What is emotional intelligence or EQ?
Emotional intelligence (otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ) is the
ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to
relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome
challenges and defuse conflict. Emotional intelligence helps you build stronger
relationships, succeed at school and work, and achieve your career and personal
goals. It can also help you to connect with your feelings, turn intention into action,
and make informed decisions about what matters most to you.
Emotional intelligence is commonly defined by four attributes:
1. Self-management – You’re able to control impulsive feelings and
behaviors, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow
through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances.
2. Self-awareness – You recognize your own emotions and how they
affect your thoughts and behavior. You know your strengths and
weaknesses, and have self-confidence.
3. Social awareness – You have empathy. You can understand the
emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, pick up on emotional
cues, feel comfortable socially, and recognize the power dynamics in a
group or organization.
4. Relationship management – You know how to develop and maintain
good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others,
work well in a team, and manage conflict.
Why is emotional intelligence so important?
As we know, it’s not the smartest people who are the most successful or the
most fulfilled in life. You probably know people who are academically brilliant and
yet are socially inept and unsuccessful at work or in their personal relationships.
Intellectual ability or your intelligence quotient (IQ) isn’t enough on its own to
achieve success in life. Yes, your IQ can help you get into college, but it’s your
EQ that will help you manage the stress and emotions when facing your final
exams. IQ and EQ exist in tandem and are most effective when they build off one
another.
Emotional intelligence affects:
Your performance at school or work. High emotional intelligence can help you
navigate the social complexities of the workplace, lead and motivate others, and
excel in your career. In fact, when it comes to gauging important job candidates,
many companies now rate emotional intelligence as important as technical ability
and employ EQ testing before hiring.
Your physical health. If you’re unable to manage your emotions, you are
probably not managing your stress either. This can lead to serious health
problems. Uncontrolled stress raises blood pressure, suppresses the immune
system, increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes, contributes to infertility,
and speeds up the aging process. The first step to improving emotional
intelligence is to learn how to manage stress.
Your mental health. Uncontrolled emotions and stress can also impact your
mental health, making you vulnerable to anxiety and depression. If you are
unable to understand, get comfortable with, or manage your emotions, you’ll also
struggle to form strong relationships. This in turn can leave you feeling lonely and
isolated and further exacerbate any mental health problems.
[Read: Building Better Mental Health]
Your relationships. By understanding your emotions and how to control them,
you’re better able to express how you feel and understand how others are
feeling. This allows you to communicate more effectively and forge stronger
relationships, both at work and in your personal life.
Your social intelligence. Being in tune with your emotions serves a social
purpose, connecting you to other people and the world around you. Social
intelligence enables you to recognize friend from foe, measure another person’s
interest in you, reduce stress, balance your nervous system through social
communication, and feel loved and happy.
Building emotional intelligence: Four key skills to increasing
your EQ
The skills that make up emotional intelligence can be learned at any time.
However, it’s important to remember that there is a difference between simply
learning about EQ and applying that knowledge to your life. Just because you
know you should do something doesn’t mean you will—especially when you
become overwhelmed by stress, which can override your best intentions. In order
to permanently change behavior in ways that stand up under pressure, you need
to learn how to overcome stress in the moment, and in your relationships, in
order to remain emotionally aware.
The key skills for building your EQ and improving your ability to manage
emotions and connect with others are:
1. Self-management
2. Self-awareness
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
Building emotional intelligence, key skill 1: Self-management
In order for you to engage your EQ, you must be able use your emotions to make
constructive decisions about your behavior. When you become overly stressed,
you can lose control of your emotions and the ability to act thoughtfully and
appropriately.
Think about a time when stress has overwhelmed you. Was it easy to think
clearly or make a rational decision? Probably not. When you become overly
stressed, your ability to both think clearly and accurately assess emotions—your
own and other people’s—becomes compromised.
[Read: Stress Management]
Emotions are important pieces of information that tell you about yourself and
others, but in the face of stress that takes us out of our comfort zone, we can
become overwhelmed and lose control of ourselves. With the ability to manage
stress and stay emotionally present, you can learn to receive upsetting
information without letting it override your thoughts and self-control. You’ll be
able to make choices that allow you to control impulsive feelings and behaviors,
manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow through on
commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances.
Key skill 2: Self-awareness
Managing stress is just the first step to building emotional intelligence. The
science of attachment indicates that your current emotional experience is likely a
reflection of your early life experience. Your ability to manage core feelings such
as anger, sadness, fear, and joy often depends on the quality and consistency of
your early life emotional experiences. If your primary caretaker as an infant
understood and valued your emotions, it’s likely your emotions have become
valuable assets in adult life. But, if your emotional experiences as an infant were
confusing, threatening or painful, it’s likely you’ve tried to distance yourself from
your emotions.
But being able to connect to your emotions—having a moment-to-moment
connection with your changing emotional experience—is the key to
understanding how emotion influences your thoughts and actions.
Do you experience feelings that flow, encountering one emotion after another
as your experiences change from moment to moment?
Are your emotions accompanied by physical sensations that you
experience in places like your stomach, throat, or chest?
Do you experience individual feelings and emotions, such as anger,
sadness, fear, and joy, each of which is evident in subtle facial expressions?
Can you experience intense feelings that are strong enough to capture both
your attention and that of others?
Do you pay attention to your emotions? Do they factor into your decision
making?
If any of these experiences are unfamiliar, you may have “turned down” or
“turned off” your emotions. In order to build EQ—and become emotionally
healthy—you must reconnect to your core emotions, accept them, and become
comfortable with them. You can achieve this through the practice of mindfulness.
[Listen: Mindful Breathing Meditation]
Mindfulness is the practice of purposely focusing your attention on the present
moment—and without judgment. The cultivation of mindfulness has roots in
Buddhism, but most religions include some type of similar prayer or meditation
technique. Mindfulness helps shift your preoccupation with thought toward an
appreciation of the moment, your physical and emotional sensations, and brings
a larger perspective on life. Mindfulness calms and focuses you, making you
more self-aware in the process.
Developing emotional awareness
It’s important that you learn how to manage stress first, so you’ll feel more
comfortable reconnecting to strong or unpleasant emotions and changing how
you experience and respond to your feelings. You can develop your emotional
awareness by using HelpGuide’s free Emotional Intelligence Toolkit.
Key skill 3: Social awareness
Social awareness enables you to recognize and interpret the mainly nonverbal
cues others are constantly using to communicate with you. These cues let you
know how others are really feeling, how their emotional state is changing from
moment to moment, and what’s truly important to them.
[Read: Effective Communication]
When groups of people send out similar nonverbal cues, you’re able to read and
understand the power dynamics and shared emotional experiences of the group.
In short, you’re empathetic and socially comfortable.
