emotional

1. WHAT IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control, and
evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can
be learned and strengthened, while other claim it is an inborn
characteristic.
Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have been the leading
researchers on emotional intelligence. In their influential article “Emotional
Intelligence,” they defined emotional intelligence as, “the subset of social
intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others'
feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this
information to guide one's thinking and actions” (1990).
Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of
emotional intelligence: the perception of emotion, the ability reason using
emotions, the ability to understand emotion, and the ability to manage
emotions.
Facts on Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence means to be smart with feelings and examples of
emotional intelligence are:
• being able to recognize and manage your emotions appropriately
• being able to recognize and effectively deal with others’ emotions
• being able to motivate yourself and maintain successful relationships
In short, emotional intelligence is the skill of perceiving, understanding, and
effectively managing emotions like anger, happiness, anxiety, optimism,
humour, sadness, fear, shame, love. So, what does it have to do with you? A
lot.
In the business world, these examples of emotional intelligence separate top
achievers from the rest of the pack. In your personal life, they contribute in
a major way to your health and quality of life, to your happiness, to the quality
of your relationships and to living on purpose.
Believe it or not, this set of skills is the single most important factor in your
success.
In fact, research has shown that success is 80-90% attributable to
emotional intelligence (EI), and only 10-20% to cognitive intelligence (IQ) -
whether in your personal life or at work.
The studies show that there’s a special kind of smarts, which includes traits
as empathy and social skills. One of the best examples of emotional
intelligence is a charismatic CEO who inspires his employees and builds
teamwork. Or, a parent that’s an inspiring role model.
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2. What you didn't realize, is that EI or your skill of being aware of, controlling
your own emotions and managing those of others is now highly valued by
large companies all over the world. They look for "emotionally intelligent"
people to fill human resources, sales, customer service, training, and top
management positions.
Examples of emotional intelligence are looked for to predict which of two
people with a similar experience and educational background ends up being
the rising star on the leadership fast track. Nowadays, it’s commonly
accepted that in top management, a high IQ is a basic criterion, but a high
EIQ determines which one breaks away from the pack. Why?
Because emotional intelligence determines smart decision-making and the
ability to bring out the best in people - and these translate to impressive
bottom-line results.
Relationships are the way we interact every day, we need to relate with
everyone for business, work, family, love, friends and anything else. The
people that have high emotional intelligence are the ones that have better
personal relationships and can get the most out of them.
However, most people don’t know how it works or how they can put it to practice. The truth
is that it needs to be learned as any skill, you need practice until you get to the point where you
can control your emotions and understand everyone else emotions and feelings.
Can you imaging how the world would be if everyone controlled their own
feelings and understood the emotions of everyone?. Now, getting back to
reality, you might not change the world but you can change your life by
getting more business partners, better relationship, more friends and more
agreements.
Examples of Emotional Intelligence
If you are dealing with a teenager and you want get an agreement with him
you need to apply emotional intelligence, you can’t just impose your decisions, the
teenager will react against you or in defence of you and all communications will be done.
First you should not center your feelings on you, but in him, ask him how he feel, what are
his interest and how you can help him solve it. Even if you disagree with him, let him know that
you understand him and that you just want to talk and get the most for both of us.
There are other situations where for example, we created a huge and infinite
discussion where a simple problem created a hated discussion. Here is the
thing, this is a common problem, there are times when you want to make
you point across and you know that you are right, the other person might be
wrong and he is telling you his point of view.
However, if you try to impose you point of view without even thinking or taking in account his
point of view, he or she will get hurt in his proud and will want to deny your point and make his
point the only one. This will have no end, what you have to do make your point across, without
hurting his proud, that means hearing her and let her know where you agree in his point are
where she is wrong and how you can together benefit without imposing ones opinion with force.
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3. READ AND PONDER: Article on The Naked Truth About Emotional
Intelligence
Nancy came to work the other day in a pretty good mood. It ended when her
boss suddenly threw a fit over a simple typo in the first draft of a letter that
he had dictated.
Red-faced and irate, her boss flung the letter on her desk and said; “What
kind of stupidity is this, Nancy? Do you have any idea how important this
client is? I can’t afford this kind of careless mistake in my correspondence
and you know that!”
In a fit of desperation, Nancy pushed her chair back, stood up and left the
office in tears. She felt completely naked and violated. She was flooded with
anger and the pain of being belittled in front of other employees.
Does this situation feel familiar?
It is quite common for explosions and implosions to occur at work, at home,
on the road and at times when you least expect it. This kind of situation is
just one example of what of what we refer to as an example of emotional
unintelligence. And it can be a damaging, life altering event in a person’s life
that cannot be changed.
Especially when the people who are involved are those you love.
The words emotional intelligence ring a bell in most of our minds. It’s a commodity
that we’ve all yearned for without really knowing what it is or how it
develops. These days we tend to think of emotional intelligence as a set of qualities
that make us successful and popular with other people. The qualities or “hot
attributes” that we associate with emotional intelligence are; optimistic, persistent,
warm, team player, goal oriented etc. etc. It’s a good list but these qualities
are difficult to achieve and to maintain for any amount of time in the real
world and in real relationships. How does one get these qualities? There are
training courses for business people and for students to learn how to try
and be these wonderful things.
When we look closely at Nancy’s experience we can see that she was
probably most of these things when she came into work on that fateful day.
But these qualities faded fast when she was confronted with the emotional
explosion of her boss. If we buy into the idea that emotional intelligence is a
list of optimal attributes then we can understand why people give up quickly
on the grueling job of pretending that they have these shining qualities.
The bare truth about emotional intelligence is that it is more than a hot list
of admirable qualities. Emotional intelligence is a group of mental abilities
that develop over time from infancy through adulthood. These mental
abilities enable you to delay impulsive responding to strong emotional
stimuli and use your intelligent mind to cope with the situation. Emotional
intelligence doesn’t happen overnight or in a training course. In most cases
adults have to consistently work at strengthening and exercising the key
mental abilities that lead to emotional intelligence. We are all works in
progress in the domain of emotional intelligence. The mental abilities that
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4. have to be exercised and that develop from infancy are the most important
“attributes” of all in terms of coping with the constant emotional
rollercoaster of life.
The beauty of emotional intelligence lies in watching the growth of four key
abilities in the infant and young child. Before an infant can toddle around or
talk that baby will have developed skills that will, for example, empower him to
delay his impulsive responses. A milestone in this process is the infant’s
growing skills in recognizing and appreciating the importance of human face
and voice expressions. Looking at faces and listening to the tones in voices
seems like such a natural capacity. But this skill like so many others has to
be encouraged by parents and it develops into a monumental blocker of
impulses. When the child gazes at faces and listens to voices he is taking
that split second to process the emotional information.
As adults we can see how, when we take the time to look at the emotional
expressions on someone’s face and hear the emotional tone in their voice we
have that nanosecond in which to use that information before behaving or
responding.
In this distracting and anxiety-provoking world we need all the nanoseconds
we can get so that we don’t explode or implode. When we let this face and
voice recognition skill get rusty then we are more prone to lash out or cave
in when our buttons are pushed.
Emotional Intelligence in its developmental form is what we need to learn
and to teach our youngsters. There is much more to learn about the abilities
that empower emotional intelligence and a great deal of research has been
done on this subject.
DISCUSSION:
1. "Emotional Intelligence, more than any other assets is the most important
overall success factor."
2. Not only most jobs, but most relationships are lost because of low emotional intelligence.
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