If you cannot recognize your own feelings, how can you make good choices about jobs, or how can you communicate to others accurately. Emotional intelligence is a cluster of traits and abilities relating to the emotional side of life. Emotional Intelligence is defined as:
The capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of other, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships
In the book “Executive EQ – Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organizations,” Robert K.Cooper and Ayman Sawaf (1997) emotional intelligence is defined as “the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection and influence”. Emotional Intelligence links strongly with concepts of love and spirituality: bringing compassion and humanity to work, and also to ‘Multiple Intelligence’ theory which illustrates and measures the range of capabilities people possess, and the fact that everybody has a value. According to one study, Emotional intelligence is born largely in the neurotransmitters of the brain’s limbic system which governs feelings, impulses and drives.
EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:
- Understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behavior and all.
- Understanding others, and their feelings
Now we will go through the following EI topics briefly.