
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge from your emotions and the emotions of others. You can use the information about what you're feeling to help you make effective decisions about what to say or do (or not say or do) next. Emotional Intelligence is NOT about being soft! It is a different way of being smart – having the skill to use your emotions to help you make choices in-the-moment and have more effective control over yourself and your impact on others. The study of emotional intelligence is often dated to the early 1990s, when scientific articles suggested that there existed an unrecognized but important human mental ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance thought. The basics of Emotional Intelligence include knowing your feelings and using them to make life decisions with which you can live. Being able to manage your emotional life without begin hijacked by it or allowing yourself to become paralyzed by depression or worry, or worse, swept away by anger, is key in today’s volatile and changing workplace. Cultivating Emotional Intelligence can provide the support that you need in the face of setbacks, and a positive channelling of your impulses can be critical to keep you on target and on track as you pursue your goals. An emotionally intelligent person has empathy, not sympathy, for the other person without them having to tell you exactly what they are feeling or going through. In today’s work place this skill is critical in light of privacy laws, and issues of work place harassment. A skillful handling of emotion and feelings in the workplace is critical for the diverse personalities and skills that allow all to move in the same goal direction in some form of harmony. Emotional Intelligence allows the unspoken pulse of a group to work to get things done, sometimes the impossible, given all of the differing ideas, skills and agendas that sometimes come together. Generally speaking, emotional intelligence improves an individual's social effectiveness. The higher the emotional intelligence, the better the social relations. Emotional Intelligence is described as a combination of personal competence and social competence. Wall Street Journal, previous Chairman of GE Jack Welch stated, “A leader’s intelligence has to have a strong emotional component. He has to have high levels of self-awareness, maturity and self-control. He or she must be able to withstand the heat, handle setbacks and when those lucky moments arise, enjoy success with equal parts of joy and humility. No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can't ignore it.”