecure, doubtful or a lack of confidence. Instead, we get defensive or shut down.

Given there may be 30,000 feeling words, here's the problem...most of us only use a select few...Brene Brown suggests we can only name 3 emotions. Click here to hear which 3. When we stick to those basic emotions, we are missing a big part of our own understanding of what is going on inside of us. That leads to us simply trying to shut our emotions off, minimize them or push them down. When that happens, we lose control.

Emotional Intelligence requires emotional literacy
Emotional Intelligence is being able to both recognize and manage our emotions. To do that, you need to increase your emotional literacy.

• If you are travelling to France, you will want to increase your French speaking vocabulary.
• If you want to sing better, you may learn to read music.
• If you want increased Emotional Intelligence, you'll take time to expand your emotional literacy.

Practice Expanding your Emotional Vocabulary: Do this:
Thank about a particular situation today. It could have been "good" or not so "good.? Then take a moment to write down a few emotions you felt then. Try to get to at least 10.
Then grab a thesaurus and look for other words that might more clearly describe your emotions. Voila, you are on the road to expanding your emotional vocabulary!

Continue to grow your emotional vocabulary, and you will become more emotionally literate. That will increase your emotional control and your emotional intelligence! One last thing: Emotions are not bad, wrong or a problem for women leaders. We just need to learn to harness the power of our emotions!!! You will do that when you expand your emotional vocabulary!