We all have a side of strengths and warmth - the art is when to use which
We all have one dominant and one less dominant side of our characters. This week in a training session, we defined those two sides as strength and warmth. Our warm side is the more human, emotional one which is all about building relationships and using emotional intelligence to get to where we want to be with others. The contrast to that is our strength side, which is the harder, fact driven one where we cut straight to the point. While we all have a side that we feel more comfortable with when approaching others, we always have to remember that we have both sides in us and can access warmth and strength at any time. The art now is to find out when to use which.
Especially when it comes to human interactions warm and strength can also be related to more extrovert versus introvert characters. Extroverts are often more on the warmth side, while introverts are people that are fact driven and immediately cut to the chase. However, the world as already mentioned is not as black and white and we all have a bit of both in us.
Our warmth side is very helpful when it comes to relationship building with clients. It is great when we take partners out for dinner or when we are in informale environments to really build interpersonal relationship with our warmth capabilities. In other situations however, especially when it comes to data driven though conversations where fast decisions need to be made and solutions to be found - we need to almost only use our strength side. We can therefore see that it is not only a skill to be aware of those two sides and k is which one we lean more towards, but it’s also key to absorb our environment and make a conscious decisions which side of went to lean into to solve situations we face in the best possible way.
This is where a third component of emotional intelligence comes in. It helps us to understand which side warmth or strength will get us where we want to be. With some clients, we really have to go into warmth as they are more extrovert people that are not really turned in by hrs facts. With others, only those hard facts will get us somewhere. When we therefore master the art of knowing when to use which side of us, is when it gets really exciting. It is then that we become the leader of conversations and can get desired outcomes in a much more easy way for others. The bad news is, that this takes a lot pf practice.
It is true that we all have a warm side and a strengths side to us. We can use both of them at any time, while leaning more forward one naturally. However, the real art is to learn when to use which with people who also lean more forward one side to get to where we want to be.
