What is Emotional Intelligence?
“Emotional intelligence (EI) is the set of abilities that account for how people’s emotional reports vary in their accuracy and how the more accurate understanding of emotion leads to better problem solving in an individual’s emotional life. More formally, we defined emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in the self and others” (Salovey, Brackett & Mayer 2007). Goleman (2000) defines emotional intelligence as: the effective awareness, control and management of one's own emotions, and those of other people.
Such an intimate understanding of emotion in oneself and others, allows individuals to consciously guide their thinking and actions based on the positive and negative effects of emotion.
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This multi-dimensional model consists of four abilities:
- Emotional awareness
- Emotional facilitation
- Emotional knowledge
- Emotional regulation
Emotional awareness refers to the ability to be aware of the emotions you personally experience and to express emotions and emotional needs accurately to others.
Emotional facilitation refers to an individual’s ability to use emotions to prioritize thinking by focusing on important information that explains why feelings are being experienced. This factor also includes the ability to adopt multiple perspectives to assess a problem from all sides, including pessimistic and optimistic perspectives (Mayer & Salovey 1997)—an ability that is very important in the context of organisational change.
Emotional knowledge refers to an individual’s ability to understand emotional cycles and complex emotions such as simultaneous feelings of loyalty and betrayal.
Emotional regulation refers to the ability of an individual to connect or disconnect from an emotion depending on its usefulness in any given situation in attempts to manage their emotion.