Top Performance: The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Achieving Your Best
Imagine possessing the essential elements to achieve your best performance and that of others. What would that look like? How would you feel? What is possible in your life?
Discussions of peak performance have become essential for self-improvement, productivity, wellness, and the pursuit of excellence. Still, most of these efforts fail because they need to pay more attention to a critical element: the emotional landscape of peak performance.
When we leverage emotional intelligence to drive peak performance, we create continuous and effective results - executives, traders, startup founders, and most people explore practical approaches that deliver huge benefits.
Peak performance in the workplace:
What is peak performance in the workplace? The peak of performance for leaders and executives is about doing the best we can, both cognitively and emotionally, consistently.
Academic research often focuses on peak experience and flow states. Individuals become so immersed in a task that it is effortless and exhilarating for them. In the context of sports psychology or creative fields such as music and dance, these experiences are sometimes called “peak performance.” However, in organizations and workplaces, peak performance refers to continued high performance.
What does this high and continuous performance look like? How to divide peak performance into its core elements? And how to incorporate it into our daily lives? When we ask executives what it means to be at the peak of performance, they talk about focusing and feeling calm when facing chaos and crises, striving to achieve goals effectively, feeling satisfied, and working at a consistently high level of awareness.
More importantly, peak performance is the concept of sustainability, which helps us to be our best constantly. This means that peak performance habits can only succeed if they balance an equal balance of comfort, renewal, self-care, and well-being at the most basic level to allow for long-term sustainability.
Emotional Intelligence and Peak Performance:
Author Daniel Goleman says that emotional intelligence is a different way to intelligence. It is the basis for high performance at all levels, and taking advantage of our emotional intelligence capabilities allows us to take advantage of our main strengths and work at the highest performance in today's world.
Self-awareness, emotional balance, achievement orientation, and adaptability are the most critical competencies that promote flexibility, strengthen focus, develop goal orientation, self-motivation, and self-care, and enhance our ability to cope with changes. These competencies help build the basis for peak performance.
We achieve consistent and effective results when leverage emotional intelligence to drive peak performance.
Four Habits to Develop the Peak of Performance Using Emotional Intelligence:
How to strengthen our capabilities? Here are four habits you can use in your life to develop your ability to achieve peak performance:
1. Incorporate mindfulness practice into your day:
Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs, defines mindfulness as “paying attention intentionally in the present moment, without judgment.”
Mindfulness practices help build self-awareness and emotional balance abilities, including increasing awareness of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, can manage them, enhancing attention, building resilience, and recovering from stress quickly.
These abilities help leaders and executives recognize and manage triggers and stress reactions, perform required tasks, stay focused under stress or distraction, and communicate effectively with teams and stakeholders.
Many mindfulness practices can be chosen, such as breathing awareness, monitoring body movements, meditation, and mindfulness practices, each of which has expected benefits and connotations.
Consider starting with a daily practice that's right for you. You can do it and make it a daily habit. You can try different practices to see what works for you and develop it over time.
2. Attempt to observe, pause, paraphrase, and share:
Try to create a habit of noticing what motivates you, pausing instead of responding directly, and then participating and responding when reworking your concepts to serve the situation better. This habit takes advantage of self-awareness and emotional balance skills and helps you overcome chaotic situations calmly and control and show your best.
For example, you heard about a team member's fatal mistake and felt very angry. Notice that your anger was activated and stopped before you responded. Now, explore what is happening and how to reframe and participate in the situation. To respond with more emotional balance, it is helpful to think about the following questions:
- What is the chance in this situation?
- How does showing up in anger help you right now?
- What is your biggest goal?
- How can you be at your best in serving this goal?
One way to build a great emotional balance is to use a motivator diary, and here are some tips to help you reach a better result:
- When you're upset, notice the thoughts and emotions that come to your mind.
- I know what the discomfort was.
- Find out if you can imagine a perfect alternative outcome.
When you repeatedly search your journal and apply what you've learned, you build the habit of observing, pausing, paraphrasing, and sharing.
“Mindfulness practices help build both self-awareness and emotional balance.”
3. Set goals that push you out of your comfort zone:
Motivation and perseverance to achieve goals and stay in momentum are necessary to achieve peak performance in the workplace, and setting goals effectively is an easy habit to adopt. To improve the habit of goal setting, think about the following questions:
- Is this goal challenging enough?
- Do you feel a little uncomfortable?
- Do you take strategic risks?
When setting a goal, break it down into simple steps to keep you moving and active.
4. Train your mind to adapt to change:
Adaptability helps you work effectively during changes, see opportunities in everything, and give your best in all situations. Goleman defines adaptability as: “Flexibility in dealing with change, reconciling multiple demands, and dealing with new situations with innovative ideas and methods.”
Goleman suggested three steps to build resilience: listen to what's inside you, take advantage of your emotional self-awareness, look outside, pay attention to diverse perspectives and ideas, move away from your comfort zone, embrace experiences and opinions, and embrace new environments. Incorporating these habits into your daily routine will enhance your ability to adapt.
Additional "self-care" advice:
We must take care of ourselves to be able to care for others. Peak performance can only be achieved by building habits of rest, renewal, and self-care in your life, in addition to practicing mindfulness. So, think about other habits that provide time for renewal, such as social communication, time to acquire knowledge, conducting pleasant experiences, and adequate sleep and exercise.
These four habits and additional advice will help you develop self-awareness, emotional balance, achievement orientation, and adaptability, boost your determination and focus, achieve your goals, and gain resilience and a sense of wellness and safety, so try these things and make peak performance in the workplace your new reality.
Peak performance is only possible by building habits of rest, renewal, and self-care.