“Emotional Intelligence” (EI) is a term being used more frequently in the work force today. Employers are looking for job candidates who can demonstrate not only intellectual and technical competencies, but EI competencies as well.

What is Emotional Intelligence?
Developing your EI
Four domains of EI
How can you learn EI?
EI Competencies

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a different way of being smart. It is about knowing yourself and your feelings so well you are able to manage them effectively at any moment in any given situation.

Employers today consider personal qualities such as initiative, empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness to be every bit as important as concrete industry and technical knowledge. The degree to which you can demonstrate how you possess EI in addition to your other skills is the degree to which you will have an edge over your competition.

Think of EI as old-fashioned social skills with a 21st century twist. EI skills include the skills employers say they consider to be most important in survey after survey. The good news is that EI competencies can be learned and/or enhanced.

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Developing your EI involves:

• Becoming more aware of your present skill level in each competency
• Determining which skills you wish to develop or enhance
• Developing an intentional plan

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In Daniel Goleman’s model of EI there are four domains:

• Self-awareness – knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions
• Self-management – managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources
• Social awareness – reading people and groups accurately, having an awareness of other’s feelings, needs, and concerns
• Relationship management – adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others

These four quadrants (see diagram below) break down into 20 different EI competencies.

Research has shown that IQ alone does not guarantee success in school or work. It takes both IQ and EI. The two are inextricably tied together.

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How Can You Learn EI?

Opportunities to learn and increase your EI are all around you, in everything you do. Your job is to become more reflective of your activities – what skills you performed while doing them and what emotions you felt in the process. To get you started, the staff at UCS can share with you how each of their services and programs can contribute to increasing your EI. We can also help you create a personal plan for learning or increasing the specific EI competencies of your choice.

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Emotional Intelligence Competencies

SELF-AWARENESS

• Emotional self-awareness. Recognizing your own emotions and their effects, and recognizing how you react to cues in the environment and how your emotions affect your performance.
• Accurate self-assessment. Knowing your inner resources, abilities and limits, and being aware of your strengths and limitations. Wanting to receive feedback and new perspectives. Motivated by continuous learning and self-development. Results in targeting areas for personal change.
• Self-confidence. Believing you can accomplish a task and acknowledging that you are the best for the job. Conveying your ideas and opinions in an assured manner and having a positive impact on others.

SELF MANAGEMENT

• Emotional Self-control. Keeping your impulsive feelings and emotions under control and restraining negative actions when provoked, faced with opposition or hostility from others, or working under pressure.
• Trustworthiness. Taking action that is consistent with what you say and value. Communicating intentions, ideas, and feelings openly and directly, and welcoming openness and honesty in others. Showing integrity and taking responsibility for your behavior and performance, and building trust through reliability and authenticity.
• Conscientiousness. Taking responsibility for your personal performance. Being reliable and delivering quality work. Performing work in a careful and organized manner, paying attention to detail, following through on commitments and promises, and building trust through reliability.
• Adaptability. Flexibility to work effectively within a variety of changing situations and with various individuals and groups. Willing to change ideas or perceptions on the basis of new information or evidence. Able to alter standard procedures when necessary, and juggle multiple demands as required.
• Optimism. Seeing the world as a glass that is “half-full” rather than “half-empty.” Seeing good in others and in the situation at hand. Seeing threats merely as opportunities that can be acted upon, and taken advantage of, to achieve optimal outcomes.
• Achievement Orientation. Working toward a standard of excellence which may be a personal need to improve over past accomplishments, to outperform others, or even to surpass the greatest accomplishment ever achieved.
• Initiative. Identifying a problem, obstacle, or opportunity and taking action on it. Showing initiative and consistently striving to do better, to experience new challenges and opportunities. Being accountable for your actions and ideas.

SOCIAL AWARENESS

• Empathy. Understanding other people. Hearing and accurately understanding unspoken or partly expressed thoughts, feelings, and concerns of others. Constantly picking up emotional cues. Appreciating what people are saying and why they are saying it. Having cross-cultural sensitivity.
• Organizational Awareness. Understanding the “power” relationship in one’s own group or organization. Identifying the real decision makers and who can influence them. Recognizing the values and cultures of organizations and how they affect the way people behave.
• Service Orientation. Helping or serving others in order to meet their needs.  Focusing efforts on others. Not just reacting to the requests of others, but being proactive in knowing what others’ needs are before they are articulated.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

• Developing Others. Fostering the long-term learning or development of others and spending time helping people find their own way to excellence through specific feedback on current performance.
• Influence. Persuading, convincing, or impacting others in order to get them to go along with or support your agenda. Knowing how to make others stand up and listen.
• Communication. Sending clear and convincing messages to an audience in an open and effective way. Making presentations in an engaging style and being open to dialogue with the audience.
• Change Catalyst. Alerting, energizing, and leading groups to bring about specific changes in the way things are done. Recognizing the need for change and taking ownership of change initiatives in order to move the group forward.
• Building Bonds. Working to build or maintain friendly, reciprocal, and warm relationships or networks of contacts with people. Developing and maintaining good relationships with a variety of people.
• Teamwork and Collaboration. Working cooperatively with others, being part of a team, and working together as opposed to working separately or competitively. Enjoying shared responsibility and rewards for accomplishments and actively participating and enjoying building the capability of the team.
• Inspirational Leadership. Taking on the role as leader of a team or group. Bringing people together to get the job done. Building a strong sense of belonging within the group and leading others to feel they are part of something larger than themselves.
• Conflict Management. Handling difficult individuals, groups of people, or tense situations with diplomacy. Focusing on the issues rather than the people and working to de-escalate the bad feelings.

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