What's Emotional intelligence and Why It's Important

February 15, 2021 by Sina

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) vs. Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

EQ refers to a person's ability to process, understand and express thoughts and emotions. Having a good level of EQ will result in being able to relate to others and communicate in a more effective way being able to focus at will and think about what you choose to think rather than your mind wandering about stuff randomly.

EQ can be thought of as an individual’s abilities to be:

Self-Aware: encompassing our own knowledge of ourselves, and being able to both recognise and understand ourselves, our behaviours, and our emotions.

Self-Manage and Self-Regulate: encompassing our ability to be in control of our emotions, and therefore our responses.

Self-Motivated: encompassing our internal resources to be driven, perform, act, and reach towards goals.

Empathic: encompassing our ability to understand and ‘feel for’ others, understand their emotion, and therefore relate to them more effectively.

Relational: encompassing our ability to build and maintain relationships, network, lead, manage conflict and work with others.

How Is EQ Different To IQ?

IQ shows how fast and how good is your brain at intellectual abilities such as problem solving, reasoning and logic. However its a way of measurement is very narrow which makes it prone to criticism.

EQ shows how good your soft skills are, such as communication, understanding and expressing your thoughts and emotions and being able to control them.

Previously it was thought that the brain was fairly static once we stopped growing therefore our IQ was assumed to be static as well. Today we know that in the same way we can train the muscles in our body, we can train and change our brain. When it comes to EQ, it's not something that you're born with, you can develop it because it's a set of skills. As with any skill we can train our Emotional Intelligence skills. If you think you have low EQ, its not the end of the world - with a little discipline and practice you can improve your skills.

You need to have a brilliant IQ to be a good engineer, but to be a leader of engineers, your EQ matters more than your IQ. IQ is the intellectual ability to manage ideas, knowledge and thoughts. EQ is the ability to manage relationships with other people.

Why Is EQ Important?

EQ is Important because it will make you a more productive and enables you to build more productive relationships around you. Emotional Intelligence helps us to understand who we are, and how it impacts every facet of our lives, most notably the workplace.

Your work life and career can be hugely affected by your EQ. Workplaces, in the main, are relational environments. They are typically a melting pot of different personalities, skills, strengths, and emotions. In amongst this is the purpose of the business.

Therefore, EQ is intricately melded into each and every decision and action within the workplace. It’s there in the basic instruction to your team, just as much as it’s present in mass organisational change. Therefore, those with higher EQ typically successfully navigate the workplace more effectively. EQ enables an individual to build and drive successful teams and to be agile and responsive as needed. They, therefore, are successful.

Similarly, a lower level of EQ can be detrimental to the workplace. At its worst, it can be seen in bullying, harassment, and demotivated staff. It can present as insensitivity, arrogance, or even aggression and volatility. Whereas a high EQ will facilitate flexibility, low EQ will typically present as inflexibility and rigidity – a dangerous tack for any business.

How Can I Develop My EQ?

1. Attention Training

Paying attention to what's going on in the body leads to more understanding of emotion. The body is the easiest way for most people to access their emotions. We can train our attention to pay more and more close awareness to the mind, body and emotions. This training cultivates a clear, calm and alert mind.

2. Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery

With an attentive mind, we are able to see what's going on for us internally. We grow more knowledge of who we are, and how we engage in any particular situation. And from knowledge comes mastery e.g. "Oh I know what happens when I get angry - I know the intensity of it and how to regulate it"

3. Creating Useful Mental Habits