What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EI) was popularised by Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional intelligence [1].

In it (p 43), Goleman cites five domains of EI previously proposed by Peter Salovey and John Mayer [2].

These are:

• Knowing one’s emotions
• Managing [one’s] emotions 
• Motivating oneself
• Recognising emotions in others
• Handling relationships.

Rather than provide yet another article on this subject, may we refer you to the Wikipedia article?  This article may also be useful.  And, of course, Goleman’s book is essential reading.

So what?

The issue for emotional intelligence at work—and any other practitioner in this area—is, what do you do with these five domains?

• How does one recognise and identify one’s emotions?
• What does it mean to “manage” our emotions? Many people in casual conversation, on social media like LinkedIn and other forums, seem to believe that “managing” one’s emotions equates to suppressing our “negative” emotions. Is this what Goleman meant? Is it desirable?
• How can we motivate ourselves?
• How does one recognise and identify emotions in others and how do we know we are “right”?
• And, the particularly difficult one, what does it mean to “handle” our relationships? Other writers often substitute “manage” for “handle”. Does this make a difference?

It is highly regrettable that Goleman writes (p43) that “The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others”.

It isn’t possible to “manage” other people’s emotions. Noone can make another person feel a particular emotion, believe a specific belief, or do a particular action. The best we can hope for is to manage our responses to others’ emotions well and to endeavour to influence others constructively.

What does it mean to be an emotionally intelligent employee, manager and, in particular, leader?  This is the heart of the matter.

We do not believe “leader” is a job: it’s a set of attributes. And we believe that a leader cannot not be emotionally intelligent. But not all emotionally intelligent people are leaders (though they could be). Because EI is a subset of the attributes of leadership, at emotional intelligence at work we focus on leadership rather than EI. EI, in itself, is passive whereas leadership is active, proactive.

Related material:
> Leadership
> What emotional intelligence is not
>  blog:  How is EQ different from IQ?
>  Wikipedia article on EI  (external link)
>  Sonoma State University article on EI  (external link)

[1] Daniel Goleman, Emotional intelligence (Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 43-44 and ch 3, notes 12 and 14
[2] Peter Salovey and John D Mayer, Emotional intelligence, in Imagination, cognition and personality  9 (1990), pp 185-211, specifically p 189

by Jeremy Marchant . © 2014 Jeremy Marchant Limited . last updated  22 october 2014.
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