What Is Emotional Intelligence?
You may have heard that emotional intelligence is important to be successful for people in management positions. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, control, and evaluate emotions. Some experts suggest that emotional intelligence can be more important than IQ in your overall success in life.
Components of Emotional Intelligence
There are four different levels of emotional intelligence:
Perceiving Emotions
The first step to understanding emotions is to perceive them accurately. In many cases, this will involve understanding nonverbal signals such as body language and facial expressions.
Reasoning With Emotions
The next step is to use emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. Emotions help prioritize what we pay attention to and react to.
Understanding Emotions
Observed emotions may have a variety of meanings. The observer must understand these emotions and what they could mean. The emotion may not be directed by work but from personal circumstances.
Managing Emotions
The ability to manage emotions effectively is a crucial part of emotional intelligence. Regulating and responding to the emotions of others is an important aspect of emotional management.
Impact of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence plays a big role in today’s society, especially with the emergence of social media. In recent years there has been an increased interest in teaching and learning social and emotional intelligence in recent years. The goal is not only to improve health and well-being but also to help students succeed academically and prevent bullying.
Empathy For Others
A large part of emotional intelligence is being able to think and empathize with how other people are feeling. This often involves considering how you would respond if you were in the same situation. Individuals with strong emotional intelligence can consider the perspectives, experiences, and emotions of other people and use this information to explain why people behave the way that they do.
Greater Self-Awareness
Emotionally intelligent people not only can think about how other people are feeling but they also understand their feelings.
Thinking Before Reacting
Emotionally Intelligent people know that emotions can be powerful but also temporary. After a highly emotional event, an individual often reacts straight away. The emotionally intelligent response would be to take some time before responding which will allow everyone to calm their emotions and think more rationally.
Summary
Our society is moving toward a technological society full of numbers, data, and output. As social human beings, we must continue to learn and teach emotional intelligence especially as society has social pressures such as social media. We all can grow and be more aware of each other’s emotions and how to best respond to those emotions. There are several ways to improve emotional intelligence. Here are some tips.
Listen
The first step is to listen and pay attention to others. Take time to listen to what people are trying to tell you, both verbally and non-verbally. Body language can show a lot about what an individual is feeling. Once you get a sense that someone is feeling a certain way you can consider different factors that might contribute to that emotion.
Empathize
Noticing emotions is important but you will also need to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to fully understand how they feel. Imagine how would you feel in their situation.
Reflect
Being able to reason with emotions plays an important of emotional intelligence. Considering how your emotions influence your decisions and behaviours.