Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

Estimated Time: 1 hour

This week, we started out discussing the importance of emotions in the learning process, and how emotions (and the beliefs and mindsets that they create) can support or hurt your cognitive performance. Let’s continue by reflecting on your experience with managing your emotions and the emotions of others, before diving into the topic of emotional intelligence in a bit more depth.

Reflection: Emotional Intelligence

Goleman’s Mixed Model of Emotional Intelligence

According to Goleman, who has researched and written extensively on the subject, emotional intelligence is made up of the following components or skills:

  • Self-Awareness

    This is the ability to recognize our own emotions and state of mind and understand the impact it has on us and other people around us. It is the ability to understand how our emotions drive our behavior and actions. More broadly, self-awareness also involves knowing our identity, personality, preferences, and strengths and weaknesses among other things which are in many ways connected to how we feel and how we act. Being able to know how we feel and how that drives us in the moment can help us appreciate and channel those feelings and emotions appropriately.

  • Self-Regulation (or Self-Management)

    This is the ability to control, manage or regulate our emotions to serve our goals. It also helps us to respond appropriately in our relationships and interactions with others. We might not always be able to trace the source of our emotions, or control when and how they come, but the good news is that with learning and practice, we can control how those emotions affect or drive our actions.

  • Motivation

    Motivation is the quality of being driven by something whether it is internal or external. As a quality of emotional intelligence, motivation helps us sustain appropriate or preferred actions even in the face of conflicting or contrary emotions. Motivation is the drive to improve ourselves, learn, grow and achieve our goals. Motivation helps us to be resilient, persevere, and forge ahead in the face of difficulty. Learning new and difficult subjects can be daunting and many people give up midway. But with a good understanding of what motivates us and knowing how to channel and sustain our motivation, we can push through to accomplish our goals.

  • Social Awareness (or Empathy)

    Empathy is the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others. With empathy, we can imagine what others are feeling and experiencing, and we can choose to understand and react to them based on the perceived feelings of their situation. Empathy can be practiced by listening to others and observing them and the situations they are in.

  • Social Skills (or Relationship Management)

    Social skills help us to bring all the skills of emotional intelligence into effective relationships with other people, whether at work, school, or in our personal lives. Social skills are the ability to interact well with people and build relationships with them. Without the previously introduced emotional intelligence skills, it is hard to practice social skills. Therefore, our ability to be successful in relationships with other people starts with our ability to understand ourselves and manage our own emotions.

Some Signs of Low Emotional Intelligence

  • Having emotional outbursts that are often out of proportion to the situation at hand.
  • Difficulty listening to others.
  • Becoming argumentative when interacting with someone that has a differing opinion.
  • Regularly blaming others.
  • Inability to understand other people’s feelings, and therefore believing that others are overly sensitive.
  • Difficulty maintaining friendships and other relationships.
  • Unable, or refusing, to see other people’s points of view.

Source

Improving Emotional Intelligence

In the next two sections of this lesson, we will go deeper into developing self-awareness and self-regulation, before ending this week’s lesson content with a discussion on motivation.