EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

05/09/2016

Since 1995, this term has become widely known due to Daniel Goleman’s Best Seller
“Emotional Intelligence, why it can matter more that IQ” mainly based on the article of
two psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey who first offered and formulated this
concept. At that time, Emotional Intelligence was an innovative concept that set out
another and perhaps more important kind of intelligence that worked as a counterpart to
the Intelligence Quotient, unquestioned standard of excellence; both supposed to assess
human intelligence related to individual’s abilities in different fields. EI is twice as
important as IQ when determining social success and unlike IQ, it can be developed.
Emotional Intelligence refers to the process of understanding and facilitating emotions
into rational thinking while combining interpersonal skills and intrapersonal abilities of
self-knowledge. In practical terms, EI could be defined as the ability to perceive,
comprehend and control our own emotions and the emotions of others, using these
emotions to prioritize thinking, helping us to focus on the truly important things and being
a balance between the rational and emotional brain. These four skills that make up
Emotional Intelligence inform our decisions, help to predict life outcomes, contribute to
our personal growth and help us to understand others in order to build healthy
relationships during our lives.
EI refers to how well we handle ourselves and our relationships in four domains or core
skills divided into two elementary aspects: personal competence (intrapersonal skills) and
social competence (interpersonal skills). On the one hand, regarding to intrapersonal
skills; self-awareness is the capacity to understand our emotions as well as recognize their
current impact on our relationships which is a basis of good intuition, good decision-
making and also a moral compass. Self-management is the capacity to control our
emotions, handle them properly so they don’t get in the way of what we are doing and
use our self-awareness to learn from them and act positively. Self-motivation is the ability
to drive ourselves forward to improve, be productive, take initiative, achieve goals and
being optimist when pursuing our dreams persistently despite the obstacles.
On the other hand, regarding to interpersonal skills; social-awareness or empathy is the
capacity to identify emotions on others by understanding their perspective and taking into
account their needs/concerns. Social-skills or relationship-management is related to the
appropriate management of social interactions according to the awareness of your own
emotions, coupled with your comprehension of the emotions of others.
In conclusion, Emotional intelligence is essential to develop our potential as human beings
and is a determining factor that helps us to know if someone will succeed in life according
to their self-knowledge and social-awareness and how the individual takes advantage of it
when relating well to other people and accomplishing their goals.
Although “regular” intelligence has always been considered as the key of a promising
future, Emotional Intelligence plays an important role when talking about real success.
The important of EI lies in how these skills can influence our physic and mental health,
affect our relationships with others, help us resolving conflicts in an effective way and also
realize about the positive impacts that it has in our life such as improving our leadership
capacity and our chances for success making us feel motivated.
Consequently, our emotions are a basic component of the Emotional Intelligence playing a
critical role in the general quality of our personal and professional life. Therefore, we must
learn to manage them if we hope to reach for our dreams along the way.
“Our emotions need to be as educated as our intellect. It is important to know how to
feel, how to respond, and how to let life in so that it can touch you."
- Jim Rohn, American Foremost Business Philosopher
Maria Valentina Rubio Ángel.10°B