Since decades emotional intelligence is on the hit list for high performance as one of the most influencing factors when it comes to personal and career success. And the best thing is, you can improve it yourself.
Here we take a closer look on what we can learn from Psychology (Goleman, D., 1995; Grant, A., 2014; Bradberry, T. & Greaves, J., 2009), Neuroscience (Feldman Barretts, L., 2017) and the Dalai Lama on how to use it in the present.
Emotional intelligence became popular with David Goleman’s in the 90s, introducing it as ability to recognize or acknowledge emotions in yourself and others, understanding where they come from and manage them intentionally. Though the concept that was highly associated with empathy was not new at all. It was named and renamed since 1900s, and actually first published by Salovey & Mayer in 1990, however, the comparison to our IQ that Goleman focused on was eye-opening, catapulting emotional intelligence from research labs into Forbes magazine.
EQ is not bound to the IQ and in contrast to the IQ, it is manageable.
We started looking into emotional intelligence (EQ) as learnable skill that should become essential in personal development as well as in Recruiting and Learning & Development in organizations as the only measurable success factor that is evidently responsible for career success in terms of higher promotion, higher positions (Bradberry, T. & Greaves, J., 2009). Meaning even more important than IQ, knowledge, experience and whatever you have listed on your CV.
In their book emotional intelligence 2.0 (2009) the
authors summarized that EQ is accountable for 58% of performance and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence. 90% of high performers are also
high In EQ. It is associated with great focus of energy including most competence needed in workplace such time management, decision making and
communication.
Emotional intelligence is accountable for 58% of performance and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence- and the best is you can learn & improve it.
It sounds like magic, especially when emphasizing that this skill is improvable, though let’s not forget that there are still have blind spots in our knowledge and methodology about emotional intelligence. Though results seem to apply for all workforce, recent research found that the positive impact of emotional intelligence seems to be limited to how relevant emotions are for a specific positions (Joseph, D. L., & Newman, D. A. (2010)). Meaning while we see emotional intelligent as guarantee for success of managers and leaders e.g. Martin Luther King as well as service suppliers, healthcare and communication, it may be rather nice-to-have for scientist, analyst or mechanics.
In addition, all magic comes with a certain consequence or “dark side” how Adam Grant called it in 2014 in the Atlantic.
Of course every great skill, when not using it in line with ethics and values, can be a tool of manipulation. Being able to acknowledge and manage your emotions as well as those of others also provides EQ-high scorers with the ability to influence others on an emotional level for their intentions. This can be for the good, as in the case of Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, who used emotional speeches to motivate her employees to support charity and fundraising, but also for the bad.
Fact is, making use of our emotional intelligence in our communication e.g. inspiring speeches, has higher persuasive effect on the audience.
Fact is also that triggering primarily emotions in communication can have an awestruck effect, meaning the audience is so moved that they will question the content less and also remembers less of it, while the audience claims to be able to recall it (Grant, A., 2014).
Consequently, great EQ comes with great responsibility, being aware of own values, biases and motives as well as understanding and valuing them in others.
Read more about finding your values here
Using emotional intelligence can significantly influence our surrounding and strengths persuasion, in the good and bad way.
Deepdive:
Emotions and how they impact us
While Goleman would relate the effects of emotional intelligence back to the emotional brain, we now today from neuroscience (L. Feldman Barretts, 2017) that our brain constructs emotions, thought, and perception on the fly automatically in the situation. Feldman Barretts with this refutes the thesis of Goleman of emotions being tied to body language, having their trigger in an outside event, and being impulsive elements working against the “rational” in us.
So, no you can not tell from someone smiling that he or she is actually happy and no, there is no fight between “rational” against “emotional“ as there is no pure rational or emotional. We all feel while we think – so our so called purely rational decisions do not exist. Same as the idea that only the brightest, most experienced, and skilled minds will make it to the top.
How to improve and further develop emotional intelligence?
According to recent research best ways to increase emotional intelligence are to increase self awareness and emotional awareness as well as to find your truth essence and triggers (read more about finding your values here) to become more present, observing and less judgmental.
Here are four practical tips how you can start doing to developing your EQ right away:
Setting a starting point for you with measuring your own EQ is of course valuable. There are a lot of EQ test out there, though, we need to warn you here as most tests only consider your own perception, which will give you only the picture you want to paint for yourself. Our tip: Rather start observing yourself (write it down) and ask others for feedback in terms of how that impacted them / how it made them feel to understand how you are doing. Further recommendable methods are journaling, exercises to localize your feelings especially when under pressure and using professional coaching.
With increasing awareness, you can enable yourself to not directly react to triggers but to more conscious observing and steering. You can start with simple checking in with your feelings in daily activities, meetings, in conversations, observing what emotions come up or are triggered. If possible, pause or write them down and ask yourself timely what has triggered this emotion and how that influenced you and others. Coaching can be a great tool to create awareness here, as well Meditation holds some exercises for you to observe emotions and impact more consciously.
Though Goleman’s concept of emotional intelligent was reviewed and refuted in different aspects, empathy is still confirmed as one the major component of emotional intelligence. In an 2015 published HBR interview, Goleman refers to his discussion with the Dalai Lama, mapping compassion to emotional intelligence. Cultivate compassion for others, especially in business context, by thinking of all of us as team, by gathering information from different perspectives and make sure you are ok and the other are too can increase your emotional intelligence. Read also Give and Take of Adam Grant, which gives even more inspiration here.
Enriching your portfolio of feelings and having words for them – so increase your emotional granularity (ability to distinguish and use wider range of emotional hints in situations) – by observing. Especially for interculturally communication and leaders of intercultural teams, it is important to understand different facets of emotions to be able to improve emotional intelligence for the benefit of the team.