It seems there may be no better time to talk about emotional intelligence than during March Madness, collegiate basketball’s showcase of tears, joy, rage, frustration, anger, nerves, intensity, concentration, and focus.

Ironically, while sports bars will be full of screaming fans, the athletes must play like robots, prepared mentally and physically and ready to be immune to the ups and downs of the game. Athletes we respect do this well. They don’t always win; they don’t always make the basket, but they play composed and able to respond to the stress without crumbling or emoting.

Calling all 13-year olds on the driveway: Now is the time to learn emotional intelligence on the playing field.

The Human Performance Institute considers the most important element of managing your performance to be your “private voice.” How do you talk to yourself after you miss a big shot? Do you condemn yourself or resist that urge and look for the next opportunity? In order to maintain what it calls the “Ideal Performance State,” you must be able to control your private voice.

Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves in Emotional Intelligence 2.0 explain it this way:

“Since our brains are wired to make us emotional creatures, your first reaction to
an event is always going to be an emotional one. You have no control over this part of the process. You DO control the thoughts that follow an emotion, and you have a great deal of say in how you react to an emotion, as long as you are aware of it. Emotional Intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”

So, for those of you in the sports bars or your recliner, emotional intelligence still plays a part in your life, in your home and in your workplace. We all face stresses and challenges, and we must train ourselves to manage our emotions well and to realize how our emotions affect those around us. Our ability to “hit the final shot” with calm and precision will be based on the management of our emotions in the heat of an argument with our teenager or upon the receipt of the latest budget numbers.

As much as SportsCenter may distort our view of reality, most last-second shots don’t fall.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

We can all learn to respond better to the adversities and stresses of life.

And since most of us don’t make Michael Jordan’s salary, Bradberry and Greaves say studies show there are even financial benefits toward mastering emotions. In their studies within the workplace, 90% of the high performers also had high EQ’s (Emotional Intelligence quotients).

“The link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase adds $1,300 to annual salary. Those findings hold true for people in all industries, at all levels, in every region of the world. We haven’t yet been able to find a job in which performance and pay aren’t tied closely to EQ.”

It’s fairly well known that top athletes are disciplined, smart and often make good employees. Maybe this emotional mastery around competition is another reason why. Watch for yourself in the coming weeks who comes out ahead: those with high EQ or those throwing chairs.