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Emotional Intelligence : How Important EQ at Work?

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"If your actions inspires others to dream more, learn more,  do more and become more, you are a leader" - John Quincy Adams - Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to understand and manage your emotions. The skills involved in emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Recently, it has become a bit of a buzz word in human resources departments across the globe but researchers are saying that it is the time emotional intelligence be taken seriously. In this article, I would like to write about some questions that may come up from workplace, and how EQ will help people to deal with those problems, such as : 1. Sometimes, we are facing a bad day at work because of some personal matter, how we deal with that? Firstly, we should identify what kind of personal matter it is, and from who it comes? It is ours, or theirs? Because when we talking about workplace it should be done professionally and not allowed personal matters in

Teacher Competence

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"They are not my students, they are my kids" Many crucial issues come during the pandemic of coronavirus outbreak. Hundred of teachers, many of them have to teach-from-home for weeks. It needs a high competency to do a lot of things at the same time. Teacher has to  prepare the material to teach, make an assesment, and have a digital competency too. Meanwhile, they have their own kids at home, that need them as parents to accompany them to study. We can see who is really the professional teacher, when they have to deal with this difficult situation. Some of them have competency to teach in reguler class, but don't have the ability to teach online class. And for sure in this difficult situation with no preparation, they have to teach from home. Teacher competence always been measured as the quality of education itself.  What is the competency? Competencies are the skills and knowledge that enable a teacher to be succesful. To maximize student learning, teacher must have ex

Self Discipline : The Important Key to Success in Study

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surfer.com "Through Self Discipline comes Freedom" PLATO Something I've learned from the situation now days during the coronavirus pandemic is how to develop our self discipline. Especially when you have to work from home or study from home. For the lecturer or teachers like us, we have specific guidance about the materials that we would teach. We write a study plan of our subject and we prepare everything include our moods before we teach in online class. But, how about the students? Online learning gives the students flexibility to study anytime and anywhere. For university's students, they can manage their own time, and I believe they could do it better than students from elementary schools. The interesting one is, when the online classroom begun, most of them turn off the sound and video in their mobile devices.  Where are they, then? I hope they still listen to what the lecturer said in lecturing, of course while doing something else.  Well.. ok, I know every stu

Leaders and Decision Making

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"Everyday you have a choice, stay the same or change" Are you in a management or leadership position? Or, perhaps you moved from a specific technical position into a management or a leadership position. If so, you know that the higher you move in an organization, the more you experience increasingly complex decisions. You have a choice about how to process information and make decisions.  Many people think that decision-making is a result of personality rather than a strategic choice. With that said, leaders need to understand that personality can’t stand in the way of making critical corporate decisions. Successful leaders can alter their approach to decision-making to accommodate the demands of diverse business situations.  Four styles of decision-making: 1. Directive decision-making  A directive decision-maker typically works out the pros and cons of a situation based on what they already know. Directive decision-makers are very rational and have a low tolerance for ambigu

Leadership and Character

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"Character makes trust possible, and trust is the foundation of leadership" John C. Maxwell The relationship of headmaster's leadership and teacher's performance always be one of the interesting topic to explore in research. Most results of those researches claimed that headmaster's leadership affects to teacher's performance. Some researches said that teachers can do their job without any intervention or involve by headmaster. The question is, how's the management can be run well without any person in charge as a leader? How important are the functions of headmaster at school? Or there is a headmaster at school, but he has no character in leading the organization.  LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER Leadership means different things to different people around the world,  different things in different situation. For example, it could be related to community leadership, religious leadership, political leadership, and leadership of campaigning groups. Leaders help the

Warmth : One of the Basic Needs for Human Survival (Maslow's Hierarcy Needs)

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It was happened in 2015. When I was sitting on my colleague's office, we were talking about our schools, teachers and students. And suddenly three young students of Elementary School came into her office, they hug her tenderly. My colleague was Headmaster of Kindergarten School, and I was a Headmaster of Junior High School. We were working at the same Foundation. It was surprising me when I saw them hugging so close each other and I felt my heart was warming. My colleague told me that it happened every morning, before those students go to their school, which that school building just close by to our schools, they always come to her office first and hug her. I'm wondering why they do that? She said that all those students were her students in Kindergarten. Those kids told their parents that they didn't want to continue their school to Elementary School far from her. They said they will be missed her hugs. As we learnt about the basic needs of human to survive, Maslow's H

Transformational Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

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Most people have their own concept about leadership. Some people said that the leader must be someone who has a position in public services, could be government or private sectors. Actually, everyone is a leader, at least for himself. Just a simple example, every morning you decide, either you want to continue your sleep, or wake up and chase your dreams. You decide, what kind of dress you will wear today. Simply said, you are a leader.  But if we talking about an organization, leadership become more important because it involves many factors, such as professional knowledge and character.  In many situations, leaders have to make tough decisions. Especially when he/she faces difficult to implement those decisions in public. One of the reason why it becomes difficult, is because it would be give impact to others life itself. This is a challenge, and not easy to satisfy everyone at all. And somehow, the leaders have to take those risks. Some decisions he/she makes might be againts his/he

Multiple Intelligence: Every Person is Special

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At the end of school year, when the parents come to school to take the Report Book of their kids, the first question always come up in discussion between parents and the teachers or parents and parents is about "the ranking of the kids". This situation happened years after years at schools until the kids graduate from the school.  Well, it could be something to be proud of, if their kids get great achievements and for sure it will also give positive impact to the kids. Parents are happy, and the kids are happy too. But, how about the kids who couldn't achieve the scores of standard of the subjects, and they don't get any rank at the classroom? It could be the worst day for those kids, and it will be remain on their mind. Of course, it also gives impact to their mental health.  Agree, that curricula of education is given from the government, and every schools must be follow it. But there's a space to be creative in teaching all those subject. That's why it'

Study Problems and How to Deal With Them

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Study problems among the students always be an interesting topic to discussed. In general, when schools run well, the teacher can monitor their students when they are studying in the classroom. But in the emergency situation like now days in "coronavirus pandemic", when all the schools been closed for almost 3 months and the students have to study from home, the study problems been shown up and need to be solved. Such issues range from temporary glitches to chronic lack of motivation and low productivity. It can what feels like extraordinary will-power to overcome these issues, but the important thing to remember is that they can be conquered with the right attitude. Some of common problems are : 1. Low of Motivation Low motivation may be experienced either for certain subjects, or across the board. Students have to figure out what are their motivations to study. Some students don't know what is the goal or output of the subject they learnt. In this case, teacher have to

Self Defense Mechanism to Face Uncertainty

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bandiwagephotography.com "Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate"  jon bon jovi We are all agree that humankind is unique. Every single person in this world has unique style if they face the uncertainty situations. Some of my students send me personal messages said, "Ma'am.. It's really difficult times nowdays, since the virus Covid-19 spreads all over the world, and we should stay at home and study from home. We want to meet our friends in person."  Well, I understand, this situations are not easy to been through, not only for the students but also for the teacher as well.  "What do you do in this situations, if you feel get bored?", I asked them back. They said, they do their hobbies, such as cooking, reading, gardening, etc. But some of them said, they don't know what to do, seems like all the creativities are stuck on the wall. Feel anxiety and want to destroy something, such as cups