The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

When a company is faced with a daunting task, it needs strong leaders and team members with high intellectual intelligence (IQ) who can wisely execute smart decisions. But when you as an individual are under job stress or experiencing overwhelmingly negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, your emotional intelligence is what keeps you together, calm and focused.

Emotional Intelligence Quotient, or EQ, refers to the ability to recognize and manage one’s behaviors, emotions, and impulses in positive ways, according to a given situation. Some people are afraid to come to terms with their emotions; they often try to ignore or turn them off. But in order to be emotionally healthy, we must be honest about our feelings, accept them and be comfortable with them and ourselves. Only by indentifying those feelings will we be able to manage stress and impulsive feelings in healthy ways.  EQ also involves being able to detect the emotions and concerns of other people. By picking up on others’ emotional cues, we will be able to develop and maintain healthy relationships, defuse conflict and inspire others.

One of the ways of identifying your emotions is to observe your own behavior and reactions to certain situations. The word emotion is derived from the Latin emovere, which literally means “to move” and psychologists say that emotions are what energize us to do certain things; they help us interpret our interactions with others and react with one of three motivations: approach, avoid and attack.

• Approach Motivation

With an approach motivation, you’re inclined to cooperate, learn and discover more to try to influence and protect. Emotions common to the approach motivation are interest, compassion, trust and love.

• Avoidance Motivation

An avoidance motivation makes you want to run away from something by ignoring, rejecting, withdrawing, or dismissing it, thus lowering its value and making it unworthy of your attention. Typical avoidance emotions are impatience, guilt, frustration and anxiety. When others try to avoid you, you’ll probably experience anger, hurt, loneliness or resentment in response.

• Attack Motivation

With an attack motivation, you seek to dominate, undermine and devalue others by manipulating, threatening, bullying, and criticizing them. Common attack emotions are anger, hatred, contempt and disgust. When we are the ones under attack, we might feel shame, rejection, discouragement, and despair.

The ability to master your emotions takes practice and starts with self-awareness. By learning the three main types of motivation, we hope you’ll be able to recognize your feelings and their causes, to explore them and reflect on them. Only after we understand our own motivations and emotional needs will we be able to communicate effectively with others and control our emotions, instead of letting them rule over us.

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