Emotional Intelligence Decomposed
Posted on June 23, 2012 by John Eugene Hill, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
The emotionally intelligent individual is flexible, intuitive, and can manage their emotions for a positive outcome.
Emotional Intelligence Decomposed
Goal
The following elements will help bring clarity to the term emotional intelligence (EO or EI). This clarity is in a form of decomposition.
Intro
Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of your emotions and the emotions of others and to use that awareness to inform your decisions and actions. It requires abilities in four components: self-understanding, self-regulation, social recognition, and social regulation. The emotionally intelligent individual is one who can identify both verbal and nonverbal cues in people and who can easily build rapport. This person is flexible, intuitive, and can manage their emotions for a positive outcome.
Self Understanding
Self-understanding, a component of emotional intelligence, is an intrapersonal capability, which involves appropriately identifying and labeling your emotions. It requires accurately perceiving your current strengths and weaknesses in relation to your emotions and personal interactions. It is the ability to recognize triggers that affect your thoughts and behaviors. An emotionally intelligent individual with a great amount of self-understanding easily recognizes his emotions as they occur. He also displays self-confidence through his decisions and actions.
Rational thinking is the act of using information to reach logical conclusions. It requires an individual to make assumptions about the outcome of a situation. Using your past experiences and intellect can help you to identify the best way to handle a situation or reach a conclusion. Rational thinking is often identified with recognizing and categorizing information. A synonym of rational thinking is logic.
Emotions are thoughts or feelings that arise impulsively and are usually associated with a physical change in the person feeling them. Emotions can influence mood, thought, attitude, and behavior. Some emotions may be easier to recognize than others, especially because there can be several levels or stages of an emotion. Emotions are influenced by a number of factors, these include: triggers, past experience, personality, and environment.
Emotional triggers are events that initiate an emotional response and have an impact on your thoughts or feelings. They are a result of either emotional or situational experiences. Often, emotional triggers cause an immediate response where the individual acts almost without consideration. An emotionally intelligent person must also be able to identify emotional triggers before they occur.
Self Regulation
Self-regulation, a component of emotional intelligence, is the intrapersonal capability of controlling emotional responses. Self-regulation may require personal reflection. Individuals who are prone to taking time for personal reflection frequently have a greater capacity of self-regulation. Another characteristic of the self regulated individual is the ability to maintain emotional equilibrium, even in highly charged situations or at times when strong negative emotions are displayed by others. Self regulated individuals also use rational thinking and recognize emotional triggers that influence one’s emotional responses.
Successfully regulating your emotions fosters productivity and emotional balance. It allows you to better control your actions and behaviors and directly impacts the outcome of a situation. Regulating your emotions can help you become more emotionally intelligent.
Social Recognition
Social recognition, a component of emotional intelligence, is an interpersonal capability for identifying the emotions that others are experiencing. Social recognition typically includes strong listening skills and being adept at reading the nonverbal cues of others. The emotionally intelligent person, who has strong social recognition skills, quickly adjusts his message based on this information to maximize the efficiency of his communication.
Skillful listening is the ability to receive verbal information and to process that information in a way that allows the individual to foster greater understanding and promotes effective communication by focusing intently on the speaker. It involves hearing a speaker’s words, understanding the speaker’s message, interpreting the message appropriately, and confirming an understanding of what was said.
To effectively communicate, it’s important that you recognize, as well as be able to interpret, all types of communication. Nonverbal communication may duplicate, underscore, match, oppose, or replace verbal communication. Once you unlock your ability to decipher nonverbal cues in conversations, you will become a stronger communicator. Deciphering nonverbal cues is not always as simple as it sounds. The meaning of nonverbal cues may not always be the same as they appear.
Your ability to evaluate your current degree of social recognition is dependant upon identifying the emotions others are experiencing. By improving your listening and observation skills, including your interpretation of nonverbal communication, you can influence the behaviors of your coworkers and employees which can help you to become more successful in business.
Social Regulation
Social regulation is the ability to identify and address the emotions of a group in an affirming manner so that the group can continue to successfully work together. A person with high social regulation skills can easily read the emotions of others and accepts that emotions are a natural part of life. He encourages the discussion of emotions in a positive manner with the belief that any emotion can be dealt with successfully, allowing productive work to take place between group members.
A person with strong social regulation skills can forecast the probable outcome of emotionally charged exchanges in the group. With this knowledge, he intercedes in a way that addresses and diffuses negative emotion, yet maintains and communicates positive emotional energy so that the group can generate a desirable response to the issue.
Rapport is the quality of a relationship characterized by accord, harmony, or affinity. In a relationship with strong rapport, both parties share mutual trust and confidence in one another.
Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand another’s situation, feelings, and motives, without interest in either agreeing or disagreeing with them. Empathetic individuals have excellent listening skills. Because of their non-judgmental demeanor, they are frequently used as a sounding board by their coworkers.
A skilled social regulator helps groups function smoothly and perform at capacity. Assessing your abilities in this area will lead you to make improvements.
Conclusion
As one can see emotional intelligence plays a key factor in how we act, but as well as how we react. With the knowledge of emotional intelligence we can show up in the world with a sense of curiosity and wonder. With this open nature and an awareness of how others influence us and how we influence others we not only can change our environment but we can change the environment of those around us.
