Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to identify and
manage emotions in self and others. Today I will elaborate on how I
demonstrated EI based on Daniel Goleman’s 5 main components of EI –
self-awareness, self-regulation, internal motivation, empathy, social skills.
Firstly, self-awareness is the awareness of your own
feelings and how they can influence others. When I was still a teenager, I had
minor anger management. If someone were to make fun of my name, I would get so
irritated that I might start a fight. One day, my mum got called up by the
school because I was in a fight. After which, she told me “the more agitated
you get, the more entertained the bullies will be”. Ever since then, I paid
close attention to my anger and noticed that being receptive to the bullies, made
the bullying worse. On the contrary, when I choose to ignore, the bullying
stopped. The end result of having self-awareness is having more control of the
situation as shown in the example above, which could develop self-confidence.
Secondly, self-regulation is about controlling your impulses
to avoid acting rashly and regretting later. Self-regulation is what comes
after self-awareness. Using the same example above, having bad self-regulation
would be to react to the bullies who made fun of my name, and starting a fight.
No matter how bad the verbal bullying was, I would still be in the wrong for
starting a fight. Eventually, I would be the one getting reprimanded the most. Whereas,
if I practised good self-regulation by delaying my actions, be attentive to my
feelings, and assess the consequences of that action, the situation would have
an immediate difference. By resisting myself to start a fight, I was able to
acknowledge my anger. Then, I was able to calmly assess the consequences of
starting a fight and eventually look for alternative reactions which would lead
to better outcome. In this case, ignoring was the choice, and it worked
perfectly well. Therefore, we should always be mindful of our impulses and be
rational in our actions. Having self-regulation would lead to characteristics
like adaptability and conscientiousness.
Thirdly, internal motivation is the reason why we do the
things we do. It is the drive that controls our behaviour. There are intrinsic
and extrinsic motivations. Firstly, intrinsic motivation is by personal desire.
By doing something because you enjoy it, is an example of intrinsic motivation.
Secondly, extrinsic motivation is to obtain or avoid an outcome. Doing your
homework to avoid getting punished is an example of extrinsic motivation.
Personally, I am more inclined to intrinsic motivation because I often make
life decisions which put myself through tough and challenging situations simply
because I find life more engaging this manner. Naming the most recent cases
would be signing on as an infantry officer and enrolling in a joint degree
program by Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and DigiPen. Both of which
are well known to be challenging, yet personally rewarding. Having good
internal motivation results in characteristics like being initiative,
commitment, and perseverance.
Fourthly empathy is the ability to be receptive of others’
emotions and able to anticipate someone’s needs and the appropriate reaction. I
often practise empathy by putting myself in other person’s perspective. For
example, I witnessed a couple, Mary and James arguing over what they should
have for lunch. In general, Mary was angry because James had been the one
choosing what they would be having for lunch for a week now, and she would love
to make the choice once in a while. I would recall of my past arguments which
are mostly due to some differences in opinion, and would only require both
parties to reach a common understanding. In reaction to the scene, I stopped
the fight telling them both parties have equal rights over this. To be fair,
they should come to an agreement to take turns on the decision. From there, the
mood of the situation was neutralised and they were able to come to a mutual
understanding. Having good empathy would result in characteristics like
proactive and perceptive.
Lastly, social skills are really just an application of the
four components above. Firstly, self-awareness and self-regulation would ensure
that we present ourselves appropriately. Secondly, internal motivation would
help to create topics for conversations. While lastly, empathy would help us to
handle conflicts. Taking a ballroom event as an example, we need to have
self-awareness and self-regulation to avoid embarrassing ourselves by getting
too agitated or excited, hence speaking too loudly. Whilst internal motivation
would enable us to pursue our careers and pick up hobbies which could be common
interests during a social event. Finally, empathy would allow us to neutralise
heated conversations to reach a common understanding. This is crucial as
sensible conversations are impossible with an emotionally unstable individual.
