What is emotional intelligence?

The term “emotional intelligence” appeared in the 1990s. Researchers Peter Salovey and John Mayer defined it as a group of mental abilities:

• the ability to perceive and express emotions;
• the ability to increase the efficiency of thinking with the help of emotions;
• the ability to understand one’s own and others’ emotions;
• ability to manage emotions.

“Basically, we have two minds: one thinks, the other feels. These two minds — the emotional and the rational — are almost always in harmony, combining fundamentally different ways of knowing to successfully guide us in the world,” writes science journalist and author of a book on emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman.

— Usually a balance is established between the emotional and rational minds: emotions feed the rational mind and inspire it to action, and the rational mind ennobles emotions and in some cases prohibits their manifestation.

In most cases, these minds are strictly coordinated: feelings are necessary for thinking, and thinking is necessary for feelings. But if passions rage, the balance is disturbed. This means that the emotional mind has taken over and suppressed the rational mind.”¹.

Why do we need emotional intelligence? Coach Leonid Krol suggests approaching this issue from three different angles. So: what does emotional intelligence help, how does it develop and what can prevent it.

How does emotional intelligence help?

• Get rid of stress in case of increased uncertainty and chaos.
• Form images of action in advance, even if there is not enough information.
• It is better to understand people by getting into their shoes.
• Receive sensual pleasure and understand what keeps us in a given situation.
• Processing information is illogical.
• It is nontrivial to set problems and reformulate conditions.
• To go beyond the previous, structured experience.
• Show charm and charisma.
• Optimize individuality and openness of behavior.
• It is better to feel the beauty and depth of the surrounding world.

What do we need to know about it?

• People are alive, even when they forget about it.
• Feelings are with us all the time.
• Thousands of years of evolution have created in man many variants of reactions.
• Aggression is positive, has different forms, it is better to know and use them.
• We are beings who are often distracted.
• The less we say, the stronger our words.
• Either we control our habits, or they control us.
• Control does not mean oppression.
• If we ignore feelings, they take revenge.
• Emotional intelligence is a gift, but it can be easily wasted.
• If you invest in emotional intelligence, you are rich.
• We think with the body, if we think at all.
• Seeing the beauty around and living it helps to think qualitatively differently.

What hinders the development and manifestation of emotional intelligence?

• Acceptance of other people’s “declarations” – feelings, emotions, experiences – for one’s own (out of mental laziness or out of a sense of self-preservation).
• Underestimation of sensory experiences.
• Fear of the flow of one’s own emotional life.
• Inability to feel.
• Not too developed reflection, lack of experience in describing the inner life.
• Hurry and busyness, failure of rhythms – orientation to “external and objective”.
• Declarative, ostentatious efficiency and attempts to measure it.
• Fear of not being like that.
• The inability to observe the little things and link them into “pictures”.
• Desire to generalize, draw conclusions, sum up.
• Ignorance of oneself: one’s own charm and charisma.
• Showing maturity and intelligence.

¹ D. Goleman “Emotional intelligence. Why it might matter more than IQ” (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2015).