Emotional Intelligence – What is it? How to use it in the best possible way?

It is rightly said about emotional intelligence that:

‘’Feeling so very deeply, is a blessing and a curse too.’’

Maybe you think emotions have nothing to do with intelligence. If yes then rethink it. Because when intelligence combines with emotions, you can see magic.

Emotions drive our behaviors and impact people around us positively as well as negatively. Identification and management of these emotions is the real art of life. It is a way to learn the secrets of this amazing art.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Peter Savoy & John Mayer created the term emotional intelligence and you can also term it as EI or EQ.  Emotional Intelligence is defined as:

The recognition, understanding, and management of own emotions and the emotions of others is called EI or EQ.

It is the ability to controlled properly the particular emotions especially when a person is under pressure. But here the question arises when we need to manage Emotional Intelligence?

Difference Between IQ and EQ:

IQ is the score a person gets from several standardized tests. These tests are specially designed for measuring the intelligence of a person. Moreover, people with high IQ scores can make easy mental connections and tend to think in a very abstract manner.

While EQ is the capability of a person to manage the emotions of their own and others as well. Undoubtedly, EQ is the key skill to achieve success in the personal and professional lives of everyone. It is a fact that being intelligent is very important but it is also important to be equipped with the weapon of success i.e. Emotional Intelligence.

Management of Emotional Intelligence:

We need it when:

• We don’t have enough resources
• Have to deal with challenging relationships
• Need and receive feedback
• Have to deal with change
• Need to face fears and setbacks
• Want to meet the tight deadline

Some lucky people inherit high EI naturally but everyone can practice and develop the skill of EQ. When a person practices emotionally intelligent behavior their brain eventually adapts these behaviors as automatic programming. Moreover, it also replaces the inappropriate behaviors.

Why do we need to be concerned about Emotional Intelligence?

Actually, in the early years of our life, no one teaches us about the things that matter. We never get proper knowledge of how to become emotionally sound.  Rather than this, we learn to improve general intelligence. But according to the latest research psychologists found that the overall intelligence quotient is directly related to our emotional intelligence.

Features of Emotional Intelligence:

Daniel Goleman explained five fundamental features of EQ with their benefits:

1.     Self-Awareness:

It is an ability that helps to recognize a person his/her strengths, weaknesses, actions, emotions, limitations, and how all these things affect the other people around them.

Benefits of self-awareness:

Self-awareness helps a person to handle positive feedback more effectively and increases the likelihood of that person. When a person knows better about their strengths and weaknesses they can improve their image, organizational performance, and other important decision-making tasks of life. So, why won’t anyone won’t want to do it? Thus, all you need is emotional intelligence.

2.     Self-Regulation:

Wise management of emotions and impulses is something you can get by self-regulation. Restraining certain emotions according to a particular situation is the aim of self-regulation. For example, in certain pressure situations, it’s better to stay calm, quiet, and ignorant. Rather than shouting, fighting, and getting panicked. What do you say?

Benefits of self-regulation:

Self-regulation helps to adapt to the necessary changes in life. Moreover, it helps a person to react rationally and allows earning trust and respect of people around you.

3.     Self-Motivation:

This feature encourages a person to be contented. Self-motivation supports people to enjoy what they do and what they have and encourages them to work hard passionately to achieve their goals in life. Additionally, it also helps them not being motivated by money and status.

Benefits of self-motivation:

Self-motivation keeps people strong and motivated even in difficulties and facing setbacks. Increase the self-confidence of a person and decreases the probability of procrastinating.

4.     Social Skills:

Social skills are the most necessary factors to manage personal and professional relationships. They help a person to interact with other people in a society, help them to find ways to become successful in an organization. Moreover, it can also make you famous within friends.

Benefits of social skills:

If a person efficiently interacts with others he/she would be able to understand the problems and issues of others and effort more progressively to solve their issues. The presence of a person with good social skills creates a positive environment that supports others to feel comfortable and progressive.

5.     Empathy:

Empathy is simply about imagining own self in someone else’s situations. Being empathetic means a person can understand or identify other situations and positions. Moreover, it provides a person with awareness of how an individual feels and why a person behaves weirdly in a situation.

Benefits of Empathy:

Empathy helps a person to fit their feet in other’s shoes to understand the situations and conditions a person is suffering from. Empathy connects people more closely as they can feel the pain of others and constructs a progressive society.

Is Emotional Intelligence important?

At this point a very important question arises:

Why emotional intelligence is important?

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a kind of framework that leads us on the path of a happy and fulfilled life. Moreover, applying the standards of emotional intelligence to the emotional responses helps to understand their logical consistency or inconsistency with believes a person has about emotions. So, all of us can make our living standards even higher and better.

As a manager of an organization or a leader, it is a must to understand your personality and the personalities of people around you. This is a perfect way to form a better team. So, definitely you won’t like to miss such an initiative.

Benefits of Emotional Intelligence:

Being emotionally sound is helpful in many ways. The benefits of EQ can be discussed in three major categories:

A.     Professional performance:

For jobs of all kinds, the technical skills and intelligent quotient are important but emotional intelligence is two times more important than these factors.

• As an employee of an organization you have to know that it was IQ that got you a job but only the EQ will get you promoted.
• By controlling personal emotions and using better words a person gets more fruitful results out of negotiation talks with a client, co-worker, or business partner
• Being emotionally intelligent a person can figure out who is in stress at their workplace surroundings and how to relieve their stress to help them or making their organizational performance more productive.
• Only an emotionally intelligent individual can predict about the future conversation even before talking to the person. A person with emotional intelligence can easily judge the mood of another person and then plans things most effectively.
• Through emotional intelligence, it is easy to understand things clearly. And it is also possible to modify the behavior of others or even their own. These skills are fundamental in an organization to create a progressive environment.
• Emotional intelligence improves leadership abilities and molds a leader to take criticism positively.
• It ensures people to be a good listener and helps to stay and keep calm and cool even in pressure.
• EQ insists to admit and learn from the mistakes and also helps to cut down the major ego issues during teamwork.

B.     Personal Relationships:

There is a very strong connection between personal relationships and EQ. Emotional intelligence promotes consistent and positive relationships in both children and adults. Being more aware of various human emotions it is sure that an emotional intelligent will not say or does something hurtful in the heat of emotional situations.

And in case of being at the receiving end, an emotionally intelligent person understands the mental condition and emotions of another person. He/she tries to neutralize the situation more effectively. So, the overall impact is a better personal relation.

C.     Health:

In one line it can be explained as:

Higher stress is correlated with lower emotional intelligence and loneliness while higher emotional intelligence is responsible for better relationships and lower stress levels. This condition actually promotes:

• Improved cardiovascular health
• Strong immune system
• Good wound-healing
• Controlled sugar level
• And, better mental health with minimum anxiety and depression

How to develop Emotional Intelligence:

IQ always remains constant throughout life but EQ can be developed, improve, and honed over time. You just need to use some techniques to develop emotional intelligence. There are three ways to develop, implement, and enhance emotional intelligence.

• Tapping into the emotions
• Connect with people
• Put EQ for practical use

Tapping into the emotions:

• Initially note down your emotional reactions about what you experience throughout the day. But acknowledgment of feelings about experiences is also necessary to improve EI. Ignoring personal feelings is about the ignorance of important information that impacts your emotions and sets the way you behave. Moreover, it is essential to pay proper attention to inner feelings and connect them to their experiences.
• Additionally, mind and body are interrelated and they affect each other. For building EQ it is important to read physical cues. They help you to understand the emotions a person feels. For example, stress or depression feels like heavy or quick breathing, the knot in the stomach, or tight chest and nerves. Another step is to understand the connection between emotions and behavior. It is essential to recognize the actual scenario that spurs behavioral impulses.
• Moreover, every emotion is valid in some way even negative emotions also. If you want to use your emotions positively, never try to judge your emotions. Ability to feel and understand personal emotions are a form of intelligence. Consider every single emotion as a part of a jigsaw puzzle that completes the whole picture of your personality.
• Furthermore, try to compose personal emotional history to understand your emotional pattern. It will surely help you to control your emotions according to particular situations and will increase EQ.
• After following all the above-mentioned techniques now practice deciding how you have to behave. Avoid escapist habits otherwise, your EQ will begin to suffer.

Connect with people:

• The first thing you need to do is be open-minded. Open-mind is the indication of higher EQ. Such a person can easily deal with the conflicts in a calm and relaxed manner by internal reflection. So, connection with people can give you drastic results.
• The next thing is the improvement of empathy skills. Be a more active listener and try to understand others’ conditions by putting yourself in the same situation. When you would be able to understand their circumstances. Then it will surely help you to improve your relationships and this is the sign of high EQ.
• Similarly, read the body language of other people and also pay attention to the impact you leave on others. Understanding others’ emotions help you to deal with them positively and effectively while knowing your impact on others helps you to make them comfortable and relax with you during a conversation.
• In addition, being emotionally honest is a way to improve EQ. It also allows you to understand youself even better. But you must need to control your emotions at a certain level. Otherwise your honesty and openness with your emotions may hurt others.

Use EQ in daily routine:

• There is always some space for improvement. You try to find your room for improvement to increase EQ.
• Similarly, practice your EQ skills in the areas of self-awareness, self-management. Moreover, relationship management and social awareness are some other important areas.
• Be light-hearted at home and your workplace. Additionally, try to throw away the negativity out of your life because it decreases EQ. Add ingredients of fun, humor, and happiness in the pie of your life. And all this will end up in an emotionally strong and intelligent human being.

Conclusion:

This single article is not enough to understand the vast field of emotional intelligence. It is just like touching the tip of an iceberg. There is a lot more beneath the surface. Indeed, emotional intelligence is an integral part of our lives. But we hardly notice. It is the most effective way to improve quality of life, interpersonal relationships, and working behavior.

Do share your thoughts about emotional intelligence and how you understand it. So, that we can learn from each other.