A simple definition of emotional intelligence is used to monitor your own emotions and other people’s emotions, distinguish different emotions and correctly label them, and use emotional information to direct your thinking, your actions and your influence on the behaviour of others.
There are five key elements of emotional intelligence, says Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist, which popularize emotional intelligence.
Self-Awareness
This is the ability to identify and know one’s emotions, motivations, and abilities. Understanding their emotions will affect on others too. Self-awareness is a major component influencing personal development. Goleman says that an individual must be able to track their emotion and detect emotion in order to reach a state of full self-awareness. Emotionally mature traits include the courage to look at yourself and your mistakes and a consciousness of how others perceive you.
Usually, we did not realize how our emotional nature is triggered and under what circumstances. As we might get upset easily because of the comments in a social media post. Individuals need to be truly aware of their emotions, regulate and express it in a socially acceptable way. We do not reflect on what we have done unless it goes wrong badly. A person with high self-awareness will go back to their actions and behaviour frequently and find out their strengths and things to be improved.
Self-regulation
This is the ability to manage your impulses, the ability to reason when you speak or react, and the ability to properly voice yourself. Goleman stated that emotional maturity is being able to be accountable for your actions, being adaptable to change, and being able to adequately react to irrational emotions or behaviour to other peoples.
For example, if somebody is screaming at you, you understand that they are may not be angry at you. You will have the ability to perceive that they may be angry with a specific situation and feel that they need to express their feelings to someone. You wouldn’t take this personally or respond back furiously.
Individuals need to talk back to themselves and control their emotions. Emotion regulation is one of the crucial parts in emotion intelligence as a person need to have this ability to have high emotional intelligence.
There are 4 components in self-regulation:
- Self-control
- Self-control does not mean to mask or hide your emotions, but appropriately acknowledges and regulates them. This does not indicate attempting to make rash or over-reacting judgments to a situation but remaining calm and reasonable.
- It leads to the ability to make balanced choices based on what really counts and not just how we think at the point of time. Individuals with good self-control tend to stay calm even when they are stressed.
- Under pressure, they are still being able to think clearly and still make the best decisions.
- Trustworthiness
& Conscientiousness
- Both trustworthiness and conscience are about’ good’ behaviour according to your personal values and ethics code.
- Trustworthiness is your tendency to preserve your integrity, which means what you are doing is in line with your personal biases.
- Conscience is to take responsibility for your own individual performance and ensures that it fits your ability and values.
- Adaptability
- Daniel Goleman interpreted adaptability as flexible in responding to change.
- Personal change is very stressful in human being without careful control and development of our personal adaptability and resilience.
- However, it is possible to embrace change as an adventure rather than as a problem by knowing what is happening and improving our ability to handle change.
- Innovation
- Innovation is open to new things and methods.
- Search for new ideas from a variety of sources
- Be prepared to accept new solutions to the problem
- Be ready to see things from other points of view
- Take more risks in thinking
Motivation
This is keen to learn and boosting one’s self. It provides the strength and courage to move on when life has obstacles in the way. Motivation is about goals setting and keeps going with them. In this category, a person will have traits such as initiative and commitment to completing a task, and determination in the face of adversity is an emotionally mature, stated by Goleman.
Four elements that constitute motivation
- Personal drive to obtain
- The eagerness to improve or fulfil certain standards
- Commitment to personal or organizational goals
- An initiative that he described as preparation to act on chances and optimism
- The ability to proceed and pursue
Empathy
This is the tendency to recognize emotions and reactions from other peoples. Only when self-awareness is achieved can empathy be achieved. Goleman claims that before they can understand others, one must be able to understand oneself.
Emotional maturity in this category includes people with characteristics such as the perception of others, interest in other peoples ‘ concerns and worries, the ability to predict emotional responses to a problem or situation and understanding societal norms and know reasons of people behave the way they do.
Social Skills
This is the tendency of an individual to capture jokes, humour, customer service, maintain friendships and relationships, and reach a compromise with others. Goleman says that within this component, emotional maturity defines someone with good communication skills, good time management, the skill to be a leader or manage a group of people, and the ability to overcome challenging situations or disputes through negotiation or persuasion
