Reading 1

Emotional intelligence
Adapted by:
Mr. Javier Beltrán González.
Mr. Antonio Cesar Jiménez Rodríguez.

This reading describes the way how our brain works and how important it is to
decide when and how to react to different circumstances when faced with the other
members of society.

Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist, defines "emotional intelligence" as a

combination of skills including self-control, emotional control, persistence and the
ability to self motivate.

Intelligence always deals with the relationship between emotion, character and
moral instincts. Being able, for example, to restrain the emotional impulse: to
interpret the other's innermost feelings, manage relationships in a fluid, in the
words of Aristotle, the rare ability to "get angry with the right person at the right
intensity, in the right time for the right reason and the right way".

However it is noteworthy that pure intelligence does not guarantee good

management of events that arise and that must be addressed to succeed in life.
On the other hand we make the difference that academic intelligence has little to
do with emotional life, for even the smartest people can be found on the shoals of
unbridled passions and unruly impulses.

There are many other factors as the ability to self- motivate and persist whenever
we face disappointments, impulse control, mood regulation, prevention of
disorders, impair the ability of thinking, empathy, etc.., Which is a different kind of
intelligence and rational that most significantly influence performance in life.

The concept of "emotional intelligence" highlights the dominant role exercised by

the actions within the psychological functioning of a person, when it is faced with
difficult times and important tasks such as: the dangers, painful loss, persisting
toward a goal despite of failures, taking risks, among others. In all these
circumstances there is an emotion that may be involved in an action that
culminates successfully or causes a negative impact on the final performance.
Each of our emotions provides a definite arrangement to our action, so the
emotional repertoire of each of the people and their way of acting decisively
influence the success or failure we obtain in many tasks.

This skill set of socio-emotional is what Goleman defined as Emotional Intelligence.

This can be divided into two areas:

Intra-personal Intelligence: The ability to form a realistic and accurate model of

oneself, to have access to our own feelings, and use them as guides in our
behavior.
Interpersonal intelligence: The ability to understand others, to know what
motivates them, to understand how they operate, also the ability to recognize and
to react to the mood, temperament and emotions of others.

This raises two major issues that are of paramount importance:

A) Apparently there is another intelligence, as well, as we all know, and we have
always related it to the recognition and management of ideas.

B) Emotional intelligence is related, however, to the knowledge and management

of emotions. Moreover, the term "emotional intelligence" is due to the contrast
between the spheres suggests rational and affective, or between "the brain and
heart."

It is believed that the correct way is when we reason coldly, and when we are
angry or upset we cannot reason properly, so intelligence and emotion are
incompatible. However, to Goleman, emotional intelligence and emotions are
reconcilable, as far as they can reach an equilibrium where intelligence is not
carried away by emotions but by contrast, emotions can be controlled and
channeled properly to achieve effective results.

As Goleman points out, that the concept of intelligence as we all know, is usually
not enough to succeed in life, but only 20% of the factors involved, determine
success, while the remaining 80% depends on other factors related to what is
known as "Emotional intelligence" from those factors follow five main qualities (self-
awareness, balance, mood, motivation, impulse control and sociability).

As Goleman remarks, these qualities can be established as follows:

1) Self-awareness. It is the ability to recognize one's own feelings, emotions

or moods. We know that emotions have varying degrees of intensity; some
are intense enough to realize them consciously, while others are below
conscious perception. For example, if a person is afraid of snakes and
someone shows him a photograph of one of these reptiles, he will probably
 claim he is not afraid, but the sensors that are placed on his skin, or
perspiration detect a clear sign of anxiety.
2) Mental Balance. It is the ability to control our bad temper to avoid
deleterious effects, in terms of understanding these undesirable behaviors,
a clear example of this is “anger”.
3) Motivation. It is the ability to induce our emotions and positive moods,
such as trust, enthusiasm and optimism. This means, attributing failure to
the situation not to ourselves and encourage ourselves to make new
attempts.
4) Impulse control. Goleman defines this quality of emotional intelligence as
the ability to postpone the fulfillment of a desire for the sake of a goal.
5) Sociability. The four above qualities are related to the knowledge and
control of emotions, sociability has to do with the knowledge and control of
emotions and moods in relation to others.

About these five qualities mentioned above, Goleman says that the more skilled we
are to interpret our and other’s emotional cues, we will have a better control of
what we transmit. The concept raised by Goleman, is similar to social intelligence
in the theory of Weschler, which he describes as the ability to establish links with
others.

For example, a professional who has great knowledge about his content and a
high IQ, but he cannot relate to others, his chances to succeed will be greatly
diminished, so we must put into perspective the idea “knowledge is power” and
he’d rather understand knowledge as a simple theoretical tool, but not really
effective without understanding the emotional field.

A. As Goleman mentions five aspects of emotional intelligence.

A. - Knowing one's emotions. It refers to being aware of oneself, to
recognize the feeling while it is happening. The ability to notice the real
feelings, to symbolize them and name them correctly, is a key factor of
emotional intelligence.
B. - Managing emotions. Managing one's own feelings and their
appropriate expression is a skill that follows recognition of emotions.
Basically this has to do with learning to have a certain emotional distance
from the emotions resulting from failures as irritability, anxiety and
melancholy.
C- Intrinsic motivation. This means self-mastery and self-motivation, it is
allowing long-term goals, face the tasks with a level of emotional fluidity,
harmony and freedom from anxiety facilitating greater efficiency in the
performance, e.g. when people are motivated, they enjoy what they do,
their productivity increases and establish healthy interpersonal contacts.
 D. Recognizing emotions in others. This is empathy or the ability to
connect with the needs and feelings of others, it is a fundamental skill in
people. People who achieve this ability have huge advantages to function
successfully in personal and professional life, because they establish
personal contacts of cooperation and understanding with others.

E. Managing relationships. This refers to social competence,

interpersonal effectiveness, good management of communications. These
are skills that enable leadership, group management and popularity, having
skills in interpersonal relationships as the last aspect of emotional
intelligence.

Unlike the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), with almost one hundred years of history and
studies of hundreds of people, the concept of emotional intelligence is new. Still
cannot say exactly to what extent it explains the variability from one person to
another in the course of a lifetime. But existing data suggests it may be as powerful
and sometimes more than IQ and while some argue that IQ cannot be changed;
emotions can be modeled over time. And it is proven that emotions are important
when assessing the intelligence of people.

Knowledge of one's emotions is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence as well

as Socrates considered the "know thyself." Brain-activation requires the neocortex
(Part higher in the cerebral cortex) in the areas of language, as evidence of
alexithymia (neurological disorder involving the inability of the person to identify
their own emotions and, therefore, the inability to give them verbal expression)
discovered by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Peter Sifneos in 1972.

In summary, although the emotional brain circuits may react with feelings, the
neocortex is not able to select those feelings and add the nuance of language.
Goleman mentions that errors are initiated on the differences between the world of
women and men, the emotional roots of these differences can be resumed to
children, and emotional worlds they live in separated men and women while grow.

Leslie Brody and Judith Hall, summarized research on the differences in the
emotions of both sexes, suggests that while women develop the facility with
respect to language more quickly than men, women are more adept at expressing
their feelings and more able than men to use words that explore and decrease
emotional reactions such as physical fights, in contrast, it describes that men, for
which the verbalization of the impact is less emphasized, they may be quite
unaware of their emotional states.

The key difference between the sexes: men are proud of their autonomy and
inflexible independence, while women are considered part of a network of
relationships, in a way, men and women always want and expect different things
from a conversation; men are comfortable just talking about things, while women
seek emotional connection.

It is for this reason that obviously lacking in the newly divorced couples, are the
attempts by both, to reduce stress during a dispute, the presence or absence of
ways to repair a disagreement is a crucial difference between disputes of couples
who have a healthy marriage and those that eventually end in divorce.

As in the theory of systems, the term feedback refers to the exchange of data
about a part of a system is working, taking into account that a part affects all the
others that belong to the system, so any part, can of course be changed in a
positive sense. For this reason not only about solving problems in a couple, but
also at work if either party is not designed for the same purpose at any moment it
has to be separated for various reasons. Without ignoring that criticism could be as
useful as any feedback, it should point out a way to correct the problem.
Otherwise, it turns the receiver frustrated, demoralized and unmotivated.

All the critical circumstances can open the door to possibilities and alternatives that
the person did not realize existed, or simply sensitize the deficiencies that need
attention, but should include suggestions on how to deal with these problems. As
Levinson says, “There are emotional responses for anyone who is criticized, one of
them is considering as valuable information on how to do things better, instead of
taking it as a personal attack, another is waiting for the drive toward defensiveness
instead of assuming the responsibility”. But here again the skills of emotional
intelligence provide a useful advantage, especially because they provide the social
gift of knowing or not when and how to express productively against prejudice, this
feedback should be hidden with all the elegance of an effective critique so that it
can be heard without defensiveness, if everyone does this, it is more likely that
incidents disappear.

As Drucker points out, when talking about work of knowledge "unit of work means
teams, rather than the individual himself." This indicates why emotional intelligence
and the skills that help people to live in harmony, should be increasingly
appreciated in work as an advantage in the coming years.
Whenever people gather to work there is a very real sense in which they have an
IQ group, the sum of the talents and skills of all involved and enhanced, the
efficiency in which they work will be determined by how high is their IQ. The single
most important element in group intelligence, not IQ, in the academic sense, but
rather in terms of emotional intelligence. The key to a high group IQ is social
harmony.

This ability to harmonize a group will be particularly talented, productive and

satisfying. While others made up of members whose talents and abilities are
different should play poorly. To all this we must add that the positive or negative
feelings influence the performance of people, for example, if a person walks in a
foul mood and hurts himself, his stress level will increase causing an imbalance in
his body making his recovery more difficult, yet if you have positive feelings it
increases your productivity and if you work with a contagious enthusiasm , to the
rest of your teammates, it should be noted that the quality of relationships between
people could be the key to relieving stress.

Various techniques such as, relaxation and yoga to treat these conditions by
helping people, improving their disturbing feelings such as anger, anxiety,
depression, pessimism and loneliness. Emotional intelligence is a way of
preventing any disease, given that the data shows the toxicity of these emotions,
when chronic, are at the same level as the habit of smoking, helping people to
cope better with them could pose health as big as a reward to get smokers to
abandon the habit.

Big problems are developed and transmitted to the children without parents
realizing the error. For example: when a child is playing, parents are always
watching what they do and the slightest error involved, they state what they believe
is right, this only hinder the child's performance emerging contradictory orders
which causes the child not to have decisions for himself as he is always
subordinated to the decisions of his parents, instilling some fundamental emotional
messages in his life.

Some parents lose authority when they are not patient with the behavior of their
children, raise their voice and even reach the level of giving pretty nasty epithets, it
is better to be patient with the mistakes of the children and help them resolve any
circumstance, likewise the impact of this type of parenting is extremely deep which
makes the children get along better, feeling loved and less tense about them,
making them perform better in managing their own emotions, they are happy when
it is time to calm down when upset. Let’s consider seven key ingredients of this
crucial skill, all related to emotional intelligence.

1. Trust, the child feels that he most likely will not fail in what is proposed,
and that adults are friendly.
2. Curiosity, a sense that finding things is a good thing and leads to
pleasure.
3. Intentionality, the desire and ability to make an impact and act on it with
persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, to be effective.
4. Self-control, the ability to modulate and control their own actions in
ways appropriated to the age, a sense of internal control.
5. Relationship, the ability to commit with others based on the feeling of
being understood and understanding others.
6. Communication skills, the desire and ability to verbally exchange
ideas, feelings and concepts with others, this is related to a sense of trust in
others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults.
7. Cooperativity, the ability to balance their own needs with those of others
in a group activity.
Having these abilities or not depends largely on the parents, the emotional learning
begins in the first moments of their lives and continue throughout childhood, all
these little exchanges with parents and children have an emotional subtext and
with the repetition of these messages over the years children form the core of their
abilities and their emotional conception.
This is the way how temperament is forged. Which can be defined in terms of
humor that typifies our emotional life, to some extent each of us possesses a wide
emotional range, we bring temperament from birth , it is part of our genetic lottery
having a pressing force in the development of life. However it should be noted that
there are two types of people, shy and happy, the shy people are prone to fear,
born with a neurochemistry that makes this circuit is easily excited and so avoid the
unknown, they keep away from the uncertainty and they suffer anxiety. While
happy people with his nervous system calibrated with a much higher threshold for
excitation of the amygdale, are less easily frightened, are naturally sociable and
feel more willing to explore new places and meeting new people.

The human brain is not fully formed in any way at the time of birth, it continues
modeling itself along lifetime, and its higher growth occurs during childhood.
Children are born with many more neurons of the brain that those it will retain when
mature. Through a process called "pruning" the brain actually loses the neuronal
connections less used and forms strong connections in those synaptic circuits that
have been used. In all species, human beings take longer to reach full brain
maturity, while each area of the brain develops at different rates during childhood,
puberty marks the beginning of the most radical stages in the pruning brain,
emotional management habits that repeat again and again during childhood,
become a crucial opportunity to shape the emotional tendencies of a lifetime,
habits acquired in childhood are installed on the lattice basic synaptic neural
architecture and are more difficult to change in later years.
One of the most essential lessons, learned in early years of life and refined
throughout childhood is how to calm down yourself when one is angry, no doubt,
the art of calming down is dominated only after many years and with new media,
while brain maturation offers the child the emotional tools which are increasingly
being elaborated.
Clearly, the key skills of emotional intelligence have critical periods extending over
several years in childhood; each period represents an opportunity to help that child
to adopt beneficial emotional habits, or else to be more difficult to offer remedial
lessons in later years. Obviously brain plasticity continues throughout life, although
not to the extent to that spectacular way it has during childhood. Every learning is
a change in the brain, a strengthening in the synaptic connection.
Human relationships are a key point which include learning to listen and ask the
right questions, to be positive rather than being angry or passive, learning the art of
cooperation, conflict resolution and commitment to the negotiation. Also there are
different ways that emotional education is introduced in school life and it is helping
teachers to reflect on how to discipline students who misbehave and put their skills
on the right track as this is the right time to teach children. -Control of impulses,
explanation of their feelings, conflict resolution. For example, a teacher sees three
students pushing for first entering the room, you can suggest them to say a number
and the winner gets to the front of the line to enter the dining room. The immediate
lesson is that there are fair and just different ways to fix these little skirmishes,
while the deepest teaches that disputes can be negotiated.
As the child changes and grows, their specific problems do in parallel. This is
called emotional growth and it is grooved with related lines of development,
especially for knowledge, on the one hand and maturation on the other, besides
the emotional capacities such as empathy and emotional self-regulation begin in
childhood.
The years of kindergarten, marked a peak of maturity of the social emotions,
feelings, as insecurity, humility, jealousy, envy, pride and confidence, -all of which
require the ability to compare themselves to others.
This is the age that having an older sister who gets better grades can be converted
to another daughter to be "silly" for ratings and comparisons, being socially
responsible in the right way, maintain control of one's emotions, and have an
optimistic attitude, in other words, to have emotional intelligence.
There are many advantages to students when they have an emotional education, .
e.g. they have a better emotional self-awareness, they have a better management
of emotions, there is a productive use of emotions, empathy (interpretation of the
emotions), management personal relationships. Beyond these educational
benefits, the courses seem to help children more effectively to fulfill their roles in
life, becoming better friends, students, sons and daughters, and with the future
possibility of being better husbands and wives, workers and employers, parents
and citizens. Until all the boys and girls are sure to get these teachings, we must
make efforts so that it occurs. "A rising tide pushes all boats," summarizes Tim
Shriver. "Those who benefit from these skills are not only problems but all boys,
are a vaccine for life."
"We need to control ourselves, our appetites, our passions, to do good to others,"
says Thomas Lickona, writing about character education. "It takes will to keep the
excitement under the control of reason."

Being able to put aside the focus on oneself, and to control impulses, provides
social benefits, rewards the way to empathy; listening attentively, to be in the
place of others. Empathy, as noted earlier, leads to interest, altruism, and
comparison.

As Etzioni points out, "Schools have a central role in character building by instilling
self-discipline and empathy, which in turn allows the assumption of genuine
commitment to civic and moral values.”

Today. changes are rapidly occurring, it should be noted that young people are not
prepared to avoid conflicts and one of the reasons for the lack of this basic skill
life is, of course, that this society has not worked to ensure that all children have
the education that provides the essential tools in anger management or the
positive solution of conflicts, it has not taught empathy, impulse control, or any of
the foundations of emotional competence. Or simply we are still venturing to
address these issues from the main nucleus which is the family, and school
teachers are preparing for the management of emotional intelligence, so much
remains to be done to get better results in young, and are more adept at making
decisions in a real problem.

"The enthusiasm and positive

Imagination are the fuel
of the willpower. "
Paul C. Jagot