Emotional Intelligence

• home
  • a guide to coaching
  • diagnostic tests
  • Africa mini-site
  • links
  • site map
• who we are
  • values
  • associates
  • who we help
  • approaches
  • our links with Africa
• what we do
  • coaching & mentoring
  • identifying & improving leadership
  • improving leadership teams
  • increasing HR effectiveness
  • large scale change
  • leadership safaris in Africa
• our results
  • issues we help with
  • clients
  • testimonials
  • case studies
  • scorecard evaluation
• resources
  • newsletters
  • articles
  • ten minute tips
  • lessons from Kenya
  • book reviews
• contact us

 

Emotional Intelligence

What is emotional intelligence?

In a world of work where people are increasingly accepted to make the difference to success or failure, any idea that seems to offer the possibility of enabling them to work together more co-operatively and productively is likely to raise a great deal of interest. Such was the case when the concept of emotional intelligence first came to public prominence in 1995; subsequently, various products became available almost overnight. But is emotional intelligence (also known as emotional intelligence quotient – EQ) a useful concept, or is it a fad that has been over-hyped by commercial interests?

The following summarises the work of three leading contributors.

Mayer and Salovey

Emotional intelligence made its first appearance in 1989 in an article by two American psychologists, John D Mayer and Peter Salovey. The article defined emotional intelligence as ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions’. The authors argued that emotional intelligence consisted of four separate elements:

• Identifying emotions: the ability to perceive emotions in oneself and others, as well as in objects, art and events.
• Using emotions: the ability to generate, use and feel emotion to communicate feelings, or employ them in thinking or creating.
• Understanding emotions: the ability to understand emotional information, how emotions combine and progress, and to reason about such emotional meanings.
• Managing emotions: the ability to regulate emotions in oneself and others so as to promote personal understanding and growth.

Daniel Goleman

In 1995 emotional intelligence came to public attention as a result of a book by Daniel Goleman Emotional intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ. In his book, Goleman, a psychologist and journalist, summarised the work of Mayer, Salovey and others to make it accessible to a wider audience. The book became an instant best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic and the emotional intelligence movement – some have described it as a bandwagon - took off.

Goleman developed the following model of competencies:

1. Personal competence: these competencies determine how we manage ourselves.
   • Self-awareness: knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions.
   • Emotional self-awareness: recognising one’s emotions and their effects.
   • Accurate self-assessment: knowing one’s strengths and limits.
   • Self-confidence: a strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities.
   • Self-management: managing one’s internal states, impulses and resources.
   • Self-control: keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
   • Trustworthiness: maintaining standards of honesty and integrity.
   • Conscientiousness: taking responsibility for personal performance.
   • Adaptability: flexibility in handling change.
   • Achievement-orientation: striving to improve or meeting a standard of excellence.
   • Initiative: readiness to act on opportunities.
2. Social competence: these competencies determine how we handle relationships.
   • Social awareness: awareness of others’ feelings, needs and concerns.
   • Empathy: sensing others’ feelings and perspectives, and taking an active interest in their concerns.
   • Organisational awareness: reading a group’s emotional currents and power relationships.
   • Service orientation: anticipating, recognising and meeting customers’ needs.
   • Social skills: adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others.
   • Developing others: sensing others’ developmental needs and bolstering their abilities.
   • Leadership: inspiring and guiding individuals and groups
   • Influence: wielding effective tactics for persuasion.
   • Communication: listening openly and sending convincing messages.
   • Change catalyst: initiating or managing change.
   • Conflict management: negotiating and resolving disagreements.
   • Building bonds: nurturing instrumental relationships.
   • Teamwork and collaboration: working with others toward shared goals. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

Higgs and Dulewicz

These two British authors from Henley Management College identified seven elements of emotional intelligence in their book Making sense of emotional intelligence². These elements are broken down into the following three areas:

• Drivers: motivation and decisiveness, traits that energise people and drive them towards achieving goals.
• Constrainers: conscientiousness, integrity and emotional resilience, factors that control and curb the excesses of the drivers.
• Enablers: sensitivity, influence and self-awareness, traits that facilitate performance and help individuals to succeed.

You can use our leadership diagnostic to assess for yourself how you, your managers and your organisation are faring in each of these areas.

Let's Talk

The easiest way to understand how we can help, and whether you feel that you could work with us, is to begin with a conversation.

We don't believe in a "hard sell" and often find that people get value out of the exploratory discussion - whether or not we go on to work together.

Please Contact Us – we would love to hear from you.