Why Emotional Intelligence Makes You More Successful

It is a common knowledge that individuals with high emotional intelligence have a greater chance of getting hired, promoted, and earning a better salary.

An individual’s ability to identify and control his or her emotions and to be able to understand the emotions of others is termed as emotional intelligence. When an individual has high emotional intelligence, they can build better relationships, defuse conflict in teams, reduce team stress, and also improve job satisfaction. A high emotional intelligence paves the way for increased team productivity and retention of employees as well. That’s the reason employers are keener towards hiring and promoting candidates who have a high emotional quotient (EQ).

According to Daniel Goleman, there are five pillars of emotional intelligence. Let’s take a look at them to figure out how these pillars can give you an edge.

Self-awareness

An individual’s ability to identify one’s own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, emotional triggers, values, motivations, goals, and the ability to understand how these factors can affect his or her thoughts and behaviour is termed as self-awareness.

For instance, if you are suddenly feeling annoyed, stressed, or uninspired, probably it is a good time to check with yourself what it is that is making you feel these emotions. When you are able to identify the emotion and its cause, you find yourself in a much better space to address the same by taking the right action.

Self-management

The ability to regulate your emotions and to be able to control them instead of them controlling you is termed as self-management. It is a fact that even individuals with a high EQ may be subject to impulses, negative emotions such as stress and anger, bad moods etc. However, when you have better self-management, you can delay your response to certain aggressive or stressful situations. When you are able to delay your response, it gives you time to react thoughtfully in a much more clear-headed manner instead of reacting impulsively. Negative emotions not only impact the people in and around you, but it has a negative bearing on your well being as well.

Motivation

The key factor which prompts you to take action whenever you face a certain setback or an obstacle is termed as motivation. Individuals with a low motivation level are more likely to be averse towards taking risks and they quickly become anxious and give up. Owing to their lack of motivation, it may prompt them to express negatively pertaining to their responsibilities at work or project goals. This can highly impact the overall morale of the team.

Individuals who are highly motivated are more likely to seek feedback, push themselves, strive towards improving their knowledge and skills and monitor their own progress as well. That is why such individuals are always considered to be an asset to the team.

Empathy

When you have the ability to emotionally connect with others and understand their concerns, feelings, and points of view it is termed as empathy. This is a key skill to possess especially when it comes to negotiating with both internal and external customers and stakeholders. Empathy helps you to anticipate the needs or reaction of others.  Empathy is an important quality to possess especially when you work in a team. It helps in generating harmony within the team. When you are able to identify and respond to the emotional needs of your team members, it automatically paves the way for a happy work culture.

Relationship management

An individual’s ability to strike a rapport with colleagues, build trust and garner respect from colleagues is termed as relationship management. It is as simple as trusting and to be trusted in return in the team. A manager who has great relationship management skills is able to successfully guide, inspire, as well as develop their team members thereby impacting the overall productivity and performance of his or her team.

While it may seem that emotional intelligence comes naturally to some, it is possible to increase one’s emotional intelligence if you are willing to genuinely work towards it!