Emotional Intelligence: An Essential Life Skill

The ability of an individual to acknowledge, realize, and manage their own emotions and influence the emotions of others is known as Emotional Intelligence (EI) or Emotional Quotient (EQ). The term was coined by two researchers named Peter Salavoy and John Mayer and was later popularized by Daniel Goleman in 1996, in his book published under the same name. EQ is divided into five categories that are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Being aware of your emotions, their effects, and having confidence in your capabilities and worth is termed as self-awareness. Self-regulation is when an individual can control disruptive impulses, maintain trust in oneself, take responsibility for their performance, and can adapt to changing environments. The quality of motivation in an individual helps him to act upon opportunities and stay committed to constant striving, despite set-backs. The feeling of empathy assists in recognizing and developing the art of judging the needs of people around them. Having good interpersonal skills helps an individual to easily communicate and bond with people. EQ is the quality of managing oneself emotionally while having a positive impact on people around them.

Individuals with low EQ face challenging times while understanding, interpreting, and acting upon emotions. Often they get uncomfortable around emotional displays of others and have trouble expressing their own emotions. Having low EQ may also result in poor self-confidence in an individual. Hence, when employing, the employer needs to know about the EQ levels of the employee. Workers with higher EQ tend to work better in teams as they can easily adjust to changes and are open to communication as they value other team members’ input. Moreover, they are most likely to have leadership skills, taking responsibility for projects without any hesitation, thus helping expand the business. Whereas, an employee with lower EQ will be unable to succeed and will create a negative atmosphere among other members. With globalization, the workplace continues to grow, increasing the use of new technologies and innovations; thus, escalating the complexity of interactions and jobs. Therefore, in today’s decade, EQ is more important than it has ever been in the workplace. It has become an essential skill to look for while employing as working in the cross-cultural global atmosphere, under the pressure of understanding and solving problems, maintaining respectable relationships with colleagues and performing efficiently during office presentations, requires an emotionally stable person. Hence, an individual with high EQ, who can handle the pressure without any mental breakdown is the perfect fit for the workplace.

To measure EQ of a person a test is conducted where 50-70 is considered as low, 90-110 as average, and above 120 as high. If a person has low or average levels of EQ they can be improved over time unlike intelligence quotient (IQ). EQ can be enhanced by practicing techniques to maintain a positive attitude towards work and peers, by accepting the attitude of others and trying to be aware of how they are feeling and what they want. Developing a feeling of understanding and empathy can help improve levels. While working on refining EQ the greatest challenge a person may face will be to stay motivated as with low levels they tend to face difficulty in staying committed to a task. Hence, it is significant when working on this one should surround himself with people that have a positive influence.

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