We believe that through focusing on their personal development, people can learn to handle emotions intelligently, and in doing so increase their ability to succeed in personal and professional relationships. Emotional self-awareness is the core of emotional intelligence. Knowing one's emotional state allows the possibility of expressing feelings appropriately, or making the choice to withhold the expression of the emotion - in other words, managing one’s emotional responses.

Until recently, our culture has placed emphasis on certain aspects of intelligence such as logical reasoning, math skills, spatial skills, understanding analogies, verbal skills, etc. to help predict the success of people in their personal and professional lives. The fact is people with remarkable IQ scores do not always succeed in life and frequently do not know how to have successful relationships with coworkers, friends, and family. As a result, psychologists have recently proposed that emotional intelligence or EQ, the ability to understand emotions, is a more important predictor.

We know that our childhood, environmental, and early life events shape our emotional and intellectual intelligence, as do genetic factors and by a certain age in childhood our intellectual ability is established. However, emotional intelligence can continue to develop throughout the life span. Emotional intelligence is not a fixed point, but rather it is fluid and dynamic, and results from emotional teaching and a willingness to grow and develop. It is a fact that the brain is patterned throughout life; brain structures and circuits shape themselves through repeated experience, and through repeated practice, people can get better at things they once weren’t good at. In fact, emotional intelligence tends to increase through each decade of life. It’s what we used to call “maturity” – how one handle one’s self and other people.

We believe that through focusing on their personal development, people can learn to handle emotions intelligently, and in doing so increase their ability to succeed in personal and professional relationships. Emotional self-awareness is the core of emotional intelligence. Knowing one’s emotional state allows the possibility of expressing feelings appropriately, or making the choice to withhold the expression of the emotion – in other words, managing one’s emotional responses. People often undermine or diminish their personal or professional success through outbursts of anger, frustration or tears because of their inability to manage their emotions.

We use Emotional Intelligence testing when working with individuals to assess our clients’ current ability to manage their emotions and to assert themselves. EQ results demonstrate each individual’s level of self-esteem and self-actualization – indicators of their current ability to grow toward their full potential. EQ is also an effective tool when beginning personal development coaching, providing clients with a benchmark for progress during the coaching program.

Author's Bio: 

Anne and Heather have more than 50 years of combined experience helping clients to develop their full potential and working with leaders in organizations to alleviate dysfunctions and bring about behavioral change. They spent many years using personality and emotional intelligence assessments in their work with individuals as well as organizations.

Frustrated by the limitations of these systems to facilitate self-awareness and expedite development, they began building customized reports for each client. However, the cost to do this was prohibitive for many clients, leaving them and their clients without the tools necessary to create significant behavioral change and develop new habits of mind.

Experiences in their own lives as entrepreneurs, parents and spouses served to reinforce Anne and Heather's belief in the need for something that would help people to really understand why they behave the way they do.

In 2007, Anne and Heather decided to create an assessment and development system of their own with the same type of substantial reports they had been customizing for their own clients.

Using the most up-to-date research on how different parts of the brain function and the role of emotions in learning and development, they combined this information with Psychological Type, Needs and Brain Dominance theories, and Mindfulness to create the Striving Styles Personality System, or SSPS. After using the system successfully in their consulting business and personal lives, Anne and Heather have brought it to a wider practitioner market as well as to the general public.