Freelancing Week 2- Enterprise and Emotional Intelligence

This week I learned about the enterprise mindset and emotional intelligence. Again like last week it was a good opportunity for self-reflection. I took a few tests to test my entrepreneurship, enterprising and emotional intelligence in order for me assess where I am at with all of these core skills. In the first session we got a briefing on what skills make up the enterprise mindset and emotional intelligence. There is some cross-pollination between the skills with things like confidence and empathy. I learned that your emotional intelligence growth can start from when you’re very young and is effected by your home life and the way you’re raised by your parents and how you’re treated by your relatives. Your enterprise mindset is formed later when you grow into yourself and develop your professional skills.

So the first test was to test my enterprise skills. The results came out that I was occasionally enterprising which is understandable at this early stage of my career that I am occasionally taking risks and looking to better myself but I still want to stay relatively safe because I am still at university and risk taking is limited. the second test I took was to test my emotional intelligence and again the results were quite middle of the road with just slightly above average emotional intelligence. So for both core skills I have room to improve which is something I am going to take on board.

In terms of reading for this week, there was an article written by Paul Beesley that goes into more detail about something discussed in class about being a radiator vs a drain in terms of how you come across when working with others. Simply put, radiators are people who are outgoing and positive and are generally great people to work with whereas drains are people who are constantly negative and have a poor work ethic and are very difficult to work with. Beesley writes ‘It helps if we surround ourselves with like-minded, enthusiastic people that radiate their warmth, generosity of spirit and support.'(Beesley,  2018) this is something I can take moving forward in this unit as working with clients means I will have to radiate positive energy for them to get the best out of me, and for me to get the best out of them.

BEESLEY, P., 2014. Be a radiator, not a drain [viewed Feb 6, 2019]. Available from: https://www.business-times.co.uk/articles/news/be-a-radiator-not-a-drain