Improving Emotional Intelligence - A Requisite

Improving Emotional Intelligence - A Requisite

“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Theodore Rosevelt

 

Recently while reading through a blog on emotions, I came across an unusual story. One of the writers’ acquaintances’ lost his father to cancer and shortly after that, he wrote a long Instagram post describing the happy times he shared with his father and how much he will miss him. His post fetched him over 200 likes and many comments of condolences and comforting words. At this vulnerable time when he needs people’s emotional support and respect for his feelings, there arrives a comment from his girlfriend, “HAPPY 200 LIKES! How do you do this?” This is a perfect example of low emotional intelligence and some other awful traits. Now, there can be context to it; however, on a public forum, it just comes across as insensitive. 

 

Imagine a space in which you are not able to understand what people around you are feeling! There will be no bonding, no relationships. Life will be so lifeless!!

 

It’s been over two decades that the world is discussing emotional intelligence. The biggest contributor in this field is Daniel Goleman. An author and science journalist, Daniel Goleman has been writing in the context of brain, behavior, and emotional intelligence for more than a decade now. He mentions, “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand. If you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” 

Mr. Goleman is right. Being skillful alone doesn’t work; one needs to be empathetic too. What is being “empathetic”? I guess readers have very frequent exposure to the term ‘empathy’. Hence, rather than going with an old-school literal definition of empathy, let’s try to understand it in the context of an example. A couple of weeks ago, I experienced immense pain in my extreme inner lower left jaw. It was my ‘wisdom-tooth’, which had lost its direction! I was uncomfortable with the idea of reaching out to a dentist amidst the current pandemic situation. However, not being able to resist the pain, I could not help it; and ended up going to the dentist. I was very fearful and apprehensive about the whole process. Then I spoke to the dentist. He first listened to my concerns and then spared a good thirty minutes to help me understand the whole process of tooth extraction and how he himself got his ‘wisdom-tooth’ extracted, and hence he was able to empathize with my feelings. It was comforting to hear that. I could trust him and the whole process of my ‘wisdom-tooth’ extraction went smoothly. 

 

Research suggests few ways to improve emotional intelligence:

  • Observe & Listen - To understand what others are feeling, it’s important to pay attention to their behavior and communication. Feed time into listening to what others communicate verbally and non-verbally.

  • Empathize - To understand somebody, we first need to connect with their background, what has shaped them to who they are? And then imaging what it would feel like to be in his/ her position. 

  • Reflect- Consider evaluating every individual’s emotional reactions from a third person’s perspective. This helps in standing on neutral ground, rather than being judgemental. 

  • Self-awareness - Understanding your own emotions, motivators, strengths, and challenges would help in setting realistic expectations from yourself as well as others. Not being overly critical, you would be able to recognize the impact of your actions on other's emotions. 

  • Self-regulation - It is about being resilient and integrated. Being emotionally intelligent is also about not reacting impulsively to matters. “Mindfulness”, a science-backed self-regulation mechanism, is proven to be productive in understanding emotions and establishing control over them.

  • Social skills - The ability to build rapport and handle relationships with care. Socially skilled people are great at managing groups.

 

Now that’s not it. We need to make it all work incongruence. Sounds tough, ugh? Don’t worry. You don’t have to aim for a 100/100 in any of these factors. Trying to get perfection in any of the above skills might cause fatigue. Therefore, to enhance emotional intelligence, it’s important to look out for the appropriate balance of all these skills and not perfection!

 

By Padmini Roy

Counselling Psychologist & Researcher