Perspective

Look Closely

Let’s try an experience to engage your EI skills. Look closely at the image above. What comes to mind for you?

A Focus on Perspective

A skill that is vital for EI is perspective-taking:

• Having the ability to understand another person’s point of view is a key ingredient of empathy.
• Having empathy means feeling or understanding what another person might be feeling.
• Empathy begins with taking someone else’s perspective.

When we feel stressed, we are less likely to respond to others with empathy and compassion.

Look Again

Consider the image again. What kinds of EI skills would you need here to avoid a conflict?

EI Skills

This is a simple illustration of how the ability to take someone else’s perspective is interconnected with many EI skills and is critical for forming and maintaining healthy relationships. Some EI skills needed might include the following.

Emotional Self-Awareness Emotional self-awareness is awareness of your own emotions (frustration, impatience, etc.).

Emotional Self-Control Awareness of emotions enables emotion regulation. We covered some strategies earlier in this course (mindful awareness) that facilitate emotion regulation!

Empathy The ability to take the perspective of others facilitates responding with empathy.

Conflict Management The ability to resolve conflict peacefully is important both for productivity at work and for healthy relationships in all domains of our lives.