How Is Your EQ Related To NLP?

Published on 30th April 2020

Certified NLP Trainer. Professional Coach and Corporate Trainer.

Kiki Ng

A term created by two researchers – Peter Salavoy and John Mayer – and popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name, Emotional Intelligence or EQ (Emotional Quotient) is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, and those of the people around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence know how to describe and name their feelings, what their emotions mean, and how these emotions can affect other people. While IQ measures cognitive intelligence, EQ, or emotional quotient, is a ‘measurement’ for emotional intelligence. EQ has two broad competencies; personal and social competence.

People with high personal competence are very aware of their feelings, strengths and weaknesses. They know how to motivate themselves and manage their emotions well. People with high social competence are great communicators, highly empathic, able to motivate others and great at maintaining relationships.

According to Goleman, IQ only contributes to 20% of our success in life. The remaining 80% is the result of emotional intelligence. EQ includes factors such as: The ability to self-motivate, Persistence. Control of impulses, regulation of empathy, humor, and hope.

In a 2011 Career Builder Survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and human resource professionals, 71 percent stated they valued emotional intelligence in an employee over IQ; 75 percent said they were more likely to promote a highly emotionally intelligent worker; and 59 percent claimed they’d pass up a candidate with a high IQ but low emotional intelligence.’” According to the World Economic Forum, emotional intelligence was ranked as of the top 10 most important workplace skills, when it comes to what workers will need in order to be successful in 2020.

Think about a great manager that you’ve had in the past. One who is receptive to you and whom you felt comfortable going to with your questions, concerns and needs, and worked to address them and s/he made sure that you felt supported. And if (or when) you both had disagreements, they were likely respectful and productive exchanges. These are all signs of high EQ leaders; empathetic, people developers, relationship builders and great listeners and communicators.

Studies have found that EQ is a required competency for effective leaders and is the #1 predictor of professional success and personal excellence. Studies also show that EQ affects organizational profitability and performance.

EQ and NLP – the perfect match

NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming is the HOW of Emotional Intelligence. NLP explores how we think, feel and act and uses these to create the change that we want.

NLP was created in 1972, as a result of studying the works of three 20th century psychotherapists (Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson and Fritz Perls). Creators of NLP are Richard Bandler and John Grinder. At the root of NLP is the idea and process of modelling. Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erikson were the first people extensively modelled by the creators of NLP.

Below are some examples of how NLP can help us build Emotional Intelligence …

Self-Awareness – understanding how our mind operates as well as how our mood and emotional state (as well as our thoughts) impact our behaviour and results.

Mood/Emotional Management – NLP Anchoring allows us to recognise and move to a more resourceful mood/emotional state. We can also use our physiology to change our mood too!

Eliminating Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) – we all have an inner critical or cheer leader – with NLP we can eliminate or change the internal chatter of the ‘inner critic’ so that our ANTs don’t get in our way.

Help you construct new habits or replace old habits that are not working for us. Even better, learn the buying habits of customers so we can help them achieve fulfilment in their purchases and, in the process, enhance our relationship with them.

Building Rapport to make communication more meaningful. Learn 7 steps to building great rapport with anyone – even people you don’t like!

Becoming aware of the different preferences people have by using good questioning and sensory based language and observation skills.

Understanding how values motivate and influence our actions and; learning how to identify values to motivate self and others.

Building Empathy – seeing things from another person’s point of view provides new insight. Using the NLP technique Perceptual Positions (which we teach on our NLP Business Diploma course), helps people to start to build empathy with others.

The diagram below names all the NLP tools (in orange writing) which are effective in helping one increase personal and social competence, i.e EQ.