Emotional intelligence starts with reading the room

The first step to emotional intelligence

Developing emotional intelligence has been a learning journey for me over the past three decades. It certainly wasn’t something that came naturally.

Looking back, I realised there’s one place I’d encourage anyone to start: learning how to read the room. This aspect of emotional intelligence, often described as social awareness, feels much more accessible than asking someone to attend a course or watch a film and miraculously wake up the next morning emotionally intelligent.

So, how good are you at ‘reading the room’? 

How to read the room

1. Listen more than you speak
There’s always been a very useful phrase I’ve heard repeated across decades:  ‘We have two ears and one mouth and should use them in that proportion’. That’s probably a good place to start and, put simply, just aim to listen more than you speak. And, if after a meeting or conversation you realise you hogged the conversation, then just take it as a learning point and aim to do a little less speaking next time.  We are all a work in progress, so take a bit of pressure off your shoulders!

2. Listen to feedback
If you’ve ever been accused of interrupting people or just not listening, refer to tip one. Take feedback like this as your motivation to improve your interactions by pausing before you speak, sometimes not voicing your thoughts at all (more filter), or putting down your phone to enable better eye contact and connection. 

3. Pay attention to non-verbal communication
Pay attention not just to the words that people use, but more importantly notice what their facial expressions are telling you, what their body language is telling you, what their energy is telling you, because often it’s the non-verbals that are the better communicator of what someone wants to say than perhaps the words they use.

If your mind has gone into a spin with me asking you to read expression, energy and body language, please pull yourself right back from the downward spiral, thinking that only the FBI knows these things. Instead, remind yourself that your brain is a powerful tool, endlessly analysing and decoding information subconsciously. Your job is to create a little bit of space to allow your present understanding to catch up with what your brain already knows.  Still not sure? I guess if someone walks into a room seething with anger, as long as you are not absorbed in your own thoughts and head, most of us will be able to pick up on that energy and those expressions and know that we are dealing with an angry person without them ever having to say it. You can already do this. You just need to practise to improve on what you are already doing. 

4. Reflect on every interaction
After you’ve been in a room (any kind of room with other people in it!), just take a moment to reflect as you journey home or move to another room. Was there anything I missed? Were there any signals in that room that I didn’t pick up at the time? This isn’t about beating yourself up. This is about learning through reflection: what might you be learning if you reflected a little bit more about your interactions with people?

5. Put your ego to one side
To read the room, you might need to lose the ego a little bit. If you make every interaction about you, your popularity, your likeability, your authority, your needs, your fears, your interests, your knowledge, etc then it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to read the room. If emotional intelligence is genuinely important to you, then see if you can put your ego to one side just for a moment to genuinely observe and interact with the other party.

6. Create space for people to speak
After you share an opinion or idea, take a moment to check in with the other person or people. For those who like actual examples of checking in:

• “Well that’s my opinion, what do you think?”
• “That’s my idea, but perhaps you don’t agree.”
• “That’s the idea I wanted to share with you, do you have any different ideas?”
• “So that’s what I wanted to say. Does that make sense to you?”

Of course, people may still not speak up if they disagree with you, but this tiny pause allows both them and you to either respond or for you to read the room. I recall in a respect in the workplace training session a few years ago, a woman looking at me from time to time as though she wanted to say something, but she never did even though I repeatedly invited everyone to share their ideas and thoughts. After an hour of this, I created a longer pause and space for her to speak, which she then stepped into. Her question was really powerful and came from her heart: “You want me to show my colleagues respect, but how does that work when one of my colleagues last week said that given my low position in both society and at work I don’t even count as a woman?”

Sometimes people have important things to say that are profoundly relevant to the conversation we are having, but they don’t find the space to speak them. You can make that space by reading the room. 

7. Assess the room before you communicate
Pause for a moment before you speak and consciously/deliberately assess who is in front of you. This will give you valuable information enabling you to properly ‘pitch’ whatever it is you want to say. Look for things such as what kind of communication (e.g. formality of language) the other person/s might expect, what they already know, what they might want from you, whether they want to listen to you even, whether they are already distracted with phones/laptops/conversations, is their behaviour respectful, is their behaviour full of fun or banter, how are they interacting between themselves etc.

Did you know that our brains are said to be hit with 11 million bits of information per second but that we can only process 40?  Pausing gives your brain a chance to properly process what is in front of you so you can adapt, amend and respond to their needs and interests. 

8. Avoid pre-reading the room
It’s very easy for people to pre-read a room by making assumptions about the group of people or the person they’re about to interact with, before they ever take a moment to properly read the room. Just because someone tends to be critical doesn’t mean that they’re going to be critical today, just because someone tends to show up optimistic and happy doesn’t mean that today is going to be one of their days, just because you had good rapport with someone the first time you met does not mean that you will feel the same rapport this time and just because someone is usually tired and withdrawn doesn’t mean that today they’re going to be equally tired and withdrawn. Don’t pre-read the room. Assumptions are a fool’s game. 

9: Listen beyond the words
Listen out for words and phrases that indicate it’s time to really pay attention to what is going on:

• I’m fine (this usually means that they are not prepared to say how they are feeling or don’t recognise it themselves).
• It is what it is (this usually indicates someone is accepting of something they are not happy with, which can lead to problems further down the line).
• What’s the point in sharing/saying (does this person need to feel you are genuinely listening to them and interested in them).
• I’m tired of people/you just not listening (to even begin a conversation here you will need to reassure them about your sincerity).

You also need to listen out for what is not said i.e. when there is silence when you might have expected interaction. Who is not speaking, who has withdrawn from the conversation, who looks as though they want to contribute, but are not finding the right words or the space to speak. Silence is sometimes the most profound communication. 

10. Forget your limiting beliefs
If you have a limiting belief and you have a little voice in your head screaming, I’m not emotionally intelligent, and therefore I can’t read the room, or if I did read the room I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, please park that idea now. This is just a limiting belief. We can all develop our skills, we can all develop our knowledge, we can all learn/adapt/change/evolve. If we choose to. So my question to you is how has this limiting belief served you in the past? Did it serve you well, i.e. have you benefited in some way from it, or does it in fact hold you back? As a trainer, I can’t change anyone, if someone wants to change, they have to do the work themselves. I have seen people work on limiting beliefs, but often only at the point at which they understand how the limiting belief is negatively impacting their life, relationships or career etc. 

So those are my ten top tips for beginning an emotional intelligence journey by reading the room. Anything I have missed that you might have added in? Anything you disagree with? Any great stories to share about when you misread the room? 

Just as a final note:

Emotional intelligence is a huge topic and covers things such as self esteem, adaptability, impulse control, emotion perception, emotion management, stress management, empathy, optimism, assertiveness and so much more. So my final top tip here – let’s call it tip 10.5 is as follows: 

Don’t drown in terminology, complexity or what other people think when it comes to emotional intelligence. Keep it simple. Why do you want to develop your emotional intelligence? And if you want just one idea from me – aim to speak less, and tune into/listen to other people more. 

Questions, thoughts, opinions? Let us know if the comments below… or if you’d like to speak to me directly, send me a message.