Emotional intelligence

Handling situations

You can say the difficult thing

Your strongest strand is navigating situations with several people and a lot of feeling in them. You can say a hard thing without humiliating anyone, take the heat out of a tense moment, and receive criticism without putting a wall up.

Where you are strong

  • You are direct without damaging the relationship
  • You can cool a tense situation down
  • You adjust how you speak to who is listening
  • You take feedback without defending

Worth watching

  • Keeping the peace slides easily into avoiding the real issue
  • You may prioritise a comfortable atmosphere over something that needs saying
  • Other people tend to hand you the awkward jobs

Putting it to use

The strand to balance is usually noticing your own feelings. People good at handling situations often give all their attention to the room and lose track of what they themselves felt in it. After a situation you handled well, ask the extra question: and what about me?

Under pressure

When tired, you tend to keep the peace by absorbing more work and more of other people's feeling. That is when burnout is closest and least visible, because from the outside you still look fine.

And you?

Take the test to see your own result.

Take the test to find your own

The other results

This is self-report, so it measures what you think about yourself rather than your actual behaviour. That is a real limitation and not a small one: the person weakest at a skill is often the person least able to see it. If you can, ask someone close to you how they would answer for you — the gap between the two is usually the most valuable part.