Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence by Alec McPhedran

Emotional Intelligence
 
What is Emotional Intelligence? Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise your emotions, understand what they're telling you, and realise how your emotions affect people around you. Emotional intelligence also involves your perception of others: when you understand how they feel, this allows you to manage relationships more effectively. A short overview from creative sector coach and mentor Alec McPhedran.
 
Emotional Intelligence (EI) theory, also known as Emotional Quotient (EQ), is a framework for understanding how individuals perceive, manage, and utilize emotions effectively in various aspects of life. The concept of emotional intelligence was popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman in his 1995 book "Emotional Intelligence," though the idea was initially introduced by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer in 1990. Here are the key components and principles of emotional intelligence theory:
Emotional Intelligence is increasingly relevant to organizational development and developing people, because the EQ principles provide a new way to understand and assess people's behaviours, management styles, attitudes, interpersonal skills, and potential. Emotional Intelligence is an important consideration in human resources planning, job profiling, recruitment interviewing and selection, management development, customer relations and customer service, and more.

Emotional Intelligence links strongly with Multiple Intelligence theory which illustrates and measures the range of capabilities people possess, and the fact that everybody has a value.

The EQ concept argues that IQ, or conventional intelligence, is too narrow; that there are wider areas of emotional intelligence that dictate and enable how successful we are. Success requires more than IQ (Intelligence Quotient), which has tended to be the traditional measure of intelligence, ignoring essential behavioural and character elements. We've all met people who are academically brilliant and yet are socially and inter-personally inept. And we know that despite possessing a high IQ rating, success does not automatically follow.

Emotional Intelligence - Two Aspects
This is the essential premise of EQ: to be successful requires the effective awareness, control and management of one's own emotions, and those of other people. EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:

• Understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behaviour and all.
• Understanding others, and their feelings.

Emotional Intelligence - The Five Domains
Goleman identified the five 'domains' of EQ as:

1. Knowing your emotions (Self Awareness)
2. Managing your own emotions (Self Management)
3. Motivating yourself (Motivation)
4. Recognising and understanding other people's emotions (Social Awareness)
5. Managing relationships, ie., managing the emotions of others (Relationship Management)

High EI helps in understanding and managing personal relationships, fostering empathy, and effectively communicating emotions. In the workplace EI is crucial for leadership, teamwork, conflict resolution, and adaptability to change. Leaders with high EI are more likely to inspire and motivate their teams. An understanding of EI can also help with mental health as it contributes to better mental health by enabling individuals to manage stress, reduce anxiety, and cope with challenges. Finally students and learners with higher EI tend to perform better academically due to improved stress management, interpersonal relationships, and motivation.

Emotional Intelligence embraces and draws from numerous other branches of behavioural, emotional and communications theories, such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Transactional Analysis, and empathy. By developing our Emotional Intelligence in these areas and the five EQ domains we can become more productive and successful at what we do, and help others to be more productive and successful too. The process and outcomes of Emotional Intelligence development also contain many elements known to reduce stress for individuals and organizations, by decreasing conflict, improving relationships and understanding, and increasing stability, continuity and harmony.
 
Alec McPhedran Chtd Fellow CIPD, Chtd Mngr CMI, MCMI  is a recognised creative sector coach and mentor. He specialises in one to one talent coaching, facilitated learning and team development. For further information, visit www.mcphedran.co.uk.

Copyright © Alec McPhedran 2024