The Building Block of Emotional Intelligence

A Deep Understanding of Emotional Intelligence

Intelligence, in general, is the ability to learn new concepts and apply the knowledge acquired in different life aspects, and so Emotional Intelligence is similar. Emotional Intelligence “EI”, also known as Emotional Quotient “EQ”, is the ability to recognize, use, express and control one’s emotions, and the ability to understand and respond to others’ emotions. So, it is a set of skills and behaviors that allows you to improve areas of your life like home, work, school, social life, etc.

Regardless that EI can be naturally obtained, it can also be learned, developed, and enhanced, thus learning about yourself and applying that wisdom to the world around you. People with high EI are associated with an array of benefits, from improved mental health to communicating effectively, sympathizing with others, overcoming obstacles, reducing stress, developing stronger relationships, achieving success on personal and professional levels, and making wise decisions.

It is essential to mention that there are a number of different assessments that have emerged to help people measure the levels of their emotional intelligence.

5 Core Characteristics of Emotional Intelligence

After the American Psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman popularized the term Emotional Intelligence, he shed the light on EI’s 5 main characteristics that play a critical role in everyone’s life and which we sometimes overlook. So here, we are going to discuss each characteristic explicitly.

Self-awareness: is the basis of EI, in which people become aware of how their emotions and actions affect themselves and others, especially that emotions impact our behaviors, mood, interactions, and performance. This allows people to accept their strengths, weaknesses, desires, and flaws.

Self-regulation: after people become aware of their emotions, then they can start to manage them and keep them under control. This allows individuals to react, embrace, and adapt to situations wisely, thus being able to consider consequences, think before acting, manage emotions and behaviors, stay disciplined, and have self-control.

Empathy: is the ability to ignore being self-centered thus paying attention to the surroundings. This is all about recognizing and considering the emotions of others to understand their wants, needs, and viewpoints, avoid conflicts and misunderstandings and seek to help those in need.

Motivation: is the motivation we give to ourselves and other people to grow as a person and enhance emotions without doing it for rewards like money, fame, or status. So when you are motivated, you are committed to your goals, highly driven to succeed, improve and achieve, have the initiative or readiness to act on opportunities, and have optimism and resilience.

Social skills: is the ability of individuals to communicate with others, build relationships, manage conflict, and have a teamwork spirit. So people with high social skills use in conversations active listening, eye contact, verbal communication skills, and open body language.

Master Emotional Intelligence with These Tips

There are 2 types of people, those with low EI and those with high EI:

-People with low EI: can get upset easily, feel misunderstood, and get overwhelmed by emotions.

-People with high EI: stay calm during stressful situations, have great communication skills, and act in a diplomatic way.

Ideally, you should aim to know your strengths and weaknesses, stop negative self-talk, get enough sleep, don’t seek perfection, don’t get offended easily, don’t let anyone limit your happiness, and let go of mistakes.

The question remains of how we can practice new emotionally intelligent behaviors and make them habits, thus reinforcing the brain to adapt to the new behaviors and respond to the surroundings with emotional intelligence. So, here are some practices that you can start following to enhance your EI:

Recognize your emotions: depending on each situation, understand your emotions that arise and name them so you can figure out how to respond to or control your emotions.

Practice self-awareness: be aware of your own emotions and how they can affect those around you.

Ask for feedback: ask your family, friends, or colleagues how they rate your emotional intelligence as how you respond to different situations, how empathetic you are, and how you act in society without getting offended.

Stay motivated: keep yourself motivated with an attitude to motivate others especially when it comes to setting goals and facing challenges.

Maintain a positive attitude: keep your spirit high and get rid of negative attitudes that would affect you and others easily, so do what makes you stay positive and optimistic.

Empathize with others: be empathetic with the people around you by respecting and understanding their actions, opinions, and situations.

Respond to conflict without reacting: adapt to conflicts by staying calm, don’t outburst, and don’t make decisions that can lead to bigger problems.
Understand verbal communication: use assertive communication: express your thoughts, feelings, and opinions in a clear respectful way without hurting others by being too aggressive or too passive. Also, listen clearly to others and understand what is being said before responding.

Enhance your nonverbal skills: pay attention to the nonverbal details of conversations, mainly body language and facial expressions to prevent misunderstandings.

Be sociable: try to make a positive presence and good relationships, and know-how to communicate clearly (verbally or nonverbally), whenever you are around a group of people or within a community.

Regardless that EI may be naturally obtained by some people, anyone can still develop them, so you just have to practice by following these tricks to create your pathway towards becoming more emotionally intelligent.

Influence of Emotional Intelligence on the Business World

EI is a very important aspect in the business world, in which Business Emotional Intelligence has become a practical approach within any organization. This helps individuals and teams recognize and understand emotions, behaviors, and actions, and interact wisely with other employees by considering their emotions. EI became more significant as teams became cross-cultural and global, in which the complexity of interactions and emotions and how they are expressed increased. Many organizations now assess candidates’ EI as it is considered to be as significant as experience when evaluating for a critical job. So, for a person to be successful and productive, the best way is to have the IQ and EI work together. And this is based on the idea that it happens sometimes to meet someone who is smart academically but isn’t social, and here is where the gap appears.

So, having high EI in the business environment can help you achieve professional success in your career, earn a promotion or raise, navigate the social difficulties of the job, be adaptable and flexible towards change, lead, encourage and motivate team members and colleagues, be enthusiastic for work, become happier within the environment, build relationships, solve problems under pressure, make decisions responsibly, be empathetic towards others and seek to help them, influence others and persuade them, be diligent and meet deadlines, and be stress-resilient. This all leads to a positive impact on the success of individuals and others around them.

Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Social Media

In the age of social media, which is a space for social interactions, EI plays a vital role that is not to be missed. Brands and creators are using EI to build emotions that help connect them with their audience at a more personal level using the right tone and at the right time, especially since emotions are what trigger engagement on social media.

Each business should understand the emotional intelligence of its audience and customers, especially since decisions are made based on emotions. So, it becomes important to influence emotions in the audience and allow those emotions to flow thus communicating the message more effectively. Therefore, brands and creators that understand the importance of EI can understand audience behaviors and persona to make the process of content creation easier, and listen to customers, understand their pain points, gather feedback, and apply it. This all leads to an increase in brand awareness, personalized communication, a reach to a larger number of followers, an increase in engagement, better marketing decisions, a drive for social sharing, and an enhancement in brand reputation.

Emotional intelligence has become a valuable element in the success of social media and digital marketing campaigns, in which the future will be driven by how alert a brand is to its audience, and its ability to tap into its customers’ emotional intelligence. So, it’s all about appearing closer to the audience and establishing emotional connections with them to help them gain trust in organizations.

Are you interested in testing your Emotional Intelligence?

Our team has tried it and it was amazing to see how every person differs from the other in their emotions and reactions.