Emotional Intelligence
The Necessary Ingredient for Maximum Achievement

What Is Emotional Intelligence?
What are the Key Features?

What Limits It?

How Can I Increase It?

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Intelligence, education, job skills and technical ability, all of the things that go into a good resume, are necessary to get you into the door of most companies and professions. However, psychologists have learned that these skills are not enough to get you any further than the middle of the success ladder. In order to continue your rise to the top you will need to have excellent people skills, self-discipline, self-awareness, decision-making skills and self-confidence. These are the qualities that make up what is called Emotional Intelligence. It is your Emotional Intelligence or EQ that you will use to correctly read complex business and professional situations, to competently handle the many difficult interpersonal situations, complicated decisions and stressful circumstances that inevitably occur in the upper levels of all careers.

What are the key features of Emotional Intelligence?

EQ is really a set of skills that we all begin to develop intuitively from infancy on. While there are many facets of EQ the major aspects include:

1. Self-Awareness - The most basic EQ skill consists of being aware of our ongoing emotions on a moment to moment basis. Self-awareness also helps us to continually monitor our behavior, urges and reactions. It is the part of you that notices that you are beginning to get angry and tells you that this is not a good situation to show that anger. People with poor self-awareness either don’t have it at all or they lose it whenever they get upset.

2. People Skills - People with good interpersonal skills can accurately read the emotions of those around them and can understand things from the other person’s perspective. They know how and when to encourage or confront. They are good at building relationships and know how to influence employees, peers or bosses. They are adept at communicating their feelings, needs and position in a way that leaves the other person feeling respected. They are good at building team spirit and tend to resolve issues in a way that is mutually satisfactory to all involved.

3. Self-Discipline – People with good self-discipline are able to handle high levels of stress confidently. They do not act on impulse. They set long-range and short-term goals and always have a clear vision of where they want to go.

4. Decision-Making - In order to make good decisions you have to be able to see the big picture, to be able to consider the widest possible set of data and possible options, to be able to think flexibly and creatively and continually test all decisions against reality.

5. Self-Confidence - People with self-confidence have learned how to be optimistic, to have a ‘can-do’ attitude, to turn problems into opportunities. They focus their attention on the potential benefits of a decision while preparing for the potential risks. They accept and acknowledge their own mistakes and see them as learning opportunities.

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What limits Emotional Intelligence?

Uncontrolled stress reactions can dramatically reduce our performance in many areas. A student can know all of the answers to a test and get so nervous that they fail or the most skilled athlete may choke during competition and come in last. Similarly, anything that triggers distress - including stress, discrimination and emotional baggage - can make you temporarily lose your EQ abilities.

Stress increases whenever there is responsibility without predictability or control. Discrimination can either be overt harassment (e.g. being called a derogatory name) or subtle (e.g. lack of feedback). Subtle discrimination, known as microinequities, are designed to establish one groups dominance over another and include the small everyday inequities such as being criticized but never praised, being left out of important meetings, having your input ignored but noticed when a coworker says the same thing, etc. We collect emotional baggage whenever we fail to fully heal from upsetting or traumatic events in our lives. Current events in our lives then consciously or unconsciously trigger this emotional baggage causing us to overreact and lose perspective.

Stress, discrimination and emotional baggage trigger distress - what is known as the fight-or-flight response - our innate emergency response system. The fight-or-flight reaction is designed to help us make split-second decisions regarding life-threatening events. It triggers a release of adrenaline in the body that increases our heart rate and moves blood away from the stomach and into our limbs to prepare us for action. Whenever you get upset enough for your heart rate to go up 10 beats per minute you are most likely in fight-or-flight. If your life is on the line and you have to act in microseconds you don’t have time to consider things from several perspectives or to be creative or flexible and hence the fight-or-flight reaction temporarily shuts down your emotional intelligence. The biggest problem is that your fight-or-flight reaction may be inappropriately triggered by interpersonal and business situations where your life is not on the line and you don’t have to make split-second decisions. It is in these situations that you lose much needed emotional intelligence (EQ) points just when we need them the most and our ability to handle these very important situations plummets.

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What can I do to increase my EQ?

Your EQ, like your IQ is based on the abilities your were born with and everything you have learned since then. Thankfully there are many ways to increase your EQ. First you should get a good assessment of your EQ using standardized measures. You can do this through a psychologist or business consultant. Once you have a clear sense of your strengths and weaknesses then you can develop a program to improve your skills. If your EQ is consistently low then you will need to improve on your basic skills. This can either be done on your own using one of the many books that have been written on the subject or you can work with a performance coach who will custom tailor a program for you. If your EQ is high when you are at the top of your game but your fight-or-flight reaction causes you to lose your skills in certain situations or with certain people, then you need to find and correct the underlying problem. You may need to work on stress management, develop better ways of managing discrimination or to work with a counselor to get rid of your emotional baggage.

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