11 Emotional Intelligence

Introduction to Emotions

In this activity, we are going to explore and test your emotions. And right after,
tell what was happening when you felt this emotion. Emotions are what you
feel on the inside when things happen. Emotions are also known as feelings.

1. Afraid: feeling fear and worry

2. Angry: feeling mad with a person, act, or idea
3. Ashamed: feeling bad after doing wrong
4. Confident: feeling able to do something
5. Confused: feeling unable to think clear
6. Depressed: feeling sad, blue, discouraged, and unhappy
7. Embarrassed: feeling worried about what others may think
8. Energetic: feeling full of energy
9. Excited: feeling happy and aroused
10. Glad: feeling joy and pleasure
11. Jealous: feeling upset when someone has something that you would
like to have, or they get to do something you wanted
12. Lonely: feeling alone and that nobody care
13. Proud: feeling pleased for doing well
14. Relaxed: feeling at ease and without worry, calm
15. Stressed: feeling tense, tired, uneasy, and overwhelmed

A Lesson Proper for Week 11

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage our

emotions.

Emotional intelligence is sometimes called EQ (or EI) for short. Just as

a high IQ can predict top test scores, a high EQ can predict success in social
and emotional situations. EQ helps us build strong relationships, make good
decisions, and deal with difficult situations.

One way to think about EQ is that it's part of being people-smart.

Understanding and getting along with people helps us be successful in almost
any area of life. Some studies show that EQ is more important than IQ when
doing well in school or being successful at work.

The skills we use to manage our emotions and react well are part of a
bigger group of emotional skills are part of EQ. Developing all the skills that
make up emotional intelligence takes time and practice.

Improving Your EQ
Emotional intelligence is a combination of several different skills:

1. Being Aware of Your Emotions

Emotional awareness is all about noticing and identifying the emotions

we feel at any given moment. It is the most basic of the EQ skills. Sometimes,
just naming the emotion we feel can help us feel more in charge of our
emotions.

Most people feel many different emotions throughout the day. Some
feelings (like surprise) last just a few seconds. Others may stay longer,
creating a mood like happiness or sadness. Being able to notice and
accurately label these everyday feelings is the most basic of all the EQ skills.
Being aware of emotions — simply noticing them as we feel them — helps us
manage our own emotions. It also helps us understand how other people feel.
But some people might go through the entire day without really noticing their
emotions. Practice recognizing emotions as you feel them. Label them in your
mind (for example, by saying to yourself "I feel grateful," "I feel frustrated,"
etc.). Make it a daily habit to be aware of your emotions.

2. Understanding How Others Feel and Why

People are naturally designed to try to understand others. Part of EQ is

being able to imagine how other people might feel in certain situations. It is
also about understanding why they feel the way they do. Being able to
imagine what emotions a person is likely to be feeling (even when you don't
actually know) is called empathy. Empathy helps us care about others and
build good friendships and relationships. It guides us on what to say and how
to behave around someone who is feeling strong emotions.

3. Understanding and Accepting Emotions

Understanding emotions means knowing why we feel the way we do.

For example, we might say to ourselves, "I feel left out and a little insecure
because I didn't get invited to the prom yet, and two of my friends who already
did. It helps to view our emotions as understandable, given the situation. We
might think to ourselves: "No wonder I feel left out — it's natural to feel that
way in this situation." It's like giving ourselves a little kindness and
understanding for the way we feel. This helps us accept our emotions. We
know they're reasonable and that it's OK to feel whatever way we feel.
Accepting emotions means noticing, identifying, and understanding our
emotions without blaming others or judging ourselves for how we feel. It's
not helpful to tell ourselves that how we feel is someone else's fault. It is also
not good to judge our emotions and think, "I shouldn't feel this way" or "It's
awful that I feel this way!" The goal is to acknowledge your feelings without
letting them run away with you.

4. Managing Emotional Reactions

 We all get angry. We all have disappointments. Often it's important to
express how you feel. But managing your reaction means knowing when,
where, and how to express yourself. When you understand your emotions and
know how to manage them, you can use self-control to hold a reaction if now
is not the right time or place to express it. Someone who has good EQ knows
it can damage relationships to react to emotions in a way that's disrespectful,
too intense, too impulsive, or harmful.

5. Choosing Your Mood

Part of managing emotions is choosing our moods. Moods are

emotional states that last a bit. We have the power to decide what mood is
right for a situation, and then to get into that mood. Choosing the right mood
can help someone get motivated, concentrate on a task, or try again instead
of giving up. People with good EQ know that moods aren't just things that
happen to us. We can control them by knowing which mood is best for a
particular situation and how to get into that mood.

6. EQ: Under Construction

Emotional intelligence is something that develops as we get older. If it

didn't, all adults would act like little kids, expressing their emotions physically
through stomping, crying, hitting, yelling, and losing control!

Some of the skills that make up emotional intelligence develop earlier.

They may seem easier: For example, recognizing emotions seems easy once
we know what to pay attention to. But the EQ skill of managing emotional
reactions and choosing a mood might seem harder to master. That's because
the part of the brain that's responsible for self-management continues to
mature beyond our teen years. But practice helps those brain pathways
develop.

We can all work to build even stronger emotional intelligence skills just
by recognizing what we feel, understanding how we got there, understanding
how others feel and why, and putting our emotions into heartfelt words when
we need to (KidsHealth Behavioral Health Experts, n.d.).

TYPES OF RESPONSES

1. Passive response: Behaving passively means not expressing your

own needs and feelings, or expressing them so weakly that they will
not be addressed. If Geneva behaves passively, by standing in line and
not saying anything, she will probably feel angry with the girls and
herself. If the ticket office runs out of tickets before she gets to the
head of the line, she will be furious and might blow up at the girls after
it's too late to change the situation. A passive response is not usually in
your best interest, because it allows other people to violate your rights.
Yet there are times when being passive is the most appropriate
response. It is important to assess whether a situation is dangerous
 and choose the response most likely to keep you safe (Department of
Education – Republic of the Philippines).
2. Aggressive response: Behaving aggressively is asking for what you
want or saying how you feel in a threatening, sarcastic or humiliating
way that may offend the other person(s). If Geneva calls the girls
names or threatens them, she may feel strong for a moment, but there
is no guarantee she will get the girls to leave. More importantly, the
girls and their friend may also respond aggressively, through a verbal
or physical attack on Geneva. An aggressive response is never in your
best interest, because it almost always leads to increased conflict
(Department of Education – Republic of the Philippines).
3. Assertive response: Behaving assertively means asking for what you
want or saying how you feel in an honest and respectful way that does
not infringe on another person's rights or put the individual down. If
Geneva tells the girls they need to go to the end of the line because
other people have been waiting, she will not put the girls down, but
merely state the Facts of the situation. She can feel proud for standing
up for her rights. At the same time, she will probably be supported in
her statement by other people in the line. While there is a good chance
the girls will feel embarrassed and move, there is also the chance that
they will ignore Geneva and her needs will not be met.” An assertive
response is almost always in your best interest, since it is your best
chance of getting what you want without offending the other person(s).
At times, however, being assertive can be inappropriate. If tempers are
high, if people have been using alcohol or other drugs, if people have
weapons or if you are in an unsafe place, being assertive may not be
the safest choice (Department of Education – Republic of the
Philippines).

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE DOMAINS

1. Personal Competence

1. SELF-AWARENESS – Understand your feelings. Assess your

emotional state
2. SELF-MANAGEMENT – Managing your own emotions.

2. Social Competence

1. Social Awareness – It involves expanding your awareness to include

the emotions of those people around you.

I. EMPATHY – the ability to understand someone else’s feelings &

re-experience them.
II. ORGANIZATIONAL AWARENESS – Goleman defined it as “the
ability to read the current of emotions & political realities in groups.”
III. SERVICE ORIENTATION – It builds on the empathy you have
with others by helping you assist their personal development &
satisfaction.
 IV. RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT – It means using awareness of
your own emotions & those of others to build strong relationships.
V. COMMUNICATION – this means being persuasive, well
presented & objective.
VI. LEADERSHIP – your team is willing to follow your lead & wants to
work with you to meet goals
VII. DEVELOPING OTHERS – the ability to observe and provide
opportunities to develop individual team members fully.
(Free Management Books, n.d.)

Learning to React Well

Managing emotional reactions means choosing how and when to

express the emotions we feel.

People who do an excellent job of managing emotions know that it's

healthy to express their feelings — but that it matters how (and when) they
express them. Because of this, they're able to react to situations in productive
ways:

They know they can choose the way they react instead of letting
emotions influence them to do or say things they later regret.

They have a sense of when it's best to speak out — and when it's better
to wait before acting on or reacting to, what they feel.

They know that their reaction influences what happens next — including
how other people respond to them and how they feel about themselves.

You've probably been in a situation where someone reacted in a way

that was too emotional, making you cringe or feel embarrassed for the person.
You also might have been in a situation where your own emotions felt so
strong that it took all your self-control not to go down that path yourself.

Maybe you can think of a time when you didn't manage your reaction.
Perhaps anxiety, anger, or frustration got the better of you. It happens. When
it does, forgive yourself and focus on what you could have done better. Think
about what you might do next time.

What Would You Do?

Imagine this situation: Your friends have received proposals (or college
acceptances, team places, etc.). But you haven't. Once you identify,
understand, and accept how you feel, how might you react?

1. Look unhappy when you're around your friends, hoping they'll ask you
what's wrong.
2. Gossip about people who already have dates and say you don't even
want to go to the stupid dance.
 3. Confide in a friend, ‘I feel bad about not getting asked yet. But I can still
go with friends.’
4. Remind yourself that it's not the end of the world. Decide to give it time
and not let it ruin your day.

Consider each choice and think about what might happen next for
each one. Which reaction would lead to the best outcome? We always have a
choice about how to react to situations. Once we realize that, it's easier to
make choices that work out well.

Learning to react well takes practice. But we all can get better at
taking emotional situations in stride and expressing emotions in healthy ways.
And that's something to feel good about! (KidsHealth, n.d.).

A CASE STUDY OF LOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: THE LAST BEER

A young man had only a limited amount of beer in his fridge. His
best friend came round to visit. During their conversation, he told his friend not
to drink his last beer. Later he found his friend had drunk it.

WHAT WOULD AN EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT RESPONSE HAVE

BEEN?

 To go and buy some more maybe?

 To ignore it and enjoy his friend's company?
 To have a cup of coffee instead?
 To go down the pub together?

WHAT HAPPENED? He had low emotional intelligence and did

none of these. He shot his friend dead. He is now in prison, serving time for
murder. His rage drove him to short-term action, which produced long-term
negative consequences. This is an extreme but clear example of how low
emotional intelligence and a poor ability to control strong emotions, in
particular, can impact a person's behavior, work, and life. Being able to control
strong emotions such as rage is the seventh dimension of emotional
intelligence. It is very hard to build trust without being able to control your
strong emotions. If you are in business and want to be successful building
trust is imperative (Bhaskar, 2017).

Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943)

Howard is an American developmental psychologist and the son of
John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and
Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
He is currently the senior director of Harvard Project Zero, and since 1995, he
has been the co-director of The Good Project.

Gardner has written hundreds of research articles and thirty books

that have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is best known
for his theory of multiple intelligences, as outlined in his 1983 book Frames of
Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Howard Gardner's Eight Intelligences

 Verbal-linguistic intelligence refers to an individual's ability to

analyze information and produce work that involves oral and
written language, such as speeches, books, and emails.
 Logical-mathematical intelligence describes the ability to
develop equations and proofs, make calculations, and solve
abstract problems.
 Visual-spatial intelligence allows people to comprehend maps
and other types of graphical information.
 Musical intelligence enables individuals to produce and make
meaning of different types of sound.
 Naturalistic intelligence refers to identifying and distinguishing
among different types of plants, animals, and weather formations
found in the natural world.
 Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails using one's own body to
create products or solve problems.
 Interpersonal intelligence reflects an ability to recognize and
understand other people's moods, desires, motivations, and
intentions.
 Intrapersonal intelligence refers to people's ability to recognize
and assess those same characteristics within themselves.

PERSONAL BENEFITS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

 Better career
 Stronger Personal Relationships
 Increased optimism and confidence
 Better health

PROFESSIONAL BENEFITS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

 Effective leadership skills

 Improved communication
 Less workplace conflict
 Better problem-solving skills
 Increase the likelihood of promotion