EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

I’ve chosen the theme of the emotional intelligence because I recognized myself in the idea
of taking care of emotions, emotions matters and it’s not something we have to take away
from our work life and workplace. The term of emotional intelligence was introduced by two
researchers Peter Salavoy and John Mayer by the end of the 20 th century who define it as “a
form of intelligence that involves the ability to control one feelings and emotions and those
of other, to distinguish between them and to use that information to guide one’s thoughts
and actions.”
Emotional intelligence is composed by four basic components.
The first is the self-awareness, which consist of being aware of your own feeling. If you know
what you are feeling, what makes you happy, what makes you upset you can better guide
your life and your actions. A high-level of self-awareness is synonym to a healthy self-
confidence where you know what’s your qualities and your defaults, you know your strength
and your weaknesses. I think it’s essential for everyone in its personal life as much as in its
work life, especially for workers under pressure. Indeed, being aware of what you are feeling
and knowing yourself can allows to avoid issues like burn-out, arguments between employer
and employee or between employees themselves because you are less control by your
emotions and more by your reason. You can identify and name your emotions; react calmly
and explain why you can do more or in contrary can’t do as much as people expect from you
and it works too when you are capable to identify other’s emotions.
If you have a true knowing of your competences, efficiency and of your feelings you can take
better decisions for yourself and in consequences for others because all decisions have
consequences mainly in teamwork where you can impact each member of the team in a
positive or negative way. Indeed, react excessively because of spontaneous emotions can be
a threat for you in your job, you can be fired, your boss can lose trust in you, your team can
be afraid on communicate with you… So, learn how develop your self-awareness appears
essential in work life and more in the management field where you must know how identify
your emotions and one’s of your team.
Then, the second component is the self-management which is the ability to control negative
emotions like fear, anger or anxiety thinking in an optimistic way even if there are obstacles
to get in the way of what needs to be done and achieve goals. An ability essential for long-
term goals where obstacles are numerous, hard to get through and where future is
complicated to plan. I think we can compare that to the positive psychology. Indeed, when
people think about their goal to achieve positively convinced that they are going to success,
they set generally higher goal and know how to work hard to achieve them. The most
important to have a good self-management is the clarity of mind and of objectives and an
organized system. Indeed, you must be able to do constructive decisions about your actions
and behaviors, if you become too much stressed and overwhelmed you can lose control of
your emotions and the ability to think right. According to me self-management allows people
to develop their self-control and find positive even in negative situations or in upsetting
information. With a vision more positive you can better take initiative, adapt the “problem”
to be a solution or not a problem anymore. Just change your point of view on a situation,
and not stick to your guns can resolve a lot of issues.
The third component of emotional intelligence is the social awareness, which is the ability to
understand others, being empathetic with people, it means that you can imagine yourself in
the situation of another person and understand what he could feel so understand a possible
reaction to it. And so, you can recognize what people are feeling without them telling you.
People with a high level of social awareness are capable to understanding different point of
views even the contrary’s and adapt themselves to very different people because they know
how to act with this or that type of person. A social awareness people observe and translate
nonverbal information and actions in emotions. To build social awareness I think you must
be socially comfortable and mindful, it means that you must be here in the moment without
any distraction to be able see even the tiniest emotional shifts taking place in other people
and help you to understand them in a better way. According to me people with a high social
awareness lose their ability to multitask which is not necessarily a bad thing but to notice
because you are focus on people’s nonverbal cues. In a certain way you must manage your
emotional changes and other’s which can help you to reinforce your self-awareness at the
same time and sometimes learn things about yourself like if you feel discomfort hearing
certain point of view or issues from other, you’ll have learned something about yourself.
Finally, the last component of emotional intelligence is the relationship management. It’s the
ability to connect with people to respond to their emotions and influence them. People with
a high relationship management skill are good listener and communicator, they use
compassion and respect to create a positive and strong relationship with others.
This component is clearly related to the social awareness and allow you to develop deeper
connections and make your relationship more effective and fulfilling.
I think that many situations can lead to it: the use of humor which can bring closer people
when they share a laugh, resolve a conflict, give feedbacks, and accept them even if they are
negative, in a constructive way can build trust between people. In my opinion this last
component means fulfillment in your job because when you can apply it you can feel fully
accomplished in all areas.