Research suggests that a person's emotional intelligence (EQ) to be a greater predictor of success than his or her intellectual intelligence (IQ), despite an assumption that people with high IQs will naturally accomplish more in life.
Emotional intelligence(EQ) is a person's ability to understand their own emotions and those of others, and to act appropriately using these emotions.
For decades, a lot of emphasis has been put on certain aspects of intelligence such as logical reasoning, math skills, spatial skills, understanding analogies, verbal skills etc. Researchers were puzzled by the fact that while IQ could predict to a significant degree academic performance and, to some degree, professional and personal success, there was something missing in the equation. Some of those with fabulous IQ scores were doing poorly in life; one could say that they were wasting their potential by thinking, behaving and communicating in a way that hindered their chances to succeed.
What qualities make you emotionally intelligent?
This type of wisdom is founded on five basic abilities:
•You have to be aware of your own emotions and able to recognize what you're feeling at a given time.
•You must be able to manage those emotions and how you act on them.
•You should know how to motivate yourself and persist in the face of obstacles.
•You need to be able to recognize and understand other people's feelings (you must have empathy).
•You have to be able to build and maintain healthy relationships on the job and with friends, partners, and family members.
How can you improve your EQ?
Goleman says there are four ways:
•Learn to recognize your own feelings by taking a step back from them: Observe an emotion and the reaction it produces within you.
Practice naming your emotions and identifying their real causes. (Anger, for example, may spring from jealousy or insecurity.) Some people find that writing down their deepest feelings in a journal helps them identify what's really going on inside.
•Work on managing your feelings to avoid violent or destructive outbursts. It's also important to know which feelings are appropriate to express in a particular situation. The idea is not to suppress your emotions, but rather to be able to keep your feelings in perspective and avoid being hijacked by them. (If you have a generally negative outlook, you might want to read psychologist Martin Seligman's book "Learned Optimism." It offers valuable advice on developing genuine-not Pollyannaish-optimism, which can change the way you deal with the inevitable setbacks and obstacles).
•Realize that communication involves a lot more than what you say.
Empathy, or understanding what other people are feeling, can be developed through listening carefully and observing people's body language and facial expressions. To become a better listener, Goleman suggests you adopt a learning partner and practice listening to each other, then rephrasing what you hear and repeating that to your partner until you get it right. The idea is to hear the feelings behind the words.
•Deepen your connections to other people. Successful relationships depend on many skills, including the capacity to empathize, the ability to talk about your feelings, the patience to listen, and the ability to calm yourself down before discussing a problem with someone.
One of the major missing parts in the success equation is emotional intelligence, a concept made popular by the groundbreaking book by Daniel Goleman, which is based on years of research by numerous scientists such as Peter Salovey, John Meyer, Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg and Jack Block, just to name a few. For various reasons and thanks to a wide range of abilities, people with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in life than those with lower EIQ even if their classical IQ is average.
To take the EQ test