“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
Daniel Goleman
Introduction
The Greek philosopher Aristotle had a recipe for handling relationships smoothly: “Be angry with right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way”. Psychologist Peter Salovey and John Mayer call such self-control emotional intelligence, the ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions (Salovey & Mayer,1977).
Being able to recognise, understand and regulate one’s own emotion as well as those of others can be defined as Emotional Intelligence. In contrast to common belief, emotional intelligence includes the following skills: emotional awareness, a capacity to recognise and mark one’s own emotion; emotional management, ability to regulate one’s own emotions when needed and contributes other’s in doing the same; and emotional harnessing, capacity to use emotions to perform cognitive task.
Theory of emotional intelligence by Peter Salovey and Jhon D. Mayer in 1990s, Daniel Goleman expanded and popularised the concept of emotional intelligence.
American psychologist Daniel Goleman has created a structure with five elements to describe emotional intelligence.
Self-Awareness
One critical emotional intelligence skill is self-awareness, an ability to acknowledge and realize your own emotions. It also consists of being conscious about the effect of your actions, attitudes and behaviour on other individuals. On the basis of good intuition and decision-making, guiding one in organically making the right choices in all aspects of life. Knowing about one’s own KPI’s, i.e. strengths & weaknesses.
Self Regulation
EI skills don’t mean to putting your emotions in a lockup and suppressing one’s true emotions. The trick to self-regulation is knowing when and how to express your feelings. Strong capacity for self-regulation is typically associated with high conscientiousness. They accept accountability for their own acts and are considerate of how they affect other people.
Motivation
Third element, motivation is personal drive focused on improving and achieving, commitment to one’s goals, readiness to act on opportunities with optimism and resilience.
High emotional intelligence generates highly motivated individuals, who can stay focused on long term task in order to give desired results.
Empathy
Ability to validate and understand the emotions or viewpoint of others, even if doesn’t match with yours is known as Empathy. Being an empathetic person allows us to understand the dynamic which can determine social relationships. It is a key interpersonal skill, the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see the situation from their perspective.
Social Skills
Emotional understanding doesn’t confide to just understanding your own emotions &those of others. One must be able to put this knowledge into the real-life settings with interacting and communicating in routine life. Social skills such as verbal & nonverbal communication skills, active listening, supportive nature and many more, helps in building a meaningful relationships or bond with others and develops a strong understanding of them as well as yourself.
Why EI is Important?
Research by Stevens in 2019 [1] has concluded that students whose EI is higher are generally more happy, outgoing and self-confident with better handling of stress.
EI offers a framework for applying intelligence to emotional reactions along with comprehending these responses with rationality or irrationality, it can guide us towards a happy and fulfilled life. People possessing such skills can have number of positive effects in their life, such as:
- Developing a connection with oneself and gaining self-knowledge.
- Being good at communication, as EI helps us to understand oneself with others in an effective way.
- Chronic stress or prolonged negative effects which comes with anger, depression and anxiety can recognize the onset or progression of it in context of somatic disorders such as hypertension, heart attack, diabetes and what not.
- Developing many positive traits such as resilience, motivation and communication, social skills etc.
- Some researches’ have shown that individual with higher EI has reported greater wellbeing and high optimal psychological functioning.
PSYCHOMETRIC TEST TO MEASURE EI/EQ
- The Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 (EQ-i-2.0)
- The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)
- Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I)
- Emotional and Social competence Inventory (ESCI) (Boyatzis and Goleman, 2007)
- Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEI Que) (Petrides and Furnham, 2001)
Take Away Message
Emotional Intelligence helps you to understand and navigate your emotions in order to achieve a better connection with oneself as well as with others. It allows to build self-confidence and motivation in order to create a positive impact onto oneself and have better social interactions. Individuals with higher levels of EI are less likely to yield negative impacts of stressors but will be effectively proven to deal with it while promoting positive emotions. It contributes in reaching self-actualization. It is an extremely helpful skill set that keeps decision-making from being influenced by emotional biases.
References
- Exploring The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Stress Among Students at a Small, Private College, (Contemporary Issues in Education Research – Fourth Quarter 2019)
