Emotional Intelligence

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.