Emotional intelligence and self-knowledge: 4 tips to apply in the job market

1. Identify your mindset

Before understanding your emotions, it’s worth knowing what your way of thinking is. In the book “Mindset”, by psychologist and PhD, Carol S.

In summary, we can identify the mentalities as follows:

• In the fixed mindset , there is a vision that values ​​the result, but not the effort. There is also a great fear of making mistakes, the understanding that great skills are specific to those with talent and the thought of “I’ve always been like this, so I can’t change”;
• In the growth mindset , the reward is already in the process and in what has been learned so far. Mistakes are signs of learning, as they will no longer be repeated. Talents are developed and thinking focuses more on “what else can I learn?”.

Of course, there are people who have these two types, but which one is predominant?

In what behaviors, in your work environment, were you able to identify that you valued the effort more than the result?

Do you usually attribute advanced skills to phrases like “that person is like that because he has talent”?

2. List your challenges

Another efficient way to get to know yourself is to make a list of your daily challenges, record the emotion generated by this, your reaction during what happened and then evaluate your behavior in the process.

With this practice, it will be possible to name the sensations, as well as to understand what you consider as a challenge more clearly.

The important thing in this activity is for you to be transparent and describe the situation accurately without creating judgments about yourself or the people involved.

For example, Ana was upset at the meeting, she felt frustrated and interrupted the person who was against her opinion. This generated a tense atmosphere among the people on the team.

When practicing self-analysis, he reflected on his feeling generated more consciously and identified that there are points in communication that could be improved so that he would react better in the next few times.

In this example, a private conversation , or waiting for the other person to conclude and then bringing coherent arguments could already facilitate this communication.

Tip to start: you might ask yourself “what could I have done differently to make this situation better?”.

3. Do your professional SWOT Analysis

Generally used in business administration and marketing, the SWOT analysis — or SWOT analysis — is a tool to identify strengths ( strengths ), weaknesses ( weaknesses ), opportunities ( opportunities ) and threats (threats ) . With it, it is possible to analyze the internal and external environments to make a strategic planning.

Now applied to our professional reality, the SWOT analysis helps in self-knowledge from the identification of your strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats you see within the company, or under the perception of your career in general.

For example, one person joined as an HR intern, with five other people. It was said, in the process, that only two would be effective.

This intern knows a lot of relevant people in the sector, has a determined profile and likes to study. But she also feels insecure because she knows that only two people will actually be hired.

Quite simply, she could evaluate herself this way:

• Strengths : interest in HR, studious profile, has a large network of contacts to exchange experiences;
• Weaknesses : still starting his career, does not have much repertoire of activities in practice, insecure person;
• Opportunities : it has humanized leadership, the company pays for training, there is a career plan;
• Threats : other interns may compete for tenure.

With this information, it is already possible to create some questions so that self-knowledge becomes a strategy. See some examples:

1. How can I use my strengths to take advantage of opportunities?
2. How can I use my strengths to get away from threats?
3. What opportunities can I consider to reduce my weaknesses?
4. What threats reinforce my weaknesses and what strategy should I follow to lessen the effect?

Tip : always try to name the emotions you have, either at work or in a selective process to put them in this analysis, because self-knowledge in emotional intelligence also needs to be focused on what you feel.

4. Look at your personal references

An interesting practice of Positive Psychology for self-knowledge is to think of three names that are personal references in your life.

Knowing this, who were the three people who most influenced your life? Write down their names on a sheet of paper, or in a digital document.

Now that you’ve thought about these people, write below each one’s name all the positive traits you can remember and why you admire that about them.

Read the result of your notes, because that way you will realize which behaviors you admire to understand yourself and other people’s motivations.

As you could see in this article, emotional intelligence is a soft skill — or behavioral skill — that covers several fronts that cover individual and collective behavior. Such fronts need to be developed so that the management of emotions is done in the best possible way and thus you show your competitive edge as a professional in the market.

In addition, it is clear that there are several other ways to develop the ability of self-knowledge, so maintaining the study in this area and seeking references on the subject is essential for learning and better application of knowledge in everyday life.