Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Everybody's heard of IQ, right? The measurement of cognitive intelligence or ability? Well, as it turns out, there isn't a linear relationship between IQ and a person's success and happiness in life. In fact, the higher a person's IQ is, once it gets above the normal range, the less chance there is that they will lead such a life. There is, however, a very striking correlation between a person's emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) and how successful and happy they consider themselves to be. This may be for a number of reasons.

One is that our society does not require you to perform vast amounts of extremely complex or difficult cognitive work to succeed. Most of what we do in terms of handling information and relationships between facts and data are simple, automatic habitual tasks. Many of them could be (and are) quite easily and efficiently completed by machines. However, our society (by definition) does require us to work with other humans, who are all emotional creatures and may or may not be emotionally balanced, or have high IQ's, which requires much more emotional and social skill than cognitive.

What is meant by or understood of the word "success" is largely an abstract, subjective matter that tends to be based much more on an emotional than logical basis. Different people have different ideas of "success." Being "happy" doesn't have much at all to do with your cognitive abilities, but has everything to do with your emotions. Emotional health and balance is completely necessary in order to be consistently happy. What I love about EQ is that it makes perfect logical sense to put significant effort into improving it. And I love that it makes perfect logical sense because I'm one of those people who has higher IQ than EQ: logic is my friend.

Actually, it makes much more sense to me to try to improve EQ than IQ. This is for three reasons: because IQ is harder to change, because (as just mentioned) my IQ is higher than my EQ, and because EQ is much more effective in helping me reach my goals. Even among the most intellectual people I know, I have yet to meet anybody who seeks to know or understand everything more than they seek happiness (although they may be much better at it). I certainly consider acquiring happiness a much higher end than acquiring vast amounts of information.

How is EQ Determined?

The best way to explain EQ is to show how it is broken up. There are two basic areas or categories: personal competence and social competence. These, in turn, are each broken into two subcategories. Personal competence consists of self-awareness and management; social competence consists of social awareness and relationship management.

I, personally, am weakest in the social awareness area. I'm pretty personally competent, and naturally understand how to deal with other people in different emotional situations, but a lot of the time I just don't notice what others are feeling and thinking (which I think indicates an overly selfish, prideful nature on my part — which I think is the most common weakness among humans). I'm quite capable of doing it, but I tend to get so caught up in my own thoughts (which are usually in La-La-Land and aren't really important) that I don't pay attention to what's happening around me. However, I have made significant improvement in this area, and intend to continue improving.

How is EQ Improved?

One of the major criticisms of the EQ models is that they are too broad in definition, difficult to measure, and there is no universal systematic approach to actively improving one's EQ (most of the research is focused on measuring it rather than changing it). Improving it requires a lot of intuitive reasoning to determine what exercises may be done. However, I find a very interesting similarity between Personal and Social competence and the Personal and Public Victories described by Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits system (the first three habits belong to the Personal Victory, and the second three to the Public Victory; the seventh is how to improve both of them), and it is to this that I recommend turning to improve not only your EQ, but also all other aspects of your life.

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