Main Components of Emotional Intelligence
Do your feelings interfere with your work or day to day activities? If no, then its likely that you have not yet developed some of the skills that shape the foundation of emotional intelligence. According to the founders, Peter Salovay and John Mayer,” emotion intelligence is the ability to recognize emotions then, to generate and process emotions as to pilot your thoughts and behavior, to understand and manage emotions.”

The skills of emotional intelligence benefit you and others. You might be a team leader and would like to be aware of the emotions of your workmates and respond successfully. Working on your skills and improving on conscious abilities might be the first step you need to take.

Before you work on yourself its crucial to understand that there are steps of developmental model of emotional intelligence that have been there since your childhood. Emotional intelligence accommodates four branches that are developed from childhood to adulthood. The four branches are;

a) The ability to recognize emotions in yourself and others.
b) The capacity to acknowledge emotions, their language and the signals fetched by emotions
c) The potential to use emotions to ease thinking.
d) The ability control emotions so as to accomplish specific goals.

To understand what emotional intelligence entails in the real world then you must be aware of its components and how to develop them. The main components of emotional intelligence are;
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes in order to understand and feel the persons point of view. Empathy is a crucial skill for establishing relationships and maintaining them. There are different types of empathy such as cognitive, emotional and compassionate.

Cognitive empathy which is also known as perspective empathy is simply being able to put yourself in someone else place and see their outlook. Emotional empathy also referred to as personal distress is when you entirely feel the other persons emotions as if they are your own. Finally, compassionate empathy is feeling the pain of the other person and being able to provide support in that person’s life.

Self-awareness is the ability to perceive your thoughts or moods and understand them clearly and objectively then recognize the effect they have on you and others. Self-awareness is the key component of emotional intelligence. Developing this ability is essential because it helps you understand your feelings and how they affect your performance. Emotional awareness also helps you understand the links between your emotions, thoughts and actions and how they interfere with how you interact with others.

Intrinsic motivation also known as internal motivation describes the engagement in an activity because its enjoyable, interesting or important without expecting any sort of external reward. Internal motivation comes from your feelings and thoughts. The rewards of intrinsic motivation are the positive and satisfying emotions created within you.

Self-regulation is the ability to understand how you feel and how you control and manage your emotions and moods. When you are able to manage your emotions then its easier to respond to any situation well. Self- regulation competencies include; self-control, initiative, optimism, flexibility and trustworthiness.

Once you know your emotions, strengths and weaknesses then its important to rehabilitate your team. Not everyone will like the idea and to maintain your professionalism, start the team’s resurgence with an online emotional quotient test by Genos international. The eq test evaluate every member’s emotion intelligence and will suggest the best ways to improve it. Your team can also enroll in the online course provided after the test to develop inter-personal skill building tools that are not only applicable at the workplace but in all aspects of life. Everyone can live a happy and productive life both at work and other personal activities.

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