Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can be defined as managing and using emotions efficiently to ensure effective communication, resolving conflicts, relieving stress, empathising with others, overcoming emotional challenges in life. It helps in connecting with inner feelings and turning them into meaningful actions. Emotional intelligence can be beneficial in building stable and reliable relationships, achieving specific goals, and attaining overall success in life. 

Emotional intelligence is defined by four attributes: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. These attributes define the emotional presence and help individuals react to a situation in a balanced manner. In fact, intelligence quotient is not enough to succeed in life, emotional quotient is also an essential part of the process as both aspects are complementary.

Types of Emotional Intelligence

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence acts as the foundation of a stable personality and is valuable for various situations, activities, and professions. It helps individuals control their emotions while facing different problems.As per experts, emotional intelligence can be categorised into 18 types, perceiving emotion, self-awareness, knowledge of results, using emotions, empathy, self-control, unaffectedness, persuasion, understanding emotion, motivation, influencing emotions, social norms, social skills, storytelling, leadership, emotional creativity, cultural capital, and relationship building.

Perceiving emotion is the refined ability to perceive the slight hints that indicate a person’s feeling. Self-awareness is the ability to explore and understand your own emotions, character and feelings regarding a situation or a person. It is more about knowing yourself as an individual. Knowledge of results is the ability to self-evaluate the outcome of your communications with others. Using emotion is the ability to leverage emotional aspects to achieve specific goals, like thinking positive to improving motivation. The capability to control emotion by productively directing its flow is known as self-control. Empathy shows how much you can share others’ emotions and connect with them; for example, feeling genuinely happy on the promotion of a co-worker. Unaffectedness is the capability to hold feelings uptight and not react when facing difficulty or when the situation does not require any sort of involvement. It is essential to understand a particular emotion and then use it to resolve any dispute; for example, if a customer is angry about a rule, they think illogical, then the rationale behind the rule should be explained calmly to influence their emotions positively.

Persuasion also influences emotions, but emotions are used to persuade people calmly or with an argument. Motivation is a crucial emotion that helps people overcome challenging situations and keep them going to achieve their goals. Social norms are unwritten rules which guide us to stop wherever necessary, like when people get annoyed; they start to look around to find an excuse. Looking around is a social norm which acts as an indication to move away from that person. Social skills and cultural capital help in maintaining a healthy relationship with neighbours, family, and society; for instance, celebrating different festivals together. An advertisement that you can connect to is a perfect example of emotional creativity and storytelling; it helps you connect to certain characters portrayed in the specific medium. The ability to get support and influence related to emotion is the leadership emotion when a leader conveys his feelings like freedom. The sentiment of liberty with which others can connect gains followers’ leadership emotion. Establishing a relationship is an essential aspect of emotional intelligence. It helps in building a stable relationship that supports understanding. Creating a sustainable relationship with friends, family, and co-workers is an example of establishing a connection.

Impact of Emotional Intelligence

In 1990, two psychologists, John Mayer and Peter Salovey, published their article, “Emotional Intelligence,” in a journal, “Imagination, Cognition, and Personality”. They were the first to define emotional intelligence as one’s ability to monitor their own and others’ feelings and emotions, discriminate among them and use this information to guide one’s action and thinking. Emotional intelligence can affect lives in various ways. If you cannot manage your emotions, you are likely to face stress and thereby inviting multiple issues like high blood pressure and heart problems. Emotional intelligence has a significant impact on the physical as well as mental health; the more you worry, the more likely you are to feel mentally unwell and depressed, causing hormonal imbalance. Once the hormonal balance is lost, the body faces severe stress, causing physical issues. Emotional intelligence has a significant impact on professional life; you may never build any professional or personal relationship if you are emotionally weak and not invested. By understanding the innate emotions and controlling them, you can better express yourself and understand others’ feelings. This helps us communicate more efficiently and forge stronger relationships, both at work and in our personal lives.

Improving Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is essential for individuals as well as social identity. You can improve emotional intelligence with some effort. You can understand anyone’s feelings by paying attention to them and listening both verbally and non-verbally. Body language speaks a lot about an individual. You should put yourself in others’ shoes to understand their emotions; you must empathise as it nurtures and builds long-term solid relationships. You may feel emotions but cannot reflect it in your actions; thus, no one will understand your sentiment. The feelings must be reflected in your activities to empathise with others or bond with others. If you have low emotional intelligence, it affects your personal and professional lives. Many emotional intelligence books have discussed the majors and minors of emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman’s books titled “Emotional Intelligence” and “Working with Emotional Intelligence” are some of the finest books on emotional intelligence.

Conclusion

The skill of emotional intelligence can be learnt at any phase of life, but it is essential to apply that knowledge in life. It helps in connecting with inner feelings and turning them into actions. It can be beneficial for building loyal relationships, achieving specific goals, and succeeding in life. Various emotional intelligence books describe emotional intelligence in different ways and how we can enrich our emotional intelligence to build strong personal and professional relations and be invested in them for the long term. It is essential that they are reflected and well absorbed in actions to understand emotional intelligence.