Emotional Intelligence: What Is It and Why Does It Matter in Our Lives?

Dear All,

I wanted some details about Emotional Intelligence. What is it? Please help out.

Regards

What is EQ?

EQ is an individual's ability to deal with other people, manage oneself, motivate others, understand his own feelings and respond appropriately to the everyday environment successfully. It is used interchangeably with EI (emotional intelligence). EI though is largely learnt, developed throughout life and conditioned by life's experience.

Its importance

The rules of work are constantly changing and new yardsticks are being used to evaluate the performance of employees. Decisions regarding hiring and firing employees and retaining, sidelining or promoting them are also based on this. Today's corporate world uses IQ as a criterion for recruitment, and EQ for promotions.

Emotional intelligence can be instrumental in many situations at workplace and can help achieve organisational effectiveness. High EQ is essential to take the right decisions and solve problems.

Benefits

# High EQ can lead to

# Increased productivity

# Improved responsiveness

# Greater creativity

# Reduced stress levels

# Improved relationships

EQ serves as a valuable tool for HR professionals and managers who intend to bring about changes in their organisations. Having the ability to understand what motivates individual employees, an EI manager adapts management style to organisation values.

Since managers need to lead by example, they should have the ability to model right behaviours. EI facilitates this. EI is a learned behaviour and organisations can significantly benefit by incorporating it in their management training programmes.

Hope this will be of help.

Cheers

Archna

Emotional Intelligence is about how individuals manage both themselves and others. It is about understanding and gaining an accurate insight into an individual's motivation to succeed. This includes how to make decisions, why people behave the way they do, and how to maximize one's performance. This is the key to human capital management.

Until recently, the main approaches to assessing and developing human behavior have been personality questionnaires. However, by using the Emotional Intelligence model, it is possible to assess a candidate's ability to manage their personality and behavior and hence their potential for success in different situations. In today's business environment, what matters is not just a person's training or their expertise but their people skills and their ability to manage themselves and others. Understanding a candidate's Emotional Intelligence enables managers/recruiters to assess quickly the key behavioral competencies that predict success in the job role they are recruiting for.

Originally conceived by Salovey and Mayer (1990) and popularized by Goleman (1996; 1998), Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the "ability to accurately perceive, understand, integrate, and effectively manage one's own emotions and those of others." For businesses, Emotional Intelligence can provide a framework to measure and understand the 'real' human factors that determine success - how users manage their work and others; how they make decisions, etc. It helps organizations and teams understand why people behave the way they do and how to maximize their performance.

Hope it has been of some help.

Cheers,

Prof. Lakshman

Hello, when I had an assignment on EQ, I downloaded some materials which helped me. I guess they will be of help too, even though not so arranged. But I know you will find it helpful.

Cheers,
Lola
Nigeria
email: kkiremode@yahoo.com