Why your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) matters for your success
And why is even more important than your IQ
It is true that nowadays one of the most demanding and trendy topics in the tech world is Artificial Intelligence. Some claim though that the field itself is not developing as fast as it should because of one thing: emotional intelligence, which involves understanding human nature and self-awareness. How can we create perfect AI when we as human beings are not fully aware of our own potential?
The reason for why Emotional Intelligence is a vital part of our lives and an important attitude to master, is because it affects directly our mental health.
“Becoming self-aware is an early step in the creation of the life that you want. It helps you pinpoint what your passions and emotions are, and how your personality can help you in life.” — was said in the DGH blog.
During our last skill session at The D., Tarek Ez-Eldin delivered a presentation on this exact topic.
The ability to identify our own emotions and the ones from others. But why do we need it? Emotional Intelligence help us as humans to get motivated using our internal energy, and to monitor our emotions and those of the people around us.
The importance of being aware of ourselves, and have a control over your EQ is to be able to interact and connect with others, as well as to see and monitor a situation.
In order to be able to monitor properly any kind of situations and be aware of our environment and how to interact with others, we must take into consideration four components:
- Perception (how we perceive others and our environment).
- Understanding our emotions: why do we feel the way we do during a specific situation?
- Managing those emotions: how do we deal with emotions coming from our perception.
- Taking decisions: to fix or not to fix and issue; to act or not to act on a situation.
Perception is the actual process by which our brains connect with our sensory cues with past experiences, to make sense of our current environment and therefore take better decisions.
Let’s first approach the actual, physical reasons of how and why does the body create emotions.
The emotional understanding process depends on two components in the brain: the thalamus and the amygdala.
The thalamus is the bridge between the eyes and the brain. According to the article written in the blog ‘About Memory’, the name, Thalamus, “means “inner chamber”, and accordingly is located deep within the cerebrum. It is an egg-shaped structure lying at the very top of the brain stem, above the hypothalamus. The thalamus relays all information received from the senses (except smell) to the various processing centers in the cerebral cortex. Recent research also suggests that the thalamus regulates the electrical rhythms that parts of the brain use to communicate with each other.”
Speed of reaction and the process itself depends on the distance between you and the subject involved and your age (as it is directly related to the health status of your thalamus).
As the study ‘Cognitive Brain Research’ shows on the Science Direct website:
“The present study evaluated the role of the thalamus in age-related cognitive decline by investigating the correlations between thalamic volume, cognition and age.
“The thalamic decrease in volume correlated with the diminished performance on tests of cognitive speed. Additionally, in young and middle-aged, but not in old subjects, the size of the thalamus predicted performance on tasks that require cognitive speed.”
The amygdala is a nut size organ in the brain that creates emotions: if there is a dysfunction with this organ, then a person will generate less emotions.
On another note, the amygdala cannot be changed, people who lack this empathy, perception and self-awareness are most likely to suffer from a dysfunction in the amygdala.
Sometimes emotions get in the way and we reflect them with our body gestures, which might either support our verbal message or give it a wrong meaning.
EQ is something you know how to do by and with experience, as time passes and you become more open-minded, understanding and aware of yourself.
You will become acquaintance with your self-awareness increments and you learn how to interact and understand your environment. This includes being aware of your body and body language.
Here is an interesting analysis on the body language at the recent Summit Press Conference where President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin were interviewed, which reflects on the importance of nonverbal and emotional intelligence.
These factors: body language, nonverbal communication and emotional intelligence are well studied, learnt and applied by public figures such as politicians. The reason why, is simply because the human body can deliver a message without needing to speak out loud.
As you can see in the pictures from the article, “Putin’s posture projects health, vigor, and dominance — while Trump’s configuration conveys a tired, stressed, and submissive emotional tone.”
Controlling our emotions or understanding the ones from people we interact with is not always an easy job. Sometimes we may experience what is called an ‘amygdala hijack’ or more commonly known as ‘flip outs’, or find ourselves interacting with people who will have those.
“Many experts now believe that a person’s emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) may be more important than their Intelligence Quotient and is certainly a better predictor of success, quality of relationships, and overall happiness.” -says Royale Scuderi on her article ‘Sorry, But EQ Is Way More Important Than IQ These Days.’
That is why the emphasis on why EQ is considered nowadays more important than IQ. What is the benefit from having a high IQ if when needing to interact with others, such as teamwork at our job place or school, we do not know how to engage or interact with others? Or if we do not spend enough time developing ourselves and looking after our health?
“Emotional Intelligence, and our ability to draw on it as a reserve, helps us in so many ways: from assisting in looking after our physical and mental health and well-being, through to our ability to inspire and lead. It’s there in our ability to manage effective relationships and our armour and shield when it comes to conflict resolution. It is, in so many ways, the driver of success.” -Said by Natural HR on their article ‘Why Is Emotional Intelligence Important?’ by Natural HR.
What are the benefits of having a high-standard of Emotional Intelligence? There are multiple:
- Personal & social competencies: talkative, sociable and pay attention to details
- Better self-awareness: confidence
- More outgoing: curious and energetic
- Better understanding of others: empathy
- Better conflict resolution skills
- More democratic: creates and looks for common solutions
- Career oriented: they are aware of what drives them, the field they outshine at and how to improve and grow.
Studies have shown that people with low emotional intelligence lack all these skills which result in them being bad communicators. They lack empathy, prefer isolation and tend to experience relationship and career failure.
We can follow the steps we take when learning anything: we first research, so that we can develop an idea or project, and finally we put the theory into practice — in this case, by engaging with people:
- Research: Listen more than you talk
- Develop: Share with others
- Practice and practice again, educate yourself
According to an article written by ‘Develop Good Habits’ blog, self-awareness means:
“That you have a sharp realization of your personality, including your strengths and weaknesses, your thoughts and beliefs, your emotions, and your motivations.”
Today, 70% of people are not aware of themselves or lack self-awareness. Everyone is different, so different methods would work for different people: have clear objectives, keep a journal and have self-reflection, have goals, accept and ask for feedback from people who spend time with you (whether it is at work, home, school…).
So we can conclude that in order to have a balanced, healthy self-awareness, we need to dedicate daily, constant time on self-development and acceptance, so that we can be able to understand ourselves, take the best decisions and interact with people around us, whether they are close to us or not.
You can learn more by listening to this webinar about the link between body language and emotional intelligence (part 1) — and how to create bottom-line business value with emotional intelligence (part 2), by Patryk Wezowski, Founder of the Center for Body Language, and Joshua Freedman, CEO of Six Seconds — The Emotional Intelligence Network.
Originally published at medium.com on July 26, 2018.
