Emotional Intelligence (EI) Vs Intelligence (IQ)

What is Intelligence?

It is the ability to understand and learn things quickly.

Since our childhood, we keep listening to this word intelligence. We all want to be an intelligent person.

Do you really think intelligence is good enough to get you success in your life?

Intelligence can be considered as a door, which takes you to become a successful person. Intelligence helps you to get through school and college. However to be a successful in your life, mere having IQ is not sufficient, it is the amalgamation of IQ & EI which will get you a success in your life.

What is EI?

It is an ability to use your emotions and logical skills.

Understanding and managing emotion of oneself, others and of a group and using them for good reasons is EI.

Emotional Quotient is how one measures Emotional Intelligence. EI/EQ gives you:

• Self awareness
• Self confidence
• Interpersonal skills
• Social competence 

There as different phases in life, in early stages of your life IQ plays a vital role. More IQ leads towards developing good grasping, understanding and learning ability. As one grows in life and get exposed to people with diverse way of thinking and opinions, mere IQ will not help in here. A person who can understand the way other people think and understand there emotions, gets more success than the person who do not understand emotions.

A recent study happened in USA, shows that a person with high EQ earns more than the person with IQ.

We want our leader to understand what we think and how we feel.

People with emotional intelligence tend to be good at interpreting, understanding, and acting upon emotions. They are usually quite good at dealing with social or emotional conflicts, expressing their feelings, and dealing with emotional situations. A person with EI can become an effective leader and fulfil this basic need of his people.

EI, much of it is innate, but a lot comes from understanding people’s needs, their response, and what motivates them to change.

How Emotional Intelligence is useful at Work?

It’s essential. In addition to staff and colleagues, you work with Directors as well as the CEO/CFO and many other people from Management. You need to know how to be sensitive, to empathize, to put yourself in their place in order to understand what’s important to them and act accordingly.

As a leader, it is very useful, especially in gaining consensus. Most helpful is being able to identify emotions, your own and those of others and knowing how they impact behaviour and to understand people motivation.

Putting it to work

As a Leader, you can put EI to work in various settings:

1. Know your people. Whether it’s a new member on the board or an old member of your team, face time is important. It allows you to build a personal bond and helps keep you engaged.

2. Communicate. Keep in touch and on top of what’s going on with the people you work with and the problems they are facing.

3. Seek input, offer support: Your big question to your team should be “how can I help?”

4. Collaborate. Make decisions as a group.

5. Share data. Make sure everyone has the information they need to make an informed decision.

6. Look for motivation. Talk with your people to find out what it is they really want and why it is important.

7. Promote understanding. Make sure that your team understands where management is coming from, the reason for whatever action is required and that management –understands their concerns.

In the end, it comes down to respect, and the simplest way to convey respect is through the tone of voice. Temperament is not destiny. Employ with intelligence.

As a HR professional, I want all my people to come with good EI/EQ, this help in many ways, I put lot of time to prepare questions to ask to the candidate, I am hiring for leadership position. Because it is said that people do not leave company they leave company of their managers. So a person with good EQ can help indirectly and directly in the retention of people and developing good, healthy and cordial work environment.

It is not only leaders who should be strong in EQ, but also all associates, they should be able to empathize, to put themselves in the place of Management/Leaders in order to understand what’s important to them and act accordingly.

It's important to remember that no matter how good you are, there is always a room to improve your emotional intelligence. Consider areas where you are not as strong and think of ways that you can learn and grow. Take stock of your strong points and find ways to continue to develop and apply these skills.