emotional intelligence : components , importance

 1. Emotional Intelligence is the difference that makes the difference. Comment. 

Introduction:

Emotional intelligence refers to the capability of a person to manage and control his or her emotions and possess the ability to control the emotions of others as well. In other words, they can influence the emotions of other people also. The term was coined by two researchers – Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990 but got popular in 1996 from Dan Goleman’s book

Body

• Emotional intelligence is an intangible force that influences our ability to navigate our behaviours and social complexities through communication and decision-making. Emotionally intelligent people are highly persuasive and articulate with their use of words.

    “The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain”              

                                                       Daniel Goleman

Emotional intelligence consists of four attributes:

1. Self-awareness – Recognizing one’s own emotions and how they affect our thoughts and behavior, knowing our strengths and weaknesses, and having self-confidence. 
2. Self-management – Being able to control impulsive feelings and behaviors, manage our emotions in healthy ways, taking initiative, following through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances. Life-work balance is important
3. Social awareness – One can understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially, and recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization.
4. Relationship management – Knowing how to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in a team, and manage conflict.

Furthermore, emotional intelligence is made up of above four core skill areas, with two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence.

• Personal competence consists of self-awareness and self-management of our emotions.
• Social competence concerns relationship management and social awareness for human communication and interactions with others.

• In the context of leadership, emotional intelligence could be the difference between good and great leadership. Leaders with high emotional intelligence have a strong self-awareness of their emotions to better communicate, influence and motivate others to take action.
• 90% of the top performers are high in emotional intelligence, with a higher average income per year and 20% of low performers were high in emotional intelligence.Emotional intelligence also accounted for up to 60% of the job performance for supervisors through CEO’s.
• Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Civil Services-
  1. For Targeting Policies better: Bureaucrats need to know emotions, moods and drives of persons at whom public policy is targeted for better acquaintance with the nature of problems in society and their possible solutions.
  2. For motivating subordinates: EI helps a person in comprehending emotions of others, thus an emotionally intelligent civil servant can motivate his/her subordinates towards a particular goal.
  3. For Decision making: EI helps in recognizing such emotions that are unrelated to any specific problem and not allowing them to be influential to the final result.
  4. Better Communication: An Emotionally Intelligent civil servant will be able to communicate policies better. Also, the person will be able to foster a healthy relationship with subordinates.

Conclusion

When it comes to happiness and success in life and work, emotional intelligence matters just as much as intellectual ability. Emotional intelligence helps people build stronger relationships, succeed at work, and achieve their career and personal goals, which makes it different from other aspects.