Emotional intelligence (EQ) is more than just being nice or understanding emotions. As Jenelle Friday, founder and principal EQ consultant at LionHeartCS, explains, it is the key to achieving your highest potential. By mastering EQ, you can navigate complex situations, connect meaningfully with others, and make decisions aligned with your goals and values.
Expanding EQ to Enhance Life and Career
Jenelle works with business professionals worldwide to improve their EQ. She helps her clients “live their best life through tactical emotional intelligence education.” This enables them to experience real, measurable growth in their personal and professional lives.
As Jenelle says, “EQ empowers you to navigate complex situations, connect meaningfully with others through real and true empathy, and make decisions that align with your long-term goals, values, and beliefs.” Her mission is to provide the strategies and mindset shifts people need to unlock the transformative power of EQ.
Building Emotional Clarity
The first strategy Jenelle recommends for boosting EQ is to master emotional clarity. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by emotions, learn to identify and name them in real-time. As Jenelle explains, “When you achieve clarity by what you’re feeling, it becomes easier to respond in a way that’s aligned with your values and not controlled by fleeting emotions.”
Emotional clarity empowers you to stay grounded yet fully in tune with your emotions. Jenelle emphasizes that this is about managing your emotions so they don’t manage you. When you can separate fleeting emotions from your core values, you gain the clarity to make decisions that align with your long-term vision.
Turning Vulnerability into Strength
Next, Jenelle advises turning vulnerability into a superpower. As she says, “Real, true strength comes from being open about your struggles and acknowledging uncertainty.” By embracing vulnerability, you invite deeper human connections and create an environment of psychological safety built on trust. This enables real collaboration to thrive.
Part of EQ is being comfortable with uncertainty and acknowledging your gaps or struggles. Rather than hiding these, Jenelle recommends using them to connect with others in a real and authentic way. This builds the trust and psychological safety needed for people to really work together effectively.
Directing Emotions Toward Purpose
The third EQ strategy Jenelle shares is to channel your emotions into purposeful action. EQ isn’t just about understanding emotions, but using them proactively. As Jenelle says, “By aligning your emotional insights with your goals you transform challenges into opportunities and make more strategic, impact-driven decisions.”
Jenelle explains that EQ allows you to tap into your emotions as useful data to drive strategic action. Instead of suppressing emotions, listen to them to uncover potential growth opportunities or realignment needs. Channel these emotional insights into steps that propel you forward. This transforms reactive responses into purposeful action aligned with your objectives.
Shifting to a High-EQ Mindset
Mastering these three strategies represents profound shifts in mindset and approach to life and work. As Jenelle says, they change “how you think about yourself and others, how you stay in tune with your emotional triggers to make sure that you stay completely aligned with your core values and your goals.”
EQ allows you to act with intention rather than reacting based on fleeting emotions. By naming emotions, embracing vulnerability, and channeling emotions proactively, you can unlock your highest potential. As Jenelle explains, you can build a career and life that thrives through emotional intelligence.
For Jenelle, these EQ strategies are not quick fixes but lifelong mindset shifts. They enable you to stay grounded in your core values while remaining nimble and responsive to emotions and uncertainties. If you are ready to unlock higher levels of growth, purpose and resilience, Jenelle offers EQ coaching. She tailors her approach to help clients integrate EQ in a way that sticks for lasting personal and professional success. As Jenelle says, “I’m here to help you build a career and life that thrives through emotional intelligence.”
Check out her LinkedIn profile to learn more about Jenelle Friday and her approach.
