About Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Emotional Intelligence (EI), often measured as an Emotional Intelligent Quotient (EQ), describes an ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, access, and mange the emotions of self, and others, and groups. It is a relatively new area of psychological research.

Origins of the concept

The idea of emotional intelligence has been around for some considerable time. However it became widely popularised by Daniel Goldman with his best selling book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Goleman built on earlier studies such a E. L. Thorndike at Columbia University, who used the term social intelligence to describe understanding and managing of other people.

In 1975, Howard Gardner Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences introduced the idea of Multiple Intelligences which included both Interpersonal intelligence ( the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people) and Intrapersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate our feelings, fears and motivations). In the view of Gardner, traditional types of intelligence, such as IQ, fail to fully explain cognitive ability. Therefore traditional definitions of intelligence are lacking in ability to fully explain performance outcomes.

Defining emotional intelligence

There is much discussion about the definition of EI, arguments about terminology and that applications .Whilst there are a growing number of contributors to this field of intelligence we have decided for the sake of brevity chosen to comment on two popular definitions and applications.

Namely the work of Steven J. Stein, PhD. and Howard E. Book, M.D. The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. (Mayer & Salovey, 1997)

Our second recommended source would be the work of Tim Sparrow & Amada Knight, Applied EI: the importance of Attitudes in Developing Emotional Intelligence. Their definition of EI: Emotional Intelligence integrates feeling, thinking and doing. It is the habitual practice of thinking about feeling and feeling about thinking when choosing what to do.

Optimising Personal Performance

We need to examine what impact EI leadership has to offer for our personal performance, emotionally, physically and spiritually. There is now widespread support from pioneering researches like that of Dr. Alex Concord of The Concorde Initiative Her understanding of how the brain functions has lead her to identify that the limbic system is in fact the powerhouse and Chief Executive of the human-mind/human body system. Linear thinking is cognitive, but to create transformational change the limbic system has to be involved. Transformational change (limbic) is to change fundamentally how we see things and how you do things as a consequence.

Cognitive change is about providing more guidelines and rules that are more restricting. Limbic change is about changing the individual intention by addressing emotional intelligence that is not really in alignment with who they are now, their current purpose, and that creates more choices.

Dr. Alex Concord call high performance low stress systems. What is stress? Stress arises when the demand on the whole human system exceeds resources in any give time frame. Group work will increase the resources as will coaching increase the resources for the client. In summary to reduce stress, that aim is clearly to ensure that demands are minimised and resource maximised. The greatest demands are internal are much more important than external demands.

Principles of Emotional Intelligence

These eight principles are taken from Applied EI by Tim Sparrow & Amanda Knight

1. We are each of us in control of, and responsible for, our actions.

2. No one else can control out feelings.

3. People are different, they experience the world differently, they feel different things and the want different things.

4. However you, and they, are OK.

5. Feelings and behaviour are separate. Being out of touch with our feelings does not mean being out of control of ourselves and behaviour.

6. All feelings are self-justified, to be accepted, and important

7. Change is possible

8. All people have a natural tendency towards growth and health.

Measuring Individual Effectiveness

Underpinning ie is the JCA theory of Emotional Intelligence (EI) EI is a combination of skills, attitudes and habits that distinguish superior performance from run-of-the-mill performance both in life as a whole and at work. EI is made up of two parts:

Intrapersonal intelligence being intelligent in picking up what is going on inside of us (Self awareness) and doing what we need to do about it (Self management)

Interpersonal intelligence Being intelligent in picking up what is going on in other people    and between people (Other awareness) and doing what we need to do about that (Relationship management).

Core Attitude Scales:

Its hard to develop EI if you do not value yourself and others. The Core attitudes scales underpin development in all aspects of EI

1. Self regard: The degree to which you accept and values yourself

2. Regard for others: The degree to which you accept and value others as people, as distinct from liking or approving of what they may do.

Awareness

Self and Other awareness are the foundations to developing EI. Our feelings tell us what we want, like and need, and what we perceive others feelings will let us know what they want and need.

3. Self awareness: The degree to which you are in touch with your body, your feelings and intuitions

4. Awareness of others: The degree to which you are in touch with the feeling states of others.

Self management

5. Emotional resilience: the degree to which you are able to pick yourself up and bounce back when things go badly for you.

6. Personal power: The degree to which you believe you are in charge of, or take responsibility for, your outcomes in life.

7. Goal directedness: The degree to which you relate your behaviour to long term goals.

8. Flexibility: the degree to which you feel free to adapt your thinking and your behaviour to match the changing situations of life.

9. Personal connectedness: The extent and ease with which you are able to make significant connections with other people by sharing yourself with them.

10. Invitation to trust: The degree to which you invite the trust of others by being principled, reliable, consistent and known.

Relationship management

These scales reflect EI in action i.e. patterns of behaviour, or what a person tends to actually do. As such they are more closely liked with Relationship management.

As these scales are bipolar we recommend you download the full sample report for a fuller explanation. Free sample report

Developing Emotional Intelligence

Conditional Self Regard finding the hidden drivers. These are the rules by which we live our lives. These rules are literally self imposed conditions of work e.g. If our job is to make everyone else happy and we upset someone, then our self worth will plummet. If our job is to do everything perfectly right, and we make a mistake, we will feel bad.

Part of the purpose of EI is to undo the rules that bind us. We need to be clear about external conditions of worth. If our value was contingent on someone else, this would be a sorry state of affairs. Quite simply we are totally responsible for our feelings. With the results of a structured individual effectiveness profile we can begin to accurately correct some of our erroneous ideas about our self worth.