On January 28th, 1986 during an unseasonably cold morning in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the worst disaster in the history of the U.S. space program shook the nation.

Just 72 seconds after takeoff,  the Challenger shuttle erupted in a fiery explosion, killing all seven astronauts on board, including high school teacher Christie McAuliffe, the first American civilian to board a spacecraft.

As devastating as it was, the greatest tragedy of this disaster is that it was entirely preventable.

Engineers from Morton Thiokol, the space shuttle’s fuel system designer, were concerned that the O rings would fail to seal at low temperatures, leading to a catastrophic breach in the fuel delivery system. Yet there was mounting pressure from NASA  to proceed with the launch, leading to an intense debate within the inner circle of scientists.

The transcripts of the actual conversations between NASA’s leaders and the engineers at Morton Thiokol hours before their fateful decision was made to proceed with the launch are filled with personal attacks, angry accusations, and outright animosity.

In fact, the transcripts end with the fuel system’s lead engineer, who strongly disagreed with moving forward, being dismissed from the call.

In short, the Challenger disaster was not an engineering failure. It was an emotional intelligence failure.

In one of my previous posts, I shared the finding that cognitive intelligence, or IQ, is a relatively poor predictor of success and well-being in life.

Indeed, the Challenger story provides ample evidence.

After all, these were the smartest people in the entire space program–rocket scientists, literally!  And yet their inability to understand and manage their emotions caused these highly intelligent scientists to put the entire mission at grave risk, causing the deaths of seven people and grounding the program for three years.

Destructive outcomes like this aren’t limited to space.

Every day, countless lawsuits are filed, divorces finalized, families estranged, and businesses fail not because of a lack of cognitive intelligence (IQ), but because of a breakdown in emotional intelligence (EQ).

More ominously, consider tragic events like road rage shootings and other random acts of violence, most of which are incited by an emotional confrontation.

The good news: Unlike IQ, which is fixed at birth, emotional intelligence is a malleable skill that can be improved with deliberate practice.

The Four Habits of Emotionally Intelligent People

Psychologists point to four core skills utilized by people with a high level of emotional intelligence. Below, in order of impact, are each of the four skills together with simple strategies to improve in each one.

Skill #1: Self Awareness.
The foundational skill of emotional intelligence, self-awareness is the ability to accurately perceive your emotions in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations.

People with high self-awareness have the ability to see themselves clearly; to understand who they are, how others see them, and how they fit into the world.

Self-awareness gives people power.

There’s ample research showing that people who are self-aware are more fulfilled. They have stronger relationships. They’re more creative, more confident, better communicators. They’re less likely to lie, cheat and steal. They’re better at work, more promotable, more effective leaders.

People with low self–awareness are often described as having “No Filter,” as being clueless in how they’re perceived by others, too focused on the outcome versus the process, and even narcissistic.

How to improve your self-awareness:
(a) Stop judging your emotions as good or bad. Instead, observe your feelings; sit with them and remind yourself that the feeling is there to help you
understand what it is that you are experiencing.
(b) Develop a robust emotional vocabulary by learning to more precisely identify what you’re feeling and to more accurately communicate those feelings.

Skill #2: Self Management.
The skill most often associated with EQ, self-management is the ability to use your self-awareness to stay flexible, control your impulses, and direct your behavior positively.

Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist in Nazi Germany who wrote a powerful book, Man’s Search for Meaning on his experience as a Holocaust survivor, famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

People high in self-management are able to respond instead of reacting; they’re adept at dealing with their emotions the way they choose to versus being highjacked by them.

What low self-management looks like: John McEnroe’s infamous tantrums on the tennis court, or the legion of recent viral videos of disgruntled and sometimes violent airline passengers refusing to wear masks.

How to improve your self-management:
(a) Deep, diaphragmatic breath work (see my post on nasal breathing), which lowers your heart rate and activates your parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) nervous system. After taking several deep breaths, pause and ask, “How would my best self respond?” Psychologists refer to this as a “meta-moment.” Try it!
(b) Clean up your sleep hygiene: Good sleep is critical to controlling negative impulses. (For simple but proven strategies to improve your sleep, click here.)

Skill #3: Social Awareness
When we get together with friends or attend a local community function, my wife has an uncanny knack for sensing how others are feeling.

She will notice someone’s body language and facial expressions and, on our drive home, remark to me that, “Something’s not quite right with him/her.” (I, on the other hand, am usually oblivious to these subtle signals).

Her instincts are almost always correct–this is social awareness in action.

Instead of looking inward to focus on yourself, social awareness is looking outward to notice and appreciate the feelings of others.

What social awareness looks like: Empathy, being present, and remembering names.

By contrast, people with low self-awareness are often poor listeners, impatient, and frequently  “talk over” others.

How to improve your social awareness:
(a) Greet people by name.
(b) Live in the present moment. (“I will be where I am….wherever I am.”)
(c) Don’t take notes at meetings. Instead, look at each person’s face, notice their expressions, and make eye contact with whoever is speaking.

A simple habit to grow your self-awareness during conversations, especially where there is disagreement, is to pause for two full seconds after the other person finishes speaking before you respond.

It’s not easy, but it will force you to become a better listener and observer.

Skill #4 Relationship Management
The final emotional intelligence skill combines the first three EQ skills to improve your relational capital with others.

It places a high priority on putting the good of the relationship first, especially during stressful circumstances.

What poor relationship management looks like: “Winning the battle but losing the war.”  Focusing on others’ faults instead of recognizing their achievements. Dismissing people’s constructive input.

How to improve your relationship management:
(a) Be open and curious with people.
(b) Avoid giving mixed signals between your body language and voice tonality and what you’re really trying to articulate.
(c) Take feedback well. Use self-awareness to sense when you tend to get defensive, apply your self-management skills, and ask, “How would my best self respond?” Finally, deploy social awareness to listen, ask clarifying questions, and try to understand the other person’s perspective genuinely.

Self-Awareness in Action: The Transformative Power of Emotional Literacy

The impact of improving your ability to identify what you’re feeling can have tremendous benefits.

The following story from  the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence shows the impact of a simple tool for naming emotions, called the Mood Meter when introduced to an inner-city school system:

A teacher we were coaching in New York City who worked in a school for children with emotional challenges demonstrated this problem.

When we first interviewed her, she reported that her students’ emotions came out mainly in the extreme—like the enraged kids who threw a desk, or beat up a fellow student, or broke down hysterically crying in class; or the children who were silent but despondent and seriously depressed.

Her strategy for dealing with all these situations was to call in the intervention team. But she felt unable to do anything before matters reached the breaking point. As a result, she was routinely the object of their outbursts, even their violence.

She went years without reporting the welts and bruises she suffered from blows she received almost daily—because she didn’t want her kids to be expelled or go to prison.

Then we introduced the Mood Meter to her school. For the first time, it gave those children a way to become aware of what they were feeling before they erupted into violence and other extreme behaviors.

Once they had ‘irritated’ and ‘frustrated’ and ‘annoyed’ in their vocabulary, they were able to acknowledge what was going on before it zoomed all the way to enraged.

They could explain to their teacher what they were feeling and ask for help while that was still a possibility.

“After a year of using the Mood Meter,” she told us, “I had no more welts. The need for intervention decreased. Kids could tell the difference between a little bit of anger and a lot. When they felt a little bit of anger, they could raise their hand and I or the assistant teacher would support them with a strategy to shift before it got out of control. With practice, many students internalized the strategies and used them independently both in class and outside of school.”

Bit by bit, the kids took control of their own emotional destinies, without ignoring or silencing what was going on inside.

Research shows that a large percentage of children with language impairment exhibit emotional and behavioral problems.

But, as we’ve discussed, when you can name and understand a specific emotion, your brain circuits and nervous system will calm you down. Language skills facilitate executive control and metacognitive processing.

Thus, the simple act of acknowledgment creates a shift, and change becomes possible.

Becoming a Lifelong Student of Emotional Intelligence

These brief summaries are truly the tip of the iceberg in harnessing all the tools to improve your EQ.

Remember, with the overwhelming majority of top performers high in emotional intelligence and EQ twice as important as IQ in presenting the best version of yourself, you really can’t afford to ignore this critical skill.

Here are three excellent resources to help launch you on a productive self-developmental journey toward enhancing your EQ:

1. TalentSmart.com: The world’s premier provider of emotional intelligence (EQ) education. More than 75% of Fortune 500 companies rely on their products and services to develop their people. Visiting their website will give you a good introduction to the power of EQ.
2. Emotional Intelligence 2.0: Authored by TalentSmart cofounder Travis Bradberry, this practical, easy-to-read book is a field manual for understanding and improving EQ. Full of practical tools and proven strategies, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 also features an online assessment to measure your EQ, with a provision to retake it after reading the book.
3. Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett, Ph.D.: Written by the Director of the Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence, this recently released book is a field manual for “harnessing the power of emotions to help our kids, ourselves and our society thrive.” If you’re a parent, grandparent, or caregiver of young children, you will definitely want to read this insightful book.