ABSTRACT

This document is intended to provide a critical

discussion about the “emotional intelligence” and
answer the questions where in organizations it is
especially relevant, and why? How can we become
more emotionally intelligent?

Vusal Babayev
Leadership & Organizational Behavior

EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE
What? Where? Why? How?

Word count:

1475 excluding references

This page is intentionally left blank.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Cambridge Dictionary defines Emotional Intelligence (EI) as the ability to understand the way
people feel and react and to use this skill to make good judgments and to avoid or solve problems.
Although this definition does not explain what EI is, it gives some idea of what it is about. Let’s
analyze and understand the definition. Firstly, it is an ability meaning that it can be learned and
improved like any other skill that human beings possess. Not everyone is born with strong
emotional intelligence skills, people learn to be more emotionally intelligent by reading about it
and experiencing it. Moreover, understanding the way people feel and react is the next phase of
the definition. It seems easy to apply this part when reading it, but it is not. To understand another
person’s feelings, one must listen to what he/she is talking about and show empathy. The final part
of the definition says that this skill can be used to make good judgments and solve problems. What
this definition lacks to say is that emotionally intelligent people are able to understand their own
emotions in the first place. Only then, they can understand others’ emotions and manage those
people’s feelings. Therefore, the Emotional Quotient has become as important as Intelligence
Quotient (IQ). This skill enables leaders to lead and motivate their followers.

History of the term

The term first appeared to be researched in the 1930s, as “social intelligence” by Edward
Throndike. He described it as the ability to get along with other people. David Wechsler proposed
in the 1940s that the components of affective intelligence may be crucial for our success in life. In
the 1950s, Abraham Maslow talked about how people can build emotional strength. In 1985,
Wayne Payne introduces the term emotional intelligence in his doctoral dissertation entitled "A
study of emotion: developing emotional intelligence; self-integration; relating to fear, pain and
desire (theory, the structure of reality, problem-solving, contraction/expansion, tuning in/coming
out/letting go)." The two names that come to mind when talking about this concept – Peter Salovey
and John Mayer published an article about the concept named “Emotional Intelligence” in the
journal “Imagination, Cognition and Personality” in 1990. Finally, one of the contributors of the
concept – Daniel Goleman popularized the term after 1995 by publishing a book about it. The New
York Times science writer named the book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More
Than IQ”. (S. Virkus, 2009).

Components of EI
According to Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist who had a great contribution to the
popularization of the term “Emotional Intelligence”, the concept has five main essential
components:
• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Social skills
• Empathy
• Motivation
Self-awareness
Self-awareness means that an emotionally intelligent person first must start learning his/her own
emotions. Besides knowing his own emotions, one must also recognize how his emotions make an
impact on others. Becoming self-aware requires paying attention to each emotion that a person
experiences in particular and taking things slow.

Self-regulation
This term expresses the ability to manage one’s own emotions. These components of emotional
intelligence represent a consecutive series of events because without being aware of one’s
emotions, it is impossible to manage them. Managing means using emotions at the right time and
in the right place. At the end of the day, it is us that choose how to react to certain situations.
Emotional people understand this matter and react based on it. It is not about faking the emotions,
rather it is about using them appropriately.

Social skills
Social interaction is another crucial part of emotional intelligence since the hypocenter of emotions
is the people and if one can’t get along good with others, it seems hard to improve emotional
intelligence in that person.

Empathy
In my opinion, empathy is the most important element of emotional intelligence. Empathy is the
ability to understand others’ feelings and showing them that you understand their emotions. People
who have strong empathy can build relationships faster than those who do not have. For example,
if a coworker feels sad and another coworker shows empathy and a little bit of care, the relationship
between them gets stronger.
Motivation
Goleman suggests motivation as the last component of emotional intelligence and he mainly talks
about intrinsic motivation here. That is because emotionally intelligent people do not seek external
motivators, such as money, promotion, rewards, etc. Rather, they have a high need for achievement
and their intrinsic motivation comes from that need. Those people always search for ways to satisfy
themselves by achieving a personal milestone.

Where is emotional intelligence relevant in organizations?

Emotional intelligence has become a hot topic after the 90s as mentioned above. However, it has
been around since the start of businesses, it just has not been named. It applies to every department
in modern businesses. By modern business, I mean the organization has a clear structure, the
decisions are not completely made centralized and the level of transparency in the organization is
high. The first place that emotional intelligence relevant is the first step that a person puts on the
organization – the interview process. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of hiring managers surveyed by
Career Builder in 2011 said they valued an employee’s EQ over their IQ. A further three-quarter
(75%) said they would be more likely to promote an employee with high emotional intelligence.
More than half (59%) said they wouldn’t hire a candidate with a high IQ and low EQ. These facts
show how important emotional intelligence has become in the interview process because
employers understand that emotional intelligence is an important skill in the whole development
of the organization. It has a positive effect on organizational culture because it enables coworkers
to build strong teams. Strong teams mean a strong organization which is the whole purpose of the
Human Resources departments over the businesses.
Another application of emotional intelligence in organizations can be seen in a boss-employee
relationship. Perhaps, it would not be correct to limit this only to the boss-employee relationship,
more like the relationship between any two people of an organization. If a department head has a
high EQ, then it will be easy for him to create an agile team who will be able to reach the
organization’s goals.

How can we become more emotionally intelligent?

As Goleman suggests, focusing on the five components of EI will make us more emotionally
intelligent people. Let’s look at how each component can be improved. Firstly, self-awareness.
Journaling is one method to improve it because when someone writes about himself daily, when
reading that journal, he looks at himself from another perspective and it is important to look at
oneself from another point of view to improve self-awareness. Another method to improve EQ is
to be open to feedback and critique because it also offers information about oneself from another
perspective. Knowing our values will also help us become more emotionally intelligent because
when making big decisions our values will show us the way to make the correct decision.
Moreover, self-regulation can be improved by practicing observing the process of emotion. When
experiencing specific emotion questions should be asked, such as why it is happening and how can
I control it.
Improving empathy is a challenging task but it is possible to achieve it. Firstly, we have to put
ourselves in somebody else’s position and try to understand that person. Active listening skills are
important to be more empathic because if the opposing side does not see that we are listening to
them, it will demotivate them to talk to us. Not only the words that a person is telling tell us about
him but also the body language, therefore it is quite significant to analyze body language in order
to fully understand one’s feelings and emotions.
Last but not least, social skills must be improved to be more emotionally intelligent.
Communication skills are coming to light when discussing social skills. Above all, we have to
know how well we communicate with others and to test this, there exist many quizzes and tests
about communication skills. Another way is simply to talk to our friends or family to give feedback
to us about our communication skills. However, objectivity is the key here and our friends and
family may tend to hide some of the negative feedback about us. Thus, the online tests would be
more objective. Practice is the best teacher that could teach us how to communicate.
 References:

BillT, & Midgie. (n.d.). Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Learning How to Be More Aware.

Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_45.htm.

Cherry, K. (2019, April 3). 5 Key Components of Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved from

https://www.verywellmind.com/components-of-emotional-intelligence-2795438.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved

from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/emotional-intelligence.

Goleman, D. (2006). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.

Grasz, J. (2011). Seventy-One Percent of Employers Say They Value Emotional Intelligence over

IQ, According to CareerBuilder Survey. Retrieved from

https://www.careerbuilder.ca/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?id=pr652&sd=8/18/2011&e

d=8/18/2099.