Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence:

The term encompasses the following five characteristics and abilities:
1. Self-awareness--knowing your emotions, recognizing feelings as they occur, and discriminating between them
2. Mood management--handling feelings so they're relevant to the current situation and you react appropriately
3. Self-motivation--"gathering up" your feelings and directing yourself towards a goal, despite self-doubt, inertia, and impulsiveness
4. Empathy--recognizing feelings in others and tuning into their verbal and nonverbal cues
5. Managing relationships--handling interpersonal interaction, conflict resolution, and negotiations.
It refers to the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, and for managing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships. The term, coined by American psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer, is used to describe qualities like understanding one's own and other people's emotions, and handling people and situations. In the real world, emotions -- one's own or others' -- often play an extremely crucial role, even in the most mundane situations. Sometimes, they are the difference between success and failure. The concept was popularised by Emotional Intelligence, a book by science writer Daniel Goleman. Goleman argues that IQ merely reveals the extent of a person's academic intelligence. Not only is EQ instrumental in a person's career, says Goleman, it can have an impact on IQ too, because emotions out of control impede the intellect. Leaving emotions out of a measure of intelligence, he insists, reflects a very "impoverished" view of the mind.

Why Do We Need Emotional Intelligence?
Research in brain-based learning suggests that emotional health is fundamental to effective learning. The key ingredients for this understanding are:

1. Confidence
2. Curiosity
3. Intentionality
4. Self-control
5.... [continues]

Read full essay