If you’re interested in learning how to improve emotional intelligence or what emotional intelligence is, then you landed on the right article.

Emotional Intelligence is considered to be a key ingredient in the successful development of close personal relationships.

Simply defined, emotional intelligence is the capability to understand, manage, and successfully convey one’s own feelings, as well as being able to engage successfully with the feelings of others. There has been much research to suggest that the vast majority of high performers in the work place possess high emotional intelligence, while not unexpectedly low performers in the work place often possess a lack of emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is not static. It is possible to improve emotional intelligence over time by making a concentrated effort to do so.

Learn how to improve emotional intelligence today by enrolling in the Emotional Intelligence Course today!

Four Components of Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman PhD identified four components of emotional intelligence. These are outlined below.

• Self-Awareness: The capacity to understand one’s emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Self-Management: The ability to effectively manage one’s motives and to regulate one’s behavior.
• Social Awareness: The capacity to understand what others say and feel and the reasons why they act and feel as they do.
• Relationship Management: The ability to act in such a way so that one can get desired results from others to attain personal goals.

All four components are interrelated. Mastering the first three components will help you to manage relationships effectively.

Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important

Of all the soft skills, emotional intelligence may well be the most important of all. While, emotional intelligence is seen as an important ingredient for successful people managers, it also has practical applications in all aspects of life.

It is widely accepted that emotions play a very significant role in the overall quality of our personal and professional lives. In fact emotional intelligence is becoming recognized as more important than our actual IQ. While we can learn and retain information using tools and technology, nothing can match our capability to learn, manage, and control our emotions as well as the emotions of those that we interact with.

By improving your emotional intelligence, you can see improvements in the following elements of your life.

• Physical Health – Stress can have a significant impact on our overall wellness. Stress levels are intrinsically linked to our emotional intelligence. By being conscious of our emotional state and managing reactions to stress factors, we can take steps to manage stress and maintain good physical health.

• Mental Health– As well as affecting our attitude and overall life outlook, emotional intelligence can assist in alleviating anxiety and avoiding depression. High levels of emotional intelligence can be directly correlated to more positive attitudes

• Relationships – When we improve our understanding of our emotions, we are not only better positioned to constructively communicate our feelings but more able to appreciate and relate to those who we have relationships with. This improved understanding will help to lead to stronger, more fulfilling relationships.

• Conflict Resolution – When we are able to empathize with other people’s perspectives, conflicts are easier to resolve or even be avoided completely before they arise. Negotiation skills are enhanced in lime with our improved abilities to appreciate the needs and desires of others. It’s a lot easier to provide people with what they need if we understand fully what their need is.

• Success – Higher emotional intelligence leads to stronger internal driving motivating forces. These driving forces will help eliminate procrastination, improve self-confidence, and develop our capacity to focus on a goal. Higher emotional intelligence also enables us to build better networks of support, conquer obstacles, and develop greater resilience.

• Leadership – Being able to understand the motivating drivers of others, relate positively to others and to strengthen bonds with other workers makes people with higher emotional intelligence superior leaders. Effective leaders can identify what the needs colleagues and team members are, so that they can be met while encouraging better performance and improved workplace satisfaction.

What Is The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Relationship Conflicts?

Relationship conflicts often rooted in miscommunication and a lack of awareness of the other’s point of view. Raising your emotional intelligence will help you to avoid and mitigate any relationship conflicts that may arise. Raising emotional intelligence will give you greater capacity to be aware of the emotions of those people you interact with, helping you to build a stronger relationship.

How Is Emotional Intelligence Used?

Emotional intelligence can be used in just about all life situations. It can be applied in leadership roles, team settings and in personal relationships. By applying emotional intelligence, people can create more cooperative environments and achieve more with less conflict and stress.

Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important to Critical Thinking

Understanding how emotions can affect the thinking process can help you to guard against decision making being affected on a purely emotional level. Applying emotional intelligence to critical thinking situations can help to identify biases and assist in exercising clear and sound judgement.

Emotional Intelligence Books
Below you will find some of the best emotional intelligence books available to you either online or at your local bookstore.

The key author in matters concerning emotional intelligence is Daniel Goleman whose books are widely read on the subject. Key books include Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence.

Goleman’s books particularly working with Emotional Intelligence explore the concepts of emotional intelligence and propose that the secret of success is not what is taught in school, IQ, the amount of business degrees or even the level of technical knowledge that an individual possesses but emotional intelligence.

The key concepts discussed within Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence books are extensively covered in online courses like The Emotional Intelligence Online Course

Courses to Improve Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a soft skill that can be improved with diligence and by practicing key concepts. A great way to embark on improving your emotional intelligence level is to partake in an online course that will deliver all the key concepts in an easy to follow manner while allowing you to do so at the times that best suit you.

A course like the Diploma in Emotional Intelligence Online Course will assist people to learn how to cultivate their emotional intelligence.

The course shows students how to look at their own emotional intelligence. It demonstrates how the student can identify the common components of their own emotional reactions. And how to use thought processes like mindfulness, to manage emotion as well as the emotional hot buttons that cause problems in life and relationships.

The course delves into the ways that empathy and interpersonal intelligence can be cultivated and how these qualities can be used to empower effective communication.

The five common traits used to describe and understand personality are covered, as well as the strategies on how to deal with difficult people.

In addition to the use of emotional intelligence on a personal level, the course also looks at the wider applications of the concept, including about how society utilizes emotional intelligence in all aspects of business and social interactions, as well as the deeper characteristics of our way of life.

How to Measure Emotional Intelligence

There are several ways to measure emotional intelligence. These are known as the competency based approach, the ability based approach and the trait mixed model approach.

The competency based approach measures emotionally intelligent workplace behaviors, this approach works best internal assessment and talent development, while it isn’t particularly suitable for external recruitment.

The ability based approach s designed to measure an individual’s emotional abilities. This approach works very well for external recruitment hiring processes or the determination of the core reasons for problematic behavior, whereas, it does not work well for internal talent assessment.

The trait/mixed model approach is essentially a self assessment process and measures a set of self perceptions rated to personality preferences linking emotional and social functioning. The approach is well suited to identifying underlying problematic behavior and talent development. However, it is not considered to be suitable for the selection of external recruits.

Emotional Intelligence Scale
The Schutte emotional intelligence scale or the Assessing Emotions Scale is widely used to measure emotional intelligence. The scale measures emotional responses to 33 statements and then allocates a 5 point score to each response. The mean average score for this scale is 124, with a standard deviation of 13, meaning that normal scores range between 111 and 137

Common Steps to Increasing Emotional Intelligence

• Reduce negative emotions. Negative emotions can easily overwhelm us and affect our emotions and judgement. It is important to recognize them and treat them appropriately. This can be done by reducing negative personalization and the fear of rejection.

• Manage stress. There is some level of stress in all our lives. How we manage it will go a long way to determine our emotional well being and emotional intelligence. The key to managing stress is to maintain your cool. Some common ways to maintain your cool include-: a) splashing cold water on your face and get some fresh air. This can help to reduce anxiety and b) intense aerobic exercise can help reduce negative stressful emotions like fear and depression.

• Be assertive in expressing your emotions. We have the right to say how we feel without being rude or accusatory. Being confident to set our own boundaries so that people are clear about where we stand.

• Be Proactive When Confronted By Difficult People. Difficult people can hijack and drain our emotions. The key to remaining in control of your emotions is to recognize the situation for what it is and to proactively take charge.

• Bounce back. Failing is never the issue. How we choose to respond to failure is the key driver when it comes to dealing with adverse situations. This choice can determine the difference between hope and despair, frustration and optimism. Treat every situation as a lesson to be learned from. Always seek to do better next time.

• Work on responding instead of reacting. It takes a conscious effort to respond appropriately, whereas reacting often involves knee jerk sub conscious responses to situations. Responding involves adopting a mental process of examining your feelings and choosing an appropriate response.

• Take responsibility. Your emotions and behavior belong to you—no-one else—therefore, you own them and need to take responsibility for them.

• Observe how you feel. In this modern age, it is very easy to get swept up in the rush and urgency of our day to day lives. When we get caught up, it is easy to lose track of our emotions and start acting unconsciously on autopilot. When we take the time to acknowledge our emotions, we are better placed to trust and manage them.

How to Overcome Low Emotional Intelligence

While we are all born with a certain level of emotional intelligence, the good news is that low intelligence levels can be worked on and improved. The first move is to want to improve your emotional intelligence and to commit to it. In addition to the steps outlined above, low emotional intelligence people may find the following steps useful.

When you find yourself getting angry, make an effort to remove yourself from the immediate situation and give yourself time to cool off.

When you feel that your pride has been hurt, accept that you can’t be perfect at everything and recognize others for being better or having better ideas. Humility in the right circumstances can be a great relationship building tool

Recognize that anxiety is a perfectly natural phenomenon. Practice simple relaxation techniques to overcome feelings of anxiety in normal situations. If, however you find that anxiety is becoming an issue it may be necessary to seek help from a medical health professional.

Improving emotional intelligence can have significant benefits upon all aspects of professional and personal lives, the key to improving emotional intelligence is to commit to making an improvement.

If you would like to commit to improving your emotional intelligence, you can make a start by enrolling in one of our Emotional Intelligence Online Courses today.

There you have it, all there is to know on how to improve emotional intelligence.