Emotionally intelligent people can be great leaders, team players. It is because they can control their emotions; they can identify others’ feelings. And they use this in their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, IQ is mostly related to academic abilities.
Embed from Getty ImagesHaving a high IQ ( Intelligence Quotient) does not mean that you will also have a high EQ ( Emotional Quotient) or Emotionally Intelligent.
According to a pioneering article by researchers at Yale University,
emotional intelligence is a subset of social intelligence. It is the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and use this to guide one’s thinking and actions
There are many blogs and research articles out there to tell you their meanings.
But for me, the crux of the matter is,
a good IQ can help you solve a hard problem, which many others can not. But with good emotional intelligence, you can find ten people who can solve this problem for you ( maybe in ten-odd ways !)
Because of the job-oriented educational environment and a lot of competition, we often neglect emotional intelligence and focus only on IQ.
However, it is equally or, in fact, more essential to focus on emotional intelligence!
What is Emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence has four main dimensions:
You can identify your own emotions
you can see clearly how your emotions are controlling your actions.
For instance, many of us do crazy things when we are angry! People talk in a high voice; they verbally abuse, and later on, they realized what they did! But by the time they would have ruined a relation! Emotionally intelligent people never do this !
You can identify what others are feeling
In other words, you have empathy.
Did you notice that you had this conversation with your friend, where your friend got bored listening to you? And you did not understand it at that moment. You could have understood it a little later or maybe after many days! Emotionally intelligent people pose empathy !
That means, while talking, you did not realize your listeners’ feelings, right?
Managing your emotions
Now, it is somewhat hard to realize. Imagine, you have woke-up early at 6 am to do your study.
Now, suddenly you start scrolling through a Facebook feed, then Instagram, then all your social accounts, spending almost an hour! Here, you could not control your urge [strong feeling], and you have wasted your efforts of waking up early!
Managing the relations
It consists of how to behave with your teachers, bosses, wives! How to be in their shoes and understand what they want to say something when they speak to you ( instead of their literal words)
How does good Emotional intelligence (EQ) help?
It helps to build up relationships
It helps you to be in a good sync with your colleagues, relatives, partners, and parents.
It keeps these relations stronger. If you will understand what others are thinking right now, and if most importantly, if you will act taking it into account, then the chances of your relations get ruined are very less.
More importantly,
It helps you to understand your feelings
It helps you to realize your current feelings.
I know, you would be feeling, what am I talking about?
Imagine, when you are very happy, you start singing songs, Or you call someone and promise her / him to give a party ! Now, please let me know, how many times you make this promise out of budget ? This happens because we do not understand and gauge the feelings we have at a time !
By now would have got a good sense of what emotional intelligence is!
Of course, there are many important questions and doubts related to the EQ as follows:
How to see if we ARE (NOT) emotionally intelligent?
Unlike IQ, can EQ be improved?
….And many more..
We will see these questions in the series of posts related to it.
Please share this information with your near and dear ones to make your relations good [an emotionally intelligent way 🙂 ] !
Superbbbbb…..
Thanks !