The concept of emotional intelligence has gained a lot of attention and popularity recently. While there are many definitions and ways to perceive emotional intelligence, in simple terms, it is the ability to manage the emotions of others as well as own emotions. It is also known as the Emotional Quotient or EQ.
Deep dive in emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence has become an important skill in many jobs and a person – especially in a leadership position is expected to be an emotionally intelligent person- meaning he or she can perceive, understand and manage his own emotions as well as that of others. While some people claim it to be inborn, many agree that it is a skill that can be developed over time.
The person having a high emotional quotient has also many other skills including emotional awareness, ability to understand other people’s emotions, strong interpersonal skills, reliability to handle a stressful situation or stress in general, empathy, and moderate social skills.
Every human expresses emotion in one way or another and the leader has to understand and manage the emotions expressed by his colleague and he should be able to respond appropriately. Emotional intelligence helps to relieve stress, improves dialogue, and helps to succeed at school or work.
Origins of Emotional Intelligence
The term Emotional intelligence first to have appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Baldock. In 1989 Stanley Greenspan put forward a model to describe EI, followed by another by Peter Salovey and John Mayer published in the following year. However, the term became widely known with the publication of Daniel Goleman’s book: Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ (1995).
Importance of emotional intelligence
Emotions are an important aspect of our lives – and most of the other perceived important things come second to that like wealth and fame. Being academically successful is one thing but being good with people or having empathy and a high emotional quotient is a different thing. Success cannot be measured only by the former but requires the latter as well.
The smartest person need not necessarily have a high EQ. Having a strong intelligence quotient or IQ can get you a job but it is only because of having a good EQ that you can retain a job. Being the overly emotional person on the job is also not expected and therefore a balance between emotional quotient and intelligence quotient is crucial.
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Job Performance:
Having good emotional intelligence helps you to navigate the intricacies of your career path. Emotional awareness is the ability to be aware of others’ emotions and making the best use of it for everyone is important.
Many jobs have started testing the candidates for their EQ skills. As more and more social awareness grows about the need for emotionally intelligent people grows equally. Many leadership positions now not only require technical skills or strong interpersonal skills but also good emotional abilities and the ability to manage stressful situation. Many leaders are required to undergo emotional intelligence training from time to time. Such trainings are said to improve the EQ skill as well as job satisfaction of leaders.
2. Physical and mental health
The inability to manage stress is directly linked to physical health. High stress can cause a rise in blood pressure and various heart diseases. Stress has been called a lifestyle disease and the best way to manage stress or stressful situation is to develop high emotional intelligence. This will help you in managing stress efficiently and help you become an effective leader.
Managing emotions is directly related to mental wellbeing as well. While social skills can get you in a social circle, emotional skills can help you navigate those social circles effectively. If you are uncomfortable or unable to manage your own emotions, it would be a big hurdle preventing you from getting in a social circle – thereby isolating you. Therefore EQ is necessary for managing self emotions as well as that of others.
3. Interpersonal relationships
Your relationship would be stronger if you are an emotionally intelligent person since you would be able to express yourself more clearly. Communication is the key in many interpersonal relations and the ability to communicate freely with one another can help you build better relations. This entirely depends on your emotional intelligence.
4. Social intelligence
When you have an emotional awareness of self, you are in a better position to connect with people and improve your ability to connect with other people, which is nothing but social intelligence. Social intelligence also helps to differentiate friends who mean well from people pretending to be friends. Social intelligence helps you to improve interpersonal skills, communication and thereby acts to assist you in feeling good.
How to improve emotional intelligence?
Learning about EQ skills is one thing but applying it in life or improving your emotional response is a different thing altogether. Stressful situation often breaks our ability to think and it is, therefore, necessary to train the mind to develop better emotional response and emotional abilities or in other words, make the mind strong. While many entities provide emotional intelligence training, there are few things that you can do by yourself to improve your emotional intelligence.
1. Managing Self
Managing self is crucial to making important and constructive decisions. High stress or over emotions can be overwhelming which not only clouds your judgment on important decisions but also changes your behavior.
When you are emotionally mature, you can receive criticism constructively. You will not lose your self-control or keep your cool which can be attributed to your emotional skills. You will be able to take productive decisions without getting any negative emotions.
2. Managing others’ emotion
We interact with many people every day and it is obvious that our emotions are going to cross others. Therefore, managing others’ emotions is a crucial part of having better control over your emotional reaction. The ability to manage the emotions of others is also a part of greater emotional intelligence as well as social skills.
You have to have the high emotional intelligence to ensure that when others have an outburst, you don’t react in an equal and opposite way. If someone is upset then make sure you show sympathy or empathy as necessary. Your positive emotional reaction to an outburst would show that you have greater emotional intelligence.
3. Listen and reflect
A famous saying goes, many people listen with an intent to reply rather than with an intent to understand. Whenever you are having emotional turmoil, before making a decision, listen to yourself and think. Spend some time thinking about the consequences of your action and if it would really solve the decision or simply provide you a temporary feeling of peace. An emotionally intelligent person would be able to control his negative emotion.
Conclusion:
Emotional intelligence is as important as the Intelligence quotient. Emotional intelligence is an important skill to have in every job – especially if your work involves dealing with people or colleagues. An effective leader would be considered as the one who can manage self emotions as well as people’s emotions.