◄► Emotional Intelligence ◄►

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise your emotions and react to them in a logical, proactive way versus reacting in a negative way that can harm ourselves or others. It’s when you recognise and to a degree control your emotions, rather than them controlling you.

Emotional intelligence also applies for interactions with others; being able to understand how they're feeling, listen to them and relate to their emotions about something.

How is it different to IQ?

IQ is based about mental ability, in particular the ability to understand and learn new information. It's associated with short and long-term memory, fluid and quantative reasoning and general knowledge of how things work in the world.

A person can have high IQ and low EQ - for example, someone who is very intelligent when it comes to science and grasping technical concepts, but has low EQ - arrogant, dislikeable and dismissive of other peoples feelings.

Why is it important?

In the workplace you need to be able to get along with your colleagues. You can have the highest IQ in the office but if your EQ is low people aren’t going to want to be around you or promote you.

Having a balance of both allows you to be a flexible team player that can contribute to the company in many different ways.