Self Help Wellness

Daniel Goleman is a well known international psychologist author of  “Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ ” a bestseller with over a million copies in print worldwide. He has broadly discussed this topic and argued in his book that human competencies  such as empathy, social awareness, self regulation and management adds value to our cognitive abilities in various domains of our lifes from workplace to interpersonal relationships. Emotional intelligence (EI) is simply our ability and capacities to perceive, assess, and manage our emotions and those of others, it’s our ability to recognise our emotions and behave in a rational manner. If you are one for personal development or growth Golemans concept of emotional intelligence can be a real eye opener.Why not start here by testing your Emotional intelligence and if you are up for it feel free to share your feedback. There are lots of test online and  I have tried a couple.

This post is primarily on Golemans view of Emotional intelligence with a few points on how to improve or enhance your EI.

According to some research emotional intelligence is two times more important and a contributing factor to excellence than intellect and expertise alone. I suppose congnitive as well as emotional intelligence are both importance we just have to get the balance right.

Goleman’s model outlines four main EI constructs

1. Self-awareness is our ability to read our emotions and recognize the impact while using our gut feelings to guide our decisions.

2. Self-management  involves controlling our emotions and impulses subsequently adapting to changing circumstances.

3. Social awareness  is our ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions while comprehending social networks.

4. Relationship Management  is our ability to inspire, influences, and develops others while managing conflict.

Emotional intelligence is said to be interconnected to our academic achievements, work ,our ability to communicate effectively, solve everyday problems, build meaningful interpersonal relationships, and even our ability to make moral decisions. Given that EI has the potential to increase our understanding of how individuals behave and adapt to their social environment, it is an essential area to explore at least for personal development . As emotional beings emotional intelligence will certainly serve almost anyone a good purpose. I suppose here you could say that it does not matter how intelligent an individual is cognitively, if they lack emotional intelligence they most likely will get on others peoples nerves and may struggle in their relationships, jobs or social settings .

Look out for the second part of this post on traits and how to develop your  emotional intelligence.

Reference: Wikipedia.

Pic via Kate A’s-Photostream

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