Daniel Goleman wrote the book Emotional Intelligence back in 1995. The key concept behind emotional intelligence is that the better you understand and manage your emotions and the emotions of people around you, the greater your chances of success. In other words, make emotions work for and not against you. Whether it is during a call for service, traffic stop, conversation with a trainee, or an interview for a special assignment, your level of emotional intelligence is a key factor in how those situations play out.

The concept of emotional intelligence has a direct correlation to field training. The best field trainers are ones with high emotional intelligence because they not only control and utilize their own emotions effectively, but also those of their trainee and the other people involved in the calls for service they respond to. Emotionally intelligent officers can read people’s emotions and the atmosphere of a room as easily as other people read a book. This is an amazing asset to wield because it assists in their predictions about what will and will not work best in any given situation.

There are 4 domains to work on in order to improve your emotional intelligence and gain this edge for yourself…

1. Develop better self-awareness of your emotions.

Knowing what you feel, why you feel that way, and how those feelings are either helping or hindering you is the first step to developing better emotional intelligence. Take the time to slow down your thinking and explore why you feel the way you do whenever you have a strong emotional response to something. Why are you feeling anxious about a decision? What is causing you embarrassment, jealousy, or anger? Why do you love your significant other?

As you answer these questions, you start to realize that your brain is simply responding as it has been programmed to do for thousands of years. Emotions are an internal self-preservation system regulated by hormones and endorphins. They are meant to help us avoid danger and seek out things that help us survive. The problem is that we are responding to a 21^st Century world with a “caveman” response system. Why do you think we get that feeling to punch a computer when it isn’t doing what we want it to? Or swear wildly at a car that just cut us off? When you develop the ability to pinpoint the root causes of your own emotions, then you’ll be ready to focus on improving the next domain.

2. Develop better self-management of your emotions.

Once you improve your ability to identify why you are feeling the way you do, now you begin to be able to better manage your emotional responses to stimuli. The ability to manage your own emotions gives you the following superpower – emotional adaptability. Emotional adaptability is the ability to adjust your emotions from the current state they are in and redirect them in another direction that is better suited for success. For example, simply take a sentence and replace the words “have to” with “get to.” Do you have to pick up the kids from school or do you get to pick up the kids from school? Do you have to be a field trainer or do you get to be a field trainer? Just a simple turn of phrase like this can completely change your emotional response to the situation or circumstances.

Scientific research has proven that when you have an overall positive outlook you have a greater chance of success at whatever you are doing. Want to improve your emotional self-management and adaptability? Here are 3 quick and easy ways to do it…

• Write notes of appreciation. Whenever you show appreciation for something, not only does it make you feel better by recognizing it, but it also makes the person you are recognizing feel good. That starts a cycle of positive reinforcement. Even something as simple as a Post-It Note that says, “Great job interviewing that DV suspect yesterday” can go a long way towards motivation.
• Take the time to reflect on things in your life that you are grateful for. Each night before bed or each morning before you start your day, take just 5 minutes to write down 3 things that you are grateful for in your life. I started doing this about 3 years ago and I cannot begin to tell you how much I have benefited from this practice.
• Take the time to develop a strength. Whatever you are passionate about, be sure to give yourself opportunities to spend time doing what you love to do – hike, mountain bike, collect butterflies, shooting, wood work, fishing – whatever it is make time to do it.

3. Develop better social awareness.

Social awareness is the ability to understand how other people are feeling in the moment. It is empathy, paying attention to others, listening to their words, understanding why they feel the way they do, and finding a common ground. The ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and understand their perspective, not necessarily agree with it, is what social awareness is all about. How does your OIT feel after a difficult call or after making a mistake? Understanding that can greatly improve your response and how the conversation goes afterwards. If you are reading this right now and thinking, “this is bullshit,” you have just proven that this could be an area for improvement for you.  🙂

This same concept also applies organizationally. Do you have the ability to see how organizational decisions effect the big picture or do you just look at how it affects you? Can you put yourself in the shoes of your sergeant or lieutenant and understand where they are coming from? It is this ability that often defines the great from the merely average leaders within an organization.

4. Develop better relationship management. (The key to being an awesome field trainer!)

The final step to improving your emotional intelligence comes in your ability to influence, mentor, coach, lead, and inspire others. It is about nurturing relationships through the 4 C’s of influence – Contact, Communication, Connection, and Commitment. Contact is the amount of time you have to spend around another person. As you spend time around them, communicate, interact, and learn about them. It is only through communication that you find ways to connect. What do you have in common? Once you build a connection, that is when you get a commitment from them to trust what you have to say and be accepting of your influence. It is this influence that makes an FTO memorable to an OIT. Everybody can remember fondly the FTO that you felt was truly invested in your success and wasn’t just going through the motions.

We, as law enforcement, spend hours and hours shooting, driving, and practicing defensive tactics. But, if you really want to develop a skill that will put you in the upper echelons of successful police officers, it is the skill of emotional intelligence that needs to be developed. When you think about it, policing is about 20% tactics and 80% communication, but we train in the exact opposite of that fact. The best part of this whole thing is that the domains of emotional intelligence are complimentary. Meaning that any improvement in one automatically helps to boost the others.

Stay safe and take care of each other. Thank you, as always, for everything you do to train the new officers of this department. It is greatly appreciated.

The mission at Thin Blue Line of Leadership is to inspire law enforcement supervisors to be the best leaders they can be by providing positive leadership and culture development tactics. Positive leadership and creating a positive squad culture are on-going commitments that must be nurtured and developed over time.

Thin Blue Line of Leadership is here to help. Continue reading our Twitter feed and check out our other blogs for tactics on creating positive culture. Share your thoughts or comments on this blog below or on our Facebook page. You can also follow us on Twitter at @tbl_leadership.

Continue saving the world one call at a time and as always, LEAD ON!