Table of Contents
Introduction :
Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient or EQ is one of the most interesting fields of study in Behavioral Science / Behavioral Analysis. In total, EQ is the measurement of the ability to control your emotions and feelings and to react accordingly. Till the end of this article, you will know what are the application areas where we need to understand our EQ and implement that and also how to improve our Emotional Intelligence on a daily basis.
Emotional Intelligence can be a very important factor at
- The Workplace
- In our personal relationship
- Upbringing our child ( developing a better parent-child relationship )
- In Society with neighbors and friends
Sometimes a person’s EQ can affect or influence people present around him or meeting him on a daily basis. So, It can be a distinguishing factor to identify a person for his behavioral pattern that reflects his EQ. An individual with strong EQ ca be a good leader to motivate a team of people and increase their productivity.
What is IQ & how it is different than EQ ?
Intelligent quotient ( IQ ) or cognitive intelligence is a generic term for measuring intelligence of a person. Also, we use it on a daily basis. A simple example of IQ measurement is the marks of your GPA ( grade point average you receive on your exam ). The grades you receive in school or university exams are the measurement of IQ and this is totally different than your EQ/ EI. Generally we judge a person by his / her IQ score but that person may not be a very productive when it comes to perform under certain environment under certain pressure. So, we really need to understand his EI/ EQ level at the same time.
5 Structural Components of Emotional Intelligence
There are five components we must know to better understand what is emotional intelligence.
Self Awareness
This is the first component of Emotional Intelligence and in this component, we try to understand what our emotions are. This is a basic building block that makes us aware of our emotions and the effect it can cause to use and our surroundings.
Self Regulation
Self-regulation is the next advanced component that tells us how to manage and regulate your emotions. e.g. you have already understood how do you react and what is your EQ and then this step helps us to control our emotions.
So, think before you say or do something to someone knowing the possible outcome and thereby you can possibly avoid it if it will not be in your favor.
Motivation
Motivation is always an important factor that makes someone work harder. There can be different motivational factors. A very common one is materialistic achievements e.g. money, car, relationship, house, etc. Overall these are external factors.
Some times people get motivated by internal factors e.g. you are motivated by some incidents in your family that are is driving you to do some work therefore It is related to your inner peace or self-realization. This has nothing to do with materialistic achievement. Sometimes motivational factors can be related to spiritual or social causes ( for the betterment of the society ).
Empathy
This component is mainly responsible to understand how other people feel or react to situations. So, basically you put yourself in their shoes and understand the situation and develop a sense of how other people are going through mentally.
Social Skills
This involves your ability to build social skills and the way you carry yourself socially and communicates your self with people in society and this is one of the most important factors to distinguish your EQ from others.
Understanding your emotions is very important and If you don’t understand your emotions and control them then that leads to many mental health problems such as chronic anxiety, depression, etc.
For more info on mental health-related disorders, check my other blog on Anxiety and how did I handle it. Also, you can check this Website on Psychology which I generally recommend. In severe cases, please do contact a Professional Psychologist. So, it’s very important to figure out how to improve our Emotional Intelligence on a day-to-day basis.
4 Dimensions of Emotional Intelligence
The Founding members of Emotional Intelligence have decided that EQ / EI has different dimensions. They fall into four different categories.
- Perceiving emotions
- Facilitating thoughts using emotions
- Understand the Emotion
- Manage the Emotion
Perceiving Emotions
In this dimension, we basically understand our emotions and also try to understand the emotional & mental state of others and how others are reacting to certain emotions.
Facilitating thoughts using emotions
In this process we need to prioritize our feelings based on our thoughts driven by our emotions and make decisions. So by doing this, we can make better decisions and better judgement.
Understand the Emotion
This dimension involves different complex parts of the emotions, understanding the relationship between these emotions. The causes of the emotions to occur and the consequences. Also to understand contradictory emotions and their relations.
Manage the Emotion
This involves managing the emotions in a sense experimenting by attaching and detaching with and from emotional states for yourself and others as well.
Use of Emotional Intelligence
Now the question that may come in your mind is ” What is the use of Emotional Intelligence? “ There are many actually. EI/ EQ is used as a tool in the Industry ( in the human resource department specifically ) to figure out how efficient a candidate is or fit for a particular role in the organization.
Based on that the company will select or eliminate or assign him the right kind of work he/she will be comfortable with. Eventually, this will help the person to perform better and help to improve the overall productivity of the company. it has been observed that a person with certain combinations of emotional capacity can perform a certain work better than other people.
EI/EQ is a primary factor to identify the leadership quality of a person working in the company. It helps to impove
- Team Building Capacity
- Interpersonal Communication Skill
- Conflict Resolution
- Increase more involvement
- Reduce Negative Mindset while working
These are primary factors to motivate a person to work hard and EQ/ EI is a tool that helps leaders to connect with their team members easily and helps to increase their productivity at workplace.