Most of us have heard the phrase “success is about who you know,” and that couldn’t be more true. The people we surround ourselves with are a direct reflection of our life and success. But one thing that facilitates this is emotional intelligence, or EQ for short. It’s not just about how smart you are, but also your ability to understand and manage your own emotions and influence others.
So what exactly is EQ? Well, it can be defined in two ways — having a high level of EQ indicates either someone with a high level of self-awareness coupled with an understanding of other people’s emotions, or that someone has the skill set required to work on teams effectively.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman, PhD, notes that there are five key parts to emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness, the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and be aware of how those feelings might affect other people. Self-aware individuals are capable of (1) monitoring their own moods and behaviors in a way that many others may not be able to do so easily; (2) recognizing different emotional reactions from particular situations; and (3) accurately identifying which particular emotion it was (for example, anger or sadness). Becoming self-aware requires someone who can maintain strong mental health by dealing with difficult experiences without becoming mentally drained.
- Self-regulation, knowing what time and place are appropriate for different expression levels — not locking away all emotion like a caged animal. For example, if someone asks you about something personal in front of other people who may feel uncomfortable with that subject matter, then self-regulation would allow you to say, “I’d rather talk about this later.” This makes it possible to avoid creating tension while still giving the true feedback at another time without offending anyone else.
- Motivation, wanting to put the information you have gained from into daily interactions with people, encouraging them when they are down, or helping someone who needs a kind word. For example, if one person has been having a tough time lately because their spouse lost his job, it would be important for other members of our EQ group that day not only to empathize but also to give some ideas about how to get through tough times — perhaps by talking about hobbies and finding different ways to make money at home so as not feel defeated all the time.
- Empathy, the ability to understand how others are feeling, is absolutely critical for emotional intelligence. And it requires more than just being able to recognize other people’s emotions; empathy also involves your responses based on what you sense someone is experiencing. For example: when someone is sad or feeling hopeless about something, do you respond by treating them with extra care and concern? Or do you try making an effort at buoying their spirits?
- Social skills, being a good communicator and leader and helping and supporting others. This way of understanding social dynamics allows us not only to understand power relationships between different groups (in a workplace setting!), but can also help keep our own feelings in check.
Emotional intelligence is an important skill that some people have naturally. Those who are emotionally intelligent are motivated not by external rewards like fame, money, recognition, or acclaim but by their inner needs and goals.
Emotionally intelligent individuals tend to be action-oriented because they set high goals for themselves and are always looking for new ways to achieve these targets more easily. On the other hand, those who lack EQ may never get started on something without being convinced there is some kind of external reward.
So now that you have a better understanding of emotional intelligence and mental health, what are you going to do?
Strengthening your EQ will help strengthen your mental wellness. As I have said in previous articles/blog posts, strengthening our EQ doesn’t necessarily mean that we will also be mentally healthy — there are many factors involved with it like job satisfaction or chronic stressors — so the solution is to have an integrative approach that takes into account all these many factors.
Tomi Mitchell, MD, is a family physician.
This post appeared on KevinMD.