| Emotional intelligence, also known
as EI, is the innate ability of a person to perceive, assess, and influence
one's own emotion and the emotions of other people around them. The term
emotional intelligence itself originated with Dr. Wayne Payne 1985, but the
term became popular with the book Emotional Intelligence, written by Daniel
Goldman in 1995.
Studies in the early 1990's by John Mayer and Peter Salovey came up with
a working model of emotional intelligence that defined it as the capacity to
understand and to reason with emotions. In their analysis, Mayer and Salovey,
broke emotional intelligence down into four parts:
1. Self Awareness: the ability and need to understand your own emotions,
knowing what those emotions are, and acknowledging those feelings. 2. Need
Management: that is the ability to handle emotions in a mature way that is
relevant to the present situation.
3. Self Motivation: the ability to remain focused on a goal despite your
level of self-doubt and impulsiveness.
4. Empathy: the ability to tune into the feelings of others and
effectively understanding them pretty much the same way as they understand
themselves.
5. Managing relationships: the ability to handle conflict negotiations
and third party mediations.
Why is emotional intelligence important?
Despite the fact that emotional intelligence lacks the volume of
quantitative empirical cognitive research that IQ has, the research in the
field of cognitive learning has suggested that emotional intelligence is a
key fundamental aspect of learning. According to a report published by the
National Center for Clinical Infant Programs, the level of success that a
student has learning new material boils down to their individual levels of
confidence, self-control, curiosity, their ability to communicate, their
cooperativeness, their elatedness and their intentionality. All these traits
are aspects of emotional intelligence.
More recently social scientists are beginning to uncover the relationship
of emotional intelligence to other organizational psychologies, such as
leadership, group performance, individual performance, interpersonal
exchange, performance evaluations, and change management. Humans are social
beings and as such our level of success when dealing with people is
intimately linked with our level of emotional intelligence.
Improving your level of emotional intelligence
Researches and scientists see the intelligence quotient, also known as
I.Q., as fixed, meaning that it does not change throughout ones lifetime.
E.I. differs greatly from I.Q. in that E.I. can be improved through a
combination of life experience, maturity, conscious thought, and
perseverance. You can improve your level of emotional intelligence by doing
the following:
1. Think back to the most recent time you can think of when you had hurt
somebody's feelings and analyze what your reactions were at the time and
analyze what you said that inflicted emotional pain on the other person. Try
to put yourself in the other person's shoes and empathize with them and
their feelings as you said these words. In this drill, you will effectively
increase your understanding of empathy thereby increasing your level of
emotional intelligence as a result.
2. Instead of finding fault with others, develop a mindset of positive
thoughts and try to seek positive solutions on a given problem. Remember
that everyone you deal with is human and as humans we make mistakes. Also by
being human we have the ability to learn from our mistakes and by creating a
positive attitude we can effectively coach other people and ourselves to
move forward instead of blaming other people or events for mistakes.
3. Realize that in order to succeed in the game called life, it becomes
necessary to have a high level of interpersonal communication with those
around you. You are, for the most part, helpless without other people to
help you along the way. By better understanding their emotional needs you
will be able to communicate with them more effectively and more accurately
thus paving the way to your own personal success.
In conclusion, emotional intelligence is one's ability to understand
their own emotions and also the emotions of the people that are around them.
The emotionally intelligent person makes each day of their life a lesson in
emotional intelligence and it is their goal to increase their level if
emotional intelligence each day as they communicate with other people around
them and themselves.
About the Author
Tristan Loo is the Founder of the Synergy Institute, a Personal
Development Firm based out of San Diego. Tristan is a former police officer,
personal development coach, conflict negotiator, and author.
Visit the Synergy Institute Website
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