COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

The ability to express and control our own emotions is important, but so is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. Imagine a world where you couldn’t understand when a friend was feeling sad or when a co-worker was angry. Psychologists refer to this ability as emotional intelligence, and some experts even suggest that it can be more important than IQ. Learn more about exactly what emotional intelligence is, how it works, and how it is measured.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic. Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have been the leading researchers on emotional intelligence. In their influential article “Emotional Intelligence,” they defined emotional intelligence as, “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (1990).

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The Four Branches of Emotional Intelligence. Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of emotional intelligence: the perception of emotion, the ability reason using emotions, the ability to understand emotion and the ability to manage emotions. 1.Perceiving Emotions: The first step in understanding emotions is to accurately perceive them. In many cases, this might involve understanding nonverbal signals such as body language and facial expressions. 2.Reasoning with Emotions: The next step involves using emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. Emotions help prioritize what we pay attention and react to; we respond emotionally to things that garner our attention. 3.Understanding Emotions: The emotions that we perceive can carry a wide variety of meanings. If someone is expressing angry emotions, the observer must interpret the cause of their anger and what it might mean.

For example, if your boss is acting angry, it might mean that he is dissatisfied with your work; or it could be because he got a speeding ticket on his way to work that morning or that he’s been fighting with his wife. 4.Managing Emotions: The ability to manage emotions effectively is a key part of emotional intelligence. Regulating emotions, responding appropriately and responding to the emotions of others are all important aspect of emotional management. According to Salovey and Mayer, the four branches of their model are, “arranged from more basic psychological processes to higher, more psychologically integrated processes. For example, the lowest level branch concerns the (relatively) simple abilities of perceiving and expressing emotion. In contrast, the highest level branch concerns the conscious, reflective regulation of emotion” (1997). What everyone needs to know.

Emotional Intelligence Is the Other Kind of Smart. When emotional intelligence first appeared to the masses in 1995, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the sole source of success—IQ. Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up fewer than two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence.

Personal competence is made up of your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies. •Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen. •Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behavior.

Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behavior, and motives in order to improve the quality of your relationships. •Social Awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on. •Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence, IQ, and Personality Are Different.
Emotional intelligence taps into a fundamental element of human behavior that is distinct from your intellect. There is no known connection between IQ and emotional intelligence; you simply can’t predict emotional intelligence based on how smart someone is. Intelligence is your ability to learn, and it’s the same at age 15 as it is at age 50. Emotional intelligence, on the other hand, is a flexible set of skills that can be acquired and improved with practice. Although some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, you can develop high emotional intelligence even if you aren’t born with it.

Personality is the final piece of the puzzle. It’s the stable “style” that defines each of us. Personality is the result of hard-wired preferences, such as the inclination toward introversion or extroversion. However, like IQ, personality can’t be used to predict emotional intelligence. Also like IQ, personality is stable over a lifetime and doesn’t change. IQ, emotional intelligence, and personality each cover unique ground and help to explain what makes a person tick.

Emotional Intelligence Is Linked to Performance.
How much of an impact does emotional intelligence have on your professional success? The short answer is: a lot! It’s a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction with a tremendous result. Talent Smart tested emotional intelligence alongside 33 other important workplace skills, and found that emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all types of jobs. Your emotional intelligence is the foundation for a host of critical skills—it impacts most everything you say and do each day. Emotional intelligence is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence. Of all the people we’ve studied at work, we’ve found that 90% of top performers are also high in emotional intelligence. On the flip side, just 20% of bottom performers are high in emotional intelligence.

You can be a top performer without emotional intelligence, but the chances are slim. Naturally, people with a high degree of emotional intelligence make more money—an average of $29,000 more per year than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence. The link between emotional intelligence and earnings is so direct that every point increase in emotional intelligence adds $1,300 to an annual salary. These findings hold true for people in all industries, at all levels, in every region of the world. We haven’t yet been able to find a job in which performance and pay aren’t tied closely to emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence Can Be Developed.

The communication between your emotional and rational “brains” is the physical source of emotional intelligence. The pathway for emotional intelligence starts in the brain, at the spinal cord. Your primary senses enter here and must travel to the front of your brain before you can think rationally about your experience. However, first they travel through the limbic system, the place where emotions are generated. So, we have an emotional reaction to events before our rational mind is able to engage. Emotional intelligence requires effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of the brain.

“Plasticity” is the term neurologists use to describe the brain’s ability to change. Your brain grows new connections as you learn new skills. The change is gradual, as your brain cells develop new connections to speed the efficiency of new skills acquired.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

e. Generalization
The student learns that Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic. Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have been the leading researchers on emotional intelligence. In their influential article “Emotional Intelligence,” they defined emotional intelligence as, “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (1990).

Emotional intelligence(EI) is defined as “the capacity for recognizing a person’s own feelings and those of others, for motivating themselves and for managing emotions well in themselves and other relationships” (Goleman, 1998). Serat (2009) on the other hand defines EI as the “ability, capacity, skill or self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others and of groups” (p. 2).

EI has significantly gained popularity in the world mainly because of its association with a person to manage his/her own emotions and handling other people. It is believed that people with high EI are not only good in knowing and understanding themselves, but are also able to sense and respect other people’s emotions.

More to this, Serat (2009) argues that high EI people are more optimistic, affable and resilient than people who have lower EI. Over the years, analysts have drawn a fine distinction between Intelligence Quotient and Emotional intelligence while stating that people with high EI are able to cope and relate with others better than people who have high IQ but are devoid of high EI levels.

Analysts agree that EI is important. However, they are yet to device ways through which IE can be measured. The different instruments available for measuring the same sometimes overlap or divulge thus making it hard for ordinary people to know just what is the appropriate tool of measurement (Cherniss & Goleman, 2001). Admittedly, EI is a complex issue that has been the debate of numerous debates.

One thing that analysts seem to agree on is the fact that EI is a combination of emotional and cognitive abilities. To this end, Goleman (1998) states that EI is the combination of “emotional centers of the brain (the limbic system) and the cognitive centers (prefrontal cortex)”.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

Cherniss & Goleman (2001), states that EI provides a bedrock for effective performance by individuals in their respective places of work, thus encouraging development in any given society. In managers, the authors argue that high EI is a tool that enables conflict resolution to take place more easily and effectively that would be the case if the manager had low IE levels.

According to Goleman (1998), EI has varied competencies, some which has a clear relation, while it is still unclear about how some of the competencies are related. The author suggests that self-awareness produces social awareness and self control. The two on the other hand are responsible for breeding social skills in a person.

According to arguments presented by different authors, this essay holds the opinion that EI unlike IQ is not a pre-programmed quality in the brain. One gets the impression that some of the qualities of EI can be deliberately acquired. Mersino (2007) for example argues that getting in touch with one’s feeling is a good starting point to developing EI. Further, the author states that self-awareness can be learnt. This then means that a person with low EI can still work at developing the same to higher levels.

In addition to self-awareness, Mersino (2007) suggests developing accurate self-assessment skills. This regards viewing one-self accurately and even seeking opinions regarding one’s behaviors from others. Citing Daniel Goleman, Mersino (2007) identifies self-assessing people as those who are conscious of their strengths and weakness; reflect and learn from past experiences; open to feedback, lessons, perspectives and beneficial comments; and possess a sense of humor towards their achievements and failings.

Citing Gardner (1983), Goleman (1998) identifies seven categories of intelligence. They are: Intrapersonal, interpersonal, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, visual/spatial, logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic. Goleman (1998) however associates EI with emotional competence, which he argues is responsible for self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

Under self awareness, a person develops emotional awareness, self-assessment skills and self-confidence. Under self-management, one gains emotional control, transparency, optimism, initiative, adaptability and transparency. Under social awareness, one develops service orientation, organizational awareness and empathy. Under relationship management, one is able to relate with others, develops conflict management skills, and is able to develop inspirational leadership skills, in addition to team working skills (Goleman et al, 2002).

Ruderman et al. (2001) argues that while high IQ can result to high competencies, it does not automatically result in high EI. As such, the authors identify a need for highly intelligent people to develop their EI capabilities in order to be able to relate well with other people.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

Most notably, Ruderman et al. (2001) notes that people with high IQ levels are good performers at work, but rarely know how to relate with other people. Because of their skills and competencies, they look down on other people who are not as skillful as they are, and if put in managerial positions, are more likely to command people under them rather than create work teams where strengths can be shared. “Such characters make you wonder how people can be so smart, yet so incapable of understanding themselves and others” (p.3).

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According to Ruderman et al. (2001) emotional intelligence can not only be learnt, but can also be enhanced. They suggest that the first step to developing IE is coming to terms with ones emotions. The next step would be to deliberately guide thoughts and actions towards a particular identified path.

In management, Rudeman et al (2001) argues that EI has been in existence for much longer but was known as ‘peoples skills’. People’s skills were a management concept that was endorsed for use in managers, since analysts had proved that managers who possessed the same were more successful than those who did not. While the importance of intellect was not underrated in workplaces, the same in management positions was seen as a complementary attribute.

According to Ruderman et al. (2001), a manager needs to engage other people in the management process. This calls for proper people engagement through talking and listening, influencing decisions and laying a good environment for consensus building. The manager is also responsible for putting people working under him or with him at ease.

This however is closely related to the manager’s happiness. If the manager is always angry, impatient and fails to understand other people’s positions, he or she is more prone to knee-jerk responses. This means he can be quick to anger and lashing out at other people.

Generally, people who are self-aware have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and are therefore more willing to seek assistance beyond their strengths. They also appreciate other people’s strengths and are more willing to chip in when others need help.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence no doubts seem to be the missing link that would lead to success on a personal level as well as success in the workplace. No one wants to be around a person who cannot quite grasp the extent of his strengths and weaknesses.

More to this, as much as people admire a skillful person, they detest such a person if he or she cannot pass on the skills to others or better still, a person who is patient with people who are not as equally gifted. As the different authors covered in this essay agree, emotional intelligence is indeed the bedrock of better relationships. Once a person understands him/herself, he/she is able to know the limits of what he/she can do. More to this, he is able to respect others for what they can do.

People with high EI are therefore easier to cope with, they are more willing to change and adapt to new environments and are more empathetic to other people’s causes. In an organizational setting, high EI people are relied upon as moderators and people who are capable of fostering good working relationships based on understanding. They are also able to foster harmony, continuity and stability.COMM 1004 week 5 Emotional Intelligence