What is Emotional Intelligence?
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence refers to a specific form of intelligence which is centred around using emotional information in a meaningful way. This includes the way we understand and communicate our own emotions, how we perceive the emotions of others and how we make decisions.
Every day, we face a variety of challenges in the workplace: making decisions, meeting deadlines and completing tasks. But how often are we held back by problems caused by pressure, poor communication and unclear objectives? Many employees are under-performing due to a lack of self-confidence, demotivation and anxiety.
This is where emotional intelligence can really make a difference. It’s not about suppressing our emotions but instead working with them in an intelligent way to help us navigate everyday life.
Models of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) can be defined in a number of different ways. Below are two well-known models of EI:
The EQ-i 2.0
This trait based model defines emotional intelligence as a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we: perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.
The EQ-i 2.0 model of emotional intelligence produces an overall snapshot of one’s emotional intelligence and their social and emotional functioning and is measured using the EQ-i 2.0 & EQ 360 assessments.
The MSCEIT
According to the Mayer and Salovey model, emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge and to regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.
This is an ability-based model of emotional intelligence and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is used to measure one's performance on 8 different tasks.
