Do you sometimes feel your emotional state has paralysed your ability to make decisions?

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the capacity to deal effectively with one’s own and others’ emotions. When applied to the workplace, it involves the capacity to effectively perceive, express, understand and manage emotions in a professional manner.(Stough and Palmer, 2002). Unlike personality and intelligence (IQ), EI is regarded as a set of skills or competencies that can be learned and developed.

Why do we sometimes feel stuck or paralysed? Once of the reasons may be that we are focusing on a decision that has too many variables or is too complex. If we try and analyse the pros and cons of an important decision: for example: "should I take this short term assignment or wait for the longer term contract?", we may go round and round analysing financial benefits, career, job, challenges etc. Instead, if we focus on the effort and impact required after our decison, this helps us to see if our decision will be effective and workable.

One of my clients used the above approach when between jobs and decided to not take on a short-term assignment as the effort required to find a role at his level was too time consuming to do on a regular basis. This gave him a sense of control in his day to day actions and more ownership over his decision.

If you want to know more...read the HBR article: Stop Worrying about Making the Right Decision.

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