The pandemic has created a unique set of circumstances inviting us each to examine how we’ve been living our lives.​  As we each attempt to strike a healthier balance between work and home, between our many responsibilities and cultivating our own mental and physical wellbeing, emotional intelligence may be the very thing we need. 

Michele Nevarez, the CEO of Goleman EI, can certainly help you in this area. She and her colleagues are truly committed to helping people become their best and most effective selves and bringing emotional intelligence to life by transforming theory into meaningful action.

I’ve worked with Michele for several years and even became a Certified Meta-Coach in Emotional Intelligence. It’s been both an honor and a privilege to learn and work with her and the Goleman EI team.

Last week on Creating Your Encore Career I talked with Michele about why we should all be developing Embodied Emotional Intelligence and how her course can transform your business and life.

How to Improve Your “Know, Like, and Trust” 

If, as an independent worker, you are trying to improve your "know, like, and trust" factors, EI is a perfect place to start. 

Think about what the foundation of trust is. There are a lot of elements to it but one of them is authenticity. People can feel if a person is being authentic or not. Part of what it means to be authentic is to be aligned with yourself. Think about what’s important to you and ask yourself if you’re not just doing those things but living them. Aligning to oneself in this way is what allows for human connection and for bonds of trust to develop. 

Additionally, when you’re aligned and renewed, you can connect with those around you in a positive way. These connections will have resonance as opposed to dissonance. If you’re constantly engaged in things that aren't meaningful to you or that feel like a duty, people will feel that from you. 

All of this comes back to emotional intelligence. Developing EI is what will allow us to truly begin understanding ourselves. From there, we can work from our strengths and agency. 

Developing Your Emotional Intelligence

If you’re interested in developing your EI in this way, Michele has an incredible course for you.

In the course, they invite people to reflect on certain aspects of how they're making sense of their world. These are called habits of mind and include things like your mindset and your attitude. 

Participants have the opportunity to look at these habits of mind and write about them. This doesn’t have to be time-consuming. If you just tried putting pen to physical paper or typing for a few minutes, you'd be surprised at how much can be shared. 

In Michele’s approach, she and her team have a coach reads participants’ journals in real-time and respond to them. This coaching model works so well because it’s not just introspection but being able to see the patterns that are coming up again and again that is so powerful. The coach can pick up on these patterns, reflect them back to the client, and discuss them. 

Once the client figures out their recurring habits, they can also work with their coach to come up with strategies for how to address or even combat them. The coach is so helpful to bounce ideas off of and to help the client see things differently. 

After a participant goes through the entire course, they can use this same process again to learn other skills. This could help you leverage yourself beyond learning emotional intelligence.

Learn more about Michele’s course and what she and her team do here: https://golemanei.com/ei-masterclass-embodied-emotional-intelligence-2/.