Emotional Intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is a set of emotional and social skills that collectively determine how well we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, overcome challenges, and use emotional information in effective and meaningful ways. In general, it is a predictor of success in life and work.

In order for managers to attract and retain employees that are "understood in EI," they must engage and explore EI for themselves. It provides them with tools for assessing symbiotic coefficients and a knowledge platform with which to measure the adequacy of individuals in areas such as social responsibility, self-expression, empathy and decision-making for the workforce.

Building emotional skills is important for understanding your own feelings and adapting to the feelings of others. If you are accustomed to such feelings, you can use your understanding to improve your own performance and to manage and sustain the performance of others (if you have a leadership or supervisory role).

To better understand your emotional abilities, you must first become acquainted with the four main components of emotional intelligence.

1) Self-awareness

It is considered the foundation of all other components of emotional intelligence. Confidence means being aware of how you feel. Be aware of inner emotions.

People who are in touch with their emotions can better organize their own lives. Team members need to get in touch with their emotions in order to interact effectively and evaluate the emotions of others.

People with high self-esteem learn to trust their "hunches" and recognize that these feelings can provide useful information for making difficult decisions. The answer is not always clear about who is to blame when problems arise. In this situation, team members have to rely on their own feelings and intuition.

2) Self-management

It is the second key component of emotional intelligence in emotional management. Operationally, this means team members must be able to balance their own moods so fear, worry, fear, or anger doesn't interfere with what needs to be done.

Those who can control their emotions do better because they can think clearly. Dealing with emotions does not mean suppressing or denying them, but understanding them and using that understanding to deal with situations productively. Team members must first identify a mood or feeling, think about what it means and how it affects them, and then decide how to act.

3) Social awareness

Being socially aware means understanding how to respond to different social situations and effectively changing how you interact with others for the best results.

It also means being aware of the world around you and how different environments affect people. To increase social awareness, you need to improve your ability to connect with other people verbally, non-verbally, and in the community.

4) relationship management

The final component of emotional intelligence is the ability to connect with others, build positive relationships, respond to other people's emotions, and influence others on the team.

Relationship management involves identifying, analyzing, and managing relationships with people inside and outside of your team and developing them. It is also important for successful negotiations, conflict resolution, and working with others to achieve common goals.

Reference:

Hinds, J. (2017). Emotional intelligence: Do you know the four basic components? [online] HRZone. Available at: https://www.hrzone.com/perform/people/emotional-intelligence-do-you-know-the-four-basic-components.[Accessed on 23 May 2021].