Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is crucial to success in both professional and personal life. It may be the most vital quality of all, but it’s somewhat abstract, and therefore tricky to measure and hard to teach.
Understanding Others is Essential for Productivity and Collaboration
EQ describes a person’s ability to sense and respond appropriately to emotions. This emotional sensitivity and empathy are crucial to facilitating high levels of collaboration and productivity.
Highly developed EQ skills are a quality shared by all successful leaders and superior performers. Their excellent EQ is crucial to working effectively with a wide variety of people. It’s also essential for maintaining balance and responsiveness in the rapidly changing conditions of today’s business world.
Excelling in these five key areas pertaining to intrapersonal and interpersonal relations is the foundation of good EQ.
• Self Awareness
• Self Regulation
• Motivation
• Empathy
• Social Skills
Let’s examine these qualities in greater detail.
Self-Awareness: What It Is
People with a healthy sense of self-awareness understand their own strengths and weaknesses. They comprehend how their actions affect others.
Self-Awareness: Why It Matters
Self-aware people are better able to embrace and learn from constructive criticism. They’re less likely to inadvertently offend others. They’re better able to seek help and alternate opinions.
Self-Regulation: What It Is
Self-regulation describes one’s ability to reveal one’s emotions appropriately based on circumstance. The self-regulated person recognizes the importance of balancing restraint and honesty, and conscientiously attempts to act accordingly.
Self-Regulation: Why It Matters
Self-regulation is vital to getting along with people and not alienating them.
Self-regulation is necessary to avoid extremes. Revealing all emotion without restraint or forethought can repel and alienate people, whereas suppressing emotion excessively makes a person frustrated, inaccessible and inauthentic.
Motivation: What It Is
The healthy motivation of a high EQ person is not driven by money or title, but by a more complex inner set of values.
Motivation: Why It Matters
When motivation derives from multi-dimensional inner values, there’s a greater arena of potential satisfaction, which contributes to emotional resiliency and optimism.
Empathy: What It Is
Empathy allows people to connect with other people on a human, emotional level based on compassion and a recognition of universal elements of human nature.
Empathy: Why It Matters
Empathy is crucial to responding genuinely to the concerns of others, which builds vital bonds.
Social Skills: What They Are
Social skills are the subtle give-and-take which are necessary for building trust and rapport. They’re linked with all the skills above, and highly dependent on EQ.
Social Skills: Why They Matter
Good social skills build bonds, which cultivate the respect and goodwill of other people. Co-workers with good social skills are better positioned to share responsibilities, communicate effectively, and contribute to team efforts.
EQ for Resiliency, Perseverance and Positive Personal Dynamics
Individuals with high EQ are more adaptable, flexible and team oriented. EQ isn’t taught in high school or college, and only recently has been formally recognized as a vital asset. It’s also much more difficult to quantify than many other skills. Nonetheless, In the rapidly changing technical and global conditions facing today’s workers, EQ is more vital than ever.
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