Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Matters More Than IQ. Here's How to Improve Yours.
I just spent an hour looking for a quote I saw on IG last year—couldn’t find it. But, it goes something like this: The emotional tone in your childhood home was set by the most emotionally unstable and unavailable parent.
This is important because home is our first classroom. It's the place the larger world was modeled. If you had an emotionally unstable parent or caretaker, emotional intelligence was not modeled for you.
For a child with emotionally unstable parents, the ability to communicate clearly, to make yourself seen and known was a lesson in thwarting your own needs.
Or, if you suffered from a systemic, chronic or emotional disorder, like I did–panic disorder–in order to access your reason, you had to fight through the somatic messages your terrified body was sending you.
Because I was constantly trapped inside a feeling state, I have always been in deep communication with emotions and feelings, and believed that they instructed our thoughts.
This was a notion people have pushed back on my entire adult life. But I stand by it.
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So imagine my delight when I read in Daniel Goleman’s 1995 seminal book Emotional Intelligence that the neocortex—our rational, thinking brain—grew from our emotional brain. Our limbic brain is the first to have emerged in mammals. It’s our original prehistoric emotional brain, and that’s all we had for a very, very long time.
Until …
… we began to develop some rationality, which led to evolutionary changes, and from the brainstem grew a neocortex, otherwise known as our rational brain.
This means that our rational brain grew from our emotional brain.
Another way to say this is: As a very small child, I was right. Emotions DID come first!
Because the brain grows so slowly, slower than the world around us, we often react to our contemporary dilemmas with the emotional grace of a pleistocene mammal.
Meaning: Our instinctual reflex is not often socially intelligent. We often lack finesse in moments of great duress, or even minor conflict.
The ability to “read the room” and respond accordingly is called Emotional Intelligence (EQ).
More precisely, EQ is the ability to identify and grow your own social and emotional skills and to have competency at self-regulation.
People with developed emotional intelligence have a high degree of social competency; they can read their own and others’ emotions, and can take the temperature of the emotional landscape and act accordingly.
In every setting—school, work, home, parties—being emotionally intelligent is a valuable and enviable thing to be.
A person with high emotional intelligence is often seen as being self-aware.
Getty Images | Carol Yepes
Despite setbacks, a person with emotional intelligence finds it easier to motivate and persevere despite any setbacks or frustrations. They have a profound ability to regulate their moods and delay gratification. They can express their emotions clearly, control their responses, and offer empathy, understanding and respond appropriately in return.
Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to introduce language and meaning in the rational neocortex to the chaotic whiplash of emotions rising from our prehistoric brainstem.
The term “emotional intelligence” was coined by the psychologists' Peter Salovey and John Mayer (not the singer), and made public in 1990 when they published the paper “Emotional Intelligence” in Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol 9(3), a quarterly psychology journal.
People who have developed emotional intelligence are those who “understand and express their own emotions, recognize emotions in others, regulate affect, and use moods and emotions to motivate adaptive behaviors.”
They believed that a unitary intelligence was the foundation holding up the skills they defined as “emotional intelligence.” Their version of EQ had four branches:
Identifying emotions on a nonverbal level.
Using emotions to guide cognitive thinking.
Understanding the information emotions convey and the actions emotions generate.
Regulating one’s own emotions, for personal benefit and for the common good.
During this period (early 1990s), Daniel Goleman was a science reporter at the New York Times when he came across the work of Mayer and Salovey. He explored their EQ work and deepened it.
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There are five components to Goleman’s version of emotional intelligence. They are:
1. Emotional Self-awareness:
Knowing, recognizing, and understanding what one is feeling at any given time and understanding the impact those moods have on others. Emotional self-awareness is the basis for making good decisions. A person with emotional self-awareness knows their strengths and weaknesses, and are clear about their values and morals.
2. Self-regulation:
The ability to control and manage your emotions, the negative ones in particular, and anticipating consequences before acting on impulse. Self-regulation is the ability to hold yourself personally accountable for your mistakes, and to step back and take a breath instead of exploding.
3. Motivation:
How you use your motivation to improve and achieve. People with good motivation enjoy learning, set high standards, and work toward their goals. They find new ways when they hit roadblocks and persevere when they don’t quite get something right. People who are properly motivated are more optimistic and resilient. They understand that failing is not the end of any story, it’s just a stop along the way.
4. Empathy:
An empathetic person is able to correctly sense other people’s feelings. They don’t deny, gaslight, dismiss, demean, or condescend to others when confronted or criticized. Instead, they accept the critique (if warranted), hold themselves accountable, and make sure the other person feels seen, heard, and understood. A person with empathy puts themselves in another person’s body to feel for themselves the conflict boggling about in their body. They are clear communicators, are inclusive, and respect everyone equally.
5. Social skills:
A person with social skills is adept at managing their social and personal relationships; they often inspire others and are a great team player. They are as great at listening as they are in sharing. They give praise where due, resolve conflict, and can nimbly manage change.
If you are NONE of these things, do not despair! There are ways of working on and building your emotional Intelligence. These abilities come in handy at work, at home, at parties, in school … everywhere.
Getty Images | Jose Luis Pelaez Inc
Here are some ways you can practice growing your EQ.
Listen
People often think they are great listeners, when in fact they aren’t. Listening requires focused attention, not half there and half scrolling through your brain data bank for what you want to say in response.
When you listen, watch the way a person holds their body. Listening requires awareness of body language.
Empathize
Imagine not just being the person who is talking, but imagine living with the same situation they are. If YOU were living with the degree of stress they are—in fact, remember that time you had $30 in the bank and no job?—you’d feel the way they do now. With that knowledge, you can now see from another person’s perspective instead of through your own limited experiences.
Reflect
Take what a friend has told you into consideration. Understand how their emotions might be influencing their behaviors, and decisions. How would you behave in their situation? Can you see how their emotions are playing into how they are thinking and behaving?
This is the foundational work of EQ.
When you are adept, you will have an easier time accepting criticism and holding yourself accountable for your oversights and failings.
You’ll be able to share yourself more freely with others, and move on after mistakes.
When you solve problems, you’ll be taking everyone’s feelings into account so that the solution works for everyone.
You’ll understand why you do the things you do, and why others do the things they do. With that sort of understanding in our sight, we might find that our relationships deepen and grow stronger.
Getty Images | Richard Drury
And you? Do you consider yourself emotionally intelligent? How did you learn, and what do you still need to work on?
Until next week I remain…
Amanda
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