Hi, my name's Stacy Spielman and I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about emotional intelligence today. because I think it's something that most people probably even haven't heard about, even if they have a lot of emotional intelligence themselves. Often they've never heard the term, so I'll explain a little bit more. As you can see on the slide,about being able to identify and assess your own feelings and those of others. And being able to put that together in a way that really gives you some control in life. So emotionally intelligent people are quite successful or have a sense of success because they can read situations. They have a sense of what's going on in life around them. And they know how to respond in certain situations to have their emotional needs met. So people that are highly emotionally intelligent generally feel good about life, they're happy. They enjoy life, and they know how to get along with people. And that's absolutely critical for veterinarians to be able to work with people one on one like that. So there's four different constructs, or foundations to emotional intelligence. The first one is self-awareness, that's pretty self-explanatory. It's really about being able to identify your own feelings, being able to label them. And actually also having a sense of how other people might perceive you. So when you hear about people being really in touch with themselves, that's usually what's referring to self-awareness. The second one is self-management. Now, that's a little bit about taking care of yourself, both physically and mentally. kind of knowing how to recognize your emotions and what to do about them. So having a little bit more control in life, being able to manage stress, and being able to cope. You kind of build resilience knowing how to handle certain situations. The next foundation is social awareness. Now this is where you start building empathy. So being able to kind of step into somebody else's shoes. Social awareness is incredibly important, and it's more than just empathy. It's actually being able to kind of think, not just how you might feel in somebody else's shoes. But actually recognizing that they're completely different from you, so how they might feel might be completely different than how you might react. Just recognizing that difference is a huge part of getting along with people. Don't assume that everyone thinks the same way as you. And then the last foundation is relationship management. Now, this isn't just referring to romantic relationships. It's any relationship in your life. So family, friends, colleagues, people you work with and your clients. It's about being able to put all those other bits of the foundation together, fully understanding yourself, understanding other people. And being able to work with that, being able to work through conflict. And being able to integrate all those components so that you flow through life. You have a fluid sense of life, and you're able to work things out with people. So that's just a really, really basic foundation of the whole thing. It's a massive, massive subject. If you're interested, the good news is, is that you can grow your own intelligence. Emotional intelligence is just one of many different kinds of intelligence. So you've got academic intelligence, which is probably what we most think about when we think about intelligence. Athletic intelligence, artistic intelligence, we all have various levels of that, that we're maybe born with a certain amount of talent. But in any one of those areas, you can actually improve just by learning about it and that's particularly true of emotional intelligence. Just by hearing about it, reading about it, you can actually really improve on your emotional intelligence. And I suggest that you don't wait until you go off to university, I suggest that you start right now. There's no reason not to. Get online, search the term emotional intelligence, and see what comes up. Have a read through different things and as you do that, you will be growing your own emotional intelligence.
