Emotional intelligence, also known as EQ, has gathered much attention in the last decade. I am witnessing the discussions have evolved from why Emotional Intelligence is crucial to ways of improving it. More and more companies and educational institutions are investing in educating and training their people on emotional intelligence.
For those who are less familiar, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use and manage your own emotions in a positive way. Emotional Quotient (EQ) measures emotional intelligence, just like Intelligence Quotient (IQ) measures intellectual intelligence.
Daniel Goleman popularized EQ as a concept through this book Emotional Intelligence published in 1995. This book introduced a bold concept when people saw IQ as the only measure of success and pride.
My understanding of EQ:
When I was in my mid-twenties, I started working in a new country, adapting to a pretty different culture from my native culture. With my low self-esteem inherited from my past and high emotional sensitivity, I found it hard to hide my feelings at work.
When someone shared a sad story or a challenging experience, I struggled to keep my tears from showing. I often felt embarrassed by this, especially in a male-dominated workplace in a client-facing role.
I wanted to address my sensitivity as I felt incapable of regulating and controlling my emotions.
When I researched about this, I stumbled upon this book on Emotional Intelligence. I read the book, and it blew me away!
My first big takeaway from the book was that emotions are not meant to be suppressed, hidden or controlled, contradicting my belief. I learned that EQ is about managing emotions and responding in ways that worked for me. To manage emotions, I first needed to understand them, allow them to be felt and then express them safely.
My second takeaway was that it had many components relating to awareness of self and others. When I finished the book, I realized that I already had high EQ and that I just needed to work on some of them that seemed to be a challenge. I was instantly sold in EQ and took it to my heart to keep improving and spreading awareness to others on this topic.
Components of EQ:
Based on Daniel Goleman’s model, there are 5 key domains of Emotional intelligence which determines your overall EQ level. This model helped me understand the specific domains that I was weak at and develop strategies to improve on them. I hope you can learn something about your own EQ level!
Self-awareness:
This domain of EQ determines how well is your own emotional awareness. Many times, we are unable to pinpoint how we are feeling in the moment. We often rush to suppress any feeling of discomfort or negativity by distracting ourselves through a sensory experience. Do you remember the last time you switched on Netflix because you had a stressful day? Or when you reached out to your favourite chocolate ice cream because you are feeling a bit down?
Most of us have trained ourselves to ignore the anger, frustration, or irritation we feel, hoping it will go away. Instead, these negative emotions brushed under the carpet become mountains over time, waiting to erupt anytime!
I am not suggesting sinking into that emotion fully and remain there in the doom and gloom. Instead, I encourage you to recognize and acknowledge those unpleasant emotions and find a safe outlet to express them. The intentional release of emotions might save you from an unexpected blow-out in the least expected moment.
I believe accurate self-awareness is the first step in identifying my pitfalls and addressing them through intentional action. As a result, I find that my self-confidence increases.
You might be interested to read about Secret to knowing yourself better.
Self-Management:
Self-management is the art of managing our emotions to best serve us, depending on the situation. Often our negative emotions push us to irrational behaviour even before we could take a moment to think about it.
Your self-management factors in these points:
- How much can you keep your disruptive emotions in check
- How well do you maintain your standards of honesty and integrity
- How flexible you are in handling changes
- How much do you take responsibility for personal performance
- How comfortable you are with your novel ideas, approaches and new information
Motivation:
Motivation is the emotional drive that facilitates achieving a goal and standard of excellence. A level of commitment is required to align your personal goals with the organization’s goals that you work for.
Motivation also includes your readiness level to act on opportunities. It is also essential to have optimism that measures how persistent you are in pursuing your goals despite the challenges and setbacks you face.
I see motivation as a critical source of energy that feeds into the other domains of Emotional intelligence. In my view, it serves as a motor to keep anyone moving forward, even if it is to address and improve your Emotional Intelligence.
Self-awareness, self-management and motivation are considered as Intra-personal skills as they delved into the parts within individuals.
Social Awareness:
Social skills are the ability to induce desirable responses from others. Even with the mastery of intra-personal skills, as social beings, we need to communicate outwards. Interpersonal skills help us to live as a community build on inter-dependence.
According to Goleman, social awareness is consists of the following abilities:
- Ability to persuade others with the right tactics
- Ability to openly listen and send convincing messages to others
- Ability to negotiate and resolve conflicts
- Ability to inspire and guide individuals and groups
- Ability to Initiate and manage change
Relationship Management:
When you act on social awareness, you can effectively manage the external relationship. Empathy is vital in evoking understanding of other’s feelings, needs and concerns. To work on others needs, we need to sense them first and take an active interest in their world.
In a community, for example, working in an organization or institution, it becomes crucial to anticipate, recognize and meet customer’s needs. It is also essential to harness diversity by taking active action to work with different kinds of people. Managing relationship also includes political savviness by reading a group’s emotional state and power relationships.
Find out more about What kind of intelligence do you have?
Reflections:
Now lets reflect on your EQ!
- Can you name some of the most emotionally intelligent people that you know?
- What makes them different from others?
- What EQ domains are you strong in?
- Which domain/s can you improve upon to get a better experience of life?
