Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence concerns how accurately people perceive emotion, use emotional information, regulate their own responses and manage relationships. Daniel Goleman popularised a workplace version organised around self-awareness, social awareness, self-regulation and relationship management, with motivation often added as a supporting competency.

When to use it

• Develop emotional intelligence as an ongoing capability, not a technique switched on for difficult conversations.
• Examine effective relationships to identify behaviours already working.
• When a relationship is strained, review each domain and choose one behaviour you can change.
• Do not wait for the other person to change first; adapt without abandoning legitimate boundaries.

Origins

Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer established the modern scientific construct in an article published in nineteen ninety, defining abilities concerned with perceiving, regulating and using emotion. Daniel Goleman’s mid-nineteen-nineties book brought the term to a broad audience and later adapted it into a workplace competency model. Ability EI and broader mixed models overlap, but they are not the same measure and should not be treated as interchangeable.

What it is

The four-domain workplace model asks two questions: whose emotion is being understood—self or others—and whether the focus is awareness or action. High performance requires integration rather than a single “EQ score.”

How to use it

The framework can be represented as follows:

                                                        Self                               Others
                                                 Self-awareness                      Social awareness

                                         How well do I understand my           How well do I understand
                                         own emotions, behavioural             what drives other people to
                                         drivers, moods and my effect          act and feel as they do?

Awareness

on other people? To what

extent am I able to follow my

gut instinct in decision

making?

1. 2

                                                 Self-regulation                Relationship management

                                         To what extent do I control           How do I use my self-
                                         my behaviours, exercise               awareness, social awareness
                                         self-control and adapt them           and self-regulation in order to
                        Actions          appropriately?                        develop the best relationships

with others, showing empathy,

building bonds and

communicating effectively?

1. 4

the diagram below Emotional intelligence

Begin with self-awareness, box 1. Notice emotional triggers, bodily signals, recurring interpretations and the effect of your words and actions. Seek specific feedback, use a 360° process where appropriate and compare intention with observed impact.

Develop social awareness, box 2 by listening, observing context and checking interpretations. Empathy means understanding another perspective; it does not require agreement or mind-reading.

Practise self-regulation, box 3 by creating a pause between feeling and action, naming the choice available and selecting a response consistent with values and objectives. Suppressing every emotion is not regulation.

Use relationship management, box 4 to communicate, resolve conflict, influence ethically, build trust and adjust delivery to the other person’s needs.

Change one habit at a time. The popular claim that a habit forms in 21 days arose from Maxwell Maltz’s observation that some patients took around 21 days to adjust after surgery, not from a universal behavioural law. Continue deliberate practice until the response becomes reliable in the relevant context.

Increase awareness by interrupting routine: vary a journey, speak with different colleagues, read competing viewpoints, notice unfamiliar details or listen to different sources. The purpose is not novelty for its own sake, but restoring attention to signals automatic behaviour ignores.

Final analysis.

Emotional intelligence is debated because broad commercial models can overlap with personality and social skill, and some claims exceed the evidence. Its practical value lies in specific capabilities that can be observed and developed. Good management balances empathy with judgement, organisational responsibility and appropriate boundaries.

Top practical tip

Choose one recurring interaction, identify the trigger, compare your intended and actual impact and rehearse a more useful response. Ask the other person what helped instead of relying on a global EQ label.

Top pitfall

Do not use emotional intelligence to demand constant positivity, excuse manipulation or shift responsibility for harmful conduct onto the recipient. Empathy and regulation operate alongside evidence, accountability and boundaries.

Further reading

Goleman, D. (1996) Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.