Emotional Intelligence: Concept and its Application

Emotional Intelligence: Concept and its Application

By Nikeeta Rathod

UPSC GENERAL STUDIES: Paper IV 

Table of Content

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Different Models of Emotional Intelligence (EI)

* Ability Model

* Mixed Model

Case Study 1 (Mixed Model: Self Awareness)

Case Study 2 (Mixed Model: Self-Management)

A bureaucrat has to be Emotionally Intelligent for Following Reasons

Can Emotional Intelligence be learned?

How to develop Emotional Intelligence?

Case Study: FedEx deploys Action-based Emotional Intelligence

* Action-Based Emotional Intelligence (Six Seconds Model)

Emotional Intelligence and Bhagvad Gita

Critiques of Emotional Intelligence

“Emotions drive people, people drive performance.”

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to PERCEIVE, CONTROL and EVALUATE emotions.

It is subset of SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE that involves the ability to monitor one’s own emotion and feelings as well as those of others to discriminate among these different feelings and use this information to guide one’s own thinking and action.

Different Models of Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Ability Model

It defines EI as the ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and regulate emotion to provide personal growth.

Salovery and Mayer identified four different factors of Emotional Intelligence: (PRUM)

Perception of emotion: Ability to detect and decipher emotion

Reasoning with emotions: Using emotion to promote thinking.

Understanding emotions: Interpreting the cause of emotion

Managing emotions: Regulating emotions and responding appropriately

Diagrammatic Representation of Ability Model 

Mixed Model

Introduced by Daniel Goleman, it focuses on wide array of competencies and skills that drive leadership performance.

It emphasizes on 5 main components:

Self-Awareness : It is ability to know one’s emotions and strengths, weakness, drives, values and goals as well as recognize their impact on others.

Self-Regulation: It involves controlling or redirecting one’s disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.

Social skill: It involves managing relationships to move people in the desired direction

Empathy: It involves considering other people’s feelings especially when making decision

Motivation: It involves being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.

(See below for case studies for the above points)

Diagrammatic Representation of Mixed Model

Case Studies for explanatory purpose

Case Study 1 (Mixed Model: Self Awareness)

Emotional self-awareness is the first dimension of emotional intelligence and this case study shows how important it can be.

For example, I remember once saying something to a former member of my staff. I heard it come out of my mouth and noticed that it sounded snide. I was really surprised as this was a member of staff I valued greatly and enjoyed interacting with.

I took myself out of the situation and reflected on my feelings. I tracked them back to an incident that had happened that morning. She had wanted some free copies of our CD's and I'd felt she was using me.

However, it had only been a fleeting emotion and in the busy-ness of my day I had not caught it. Instead, it lay festering inside so that when I next responded to a request from her it colored my response.

By not catching the feeling when it arose and dealing with it then, it came out later in a snide remark. This was not high on emotional intelligence.

However, I was at least able to track back to what happened and deal with it that day.

Case Study 2 : (Mixed Model: Self management)

I received a phone call once, to attend a conference in San Francisco. I had never been to San Francisco before and I'd heard a lot about it and it sounded amazing. It was also a trip I could take with a close friend as she was attending the conference too.

My immediate response was, of course, to say "Yes" enthusiastically. But was this emotionally intelligent decision?

No, not at all. It was a straight out emotional one. The only piece of information I had considered was my own enthusiasm.

As I reflected on this I decided I needed to also consider other emotional data, from my family and my boss. I also needed to factor into my decision cognitive data, such as, how much money was involved, whether I had sufficient leave, and so on.

I found out that my family was dismayed at the idea of my being away from home,the manager I was working for thought the timing was bad and he didn't want me to be away from work at that time and financially, I discovered the people expected me to pay my own way and I did not have much in the way of surplus cash at that time.

I sat down and reconsidered my decision, only this time with emotional data from a number of sources, plus all the relevant facts and figures .Next day I called back and gave my apologies.

I am sure this was the right decision. Regulating emotions means that you do include emotional data into your decisions, but it doesn't mean emotions are your only considerations.

A bureaucrat has to be Emotionally Intelligent for Following Reasons:

An emotionally intelligent civil servant is able to deal with emotions of co-workers and create a favorable environment for development and improvement of their emotional skills.

Ensuring that co- workers feel appreciated and understood helps enhance their devotion and enthusiasm for work , which positively affect their job performance.

India is a welfare state, hundreds of emotional issues have to be countered by the civil servant everyday.

If a civil servant can appreciate the emotions and behavior of others then such person can be good administrator.

Can Emotional Intelligence be learned?

Emotional competencies are not innate talents, but rather learned capabilities that must be worked on and can be developed to achieve outstanding performance.

How to develop Emotional Intelligence?

Learning Emotional Intelligence requires an engagement of our emotional habits.

Changing habits such to approach people positively instead of avoiding them, to listen better, or to give feedback skilfully is what is required to learn Emotional Intelligence.

Goleman points that individuals are born with a general emotional intelligence that determines their potential for learning emotional competencies.

Emotional competence refers to one’s ability to express or release one’s inner feelings (emotions).

Emotional capital is the set of personal and social emotional competencies which constitute a resource inherent to the person, useful for the personal, professional and organizational development and takes part in social cohesion, to personal, social and economic success. 

Furthermore, because of its impact on performance (as at work), on well-being (life satisfaction, health etc) and on social cohesion and citizenship, emotional capital should be taken into account seriously by public and educational policy-makers and practicians and companies.

Case Study: FedEx deploys Action-based Emotional Intelligence

FedEx Express is the world largest cargo airlines with over 290,000 employees moving seven million packages each day with 600 flights a day.

While founder Fred Smith was focused on logistics and speed, from the start he believed that people were the key to business.

The company sees that the people-side of leadership has grown more complex, and looking to the future, is committed to developing leadership capabilities to manage the changing workforce. 

The goal is leaders who are better at influence, make decisions that are both quick and accurate, and are able to build a culture where people feel the dedication and drive for exceptional performance in a way that’s sustainable and creates real value for all stakeholders.

This commitment to people-first leadership created an interest in “emotional intelligence” as a learnable skillset that would equip managers to deliver the FedEx way.

Action-Based Emotional Intelligence (Six Seconds Model)

Where other approaches to emotional intelligence remain quite theoretical, the Six Seconds Model is designed as a process framework for using emotional intelligence on a day-to-day basis.  At a macro-level, the model offers a three-step process with specific learnable, measurable competencies that support the three steps:

Know Yourself – increase self-awareness of emotions and reactions (competencies:  Enhance Emotional Literacy and Recognize Patterns).

Choose Yourself – shift from unconscious reaction to intentional response (competencies: Apply Consequential Thinking, Navigate Emotions, Engage Intrinsic Motivation, and Exercise Optimism).

Give Yourself – align the moment-to-moment decisions with a larger sense of purpose (competencies:  Increase Empathy and Pursue Noble Goals).

The program is yielding an 8-11% increase in core leadership competencies, with over half the participants experiencing very large (10-50%) improvements in certain key emotional intelligence skills and leadership outcomes: 72% of the program participants experience very large increases in decision making; 60% in Quality of Life, and 58% show major improvements in Influence.

While the data are impressive, the human stories are compelling.  Behind a 20% increase in relationships, we heard the story of a leader rebuilding trust with her team, or a marriage staying together.  Behind a 15% increase in Quality of Life, we heard the story of someone finding meaning and recommitting to stay sober.  That 10% increase in Decision Making is a story of a new manager finally “getting it” that people are what create value and changing the way he treats people.

Emotional Intelligence and Bhagvad Gita

The Bhagavad-Gita (the Divine song), considered to be the fifth Veda is Lord Krishna’s moral guidance to Arjuna on the battle field.

One can see striking similarities between Krishna’s emotionally stable person (Sthithapragnya) and Mayer and Salovey’s emotionally intelligent person.

The Bhagavad-Gita  stresses on the effectiveness of being able to control and manage emotions which is also covered in ability model of  Mayer and Salovey.

Tracing the root cause of all emotional turmoil, Krishna identifies desire and anger as the two vices that lead an individual to his downfall.

To achieve emotional stability, Krishna shows the path of ‘Nishkama Karma’ – action with detachment to the outcome or result of the action.

Critiques of Emotional Intelligence

A critique of emotional intelligence is that it is not an exact science and therefore hard to measure. Commonly used self-reports and peer-evaluations are often characterized by severe limitations, such as bias, prejudice, and manipulation.

But also the use of ability tests is not without flaws since they might not mirror precisely what people would do if they encounter the abstract emotional settings in real-life situations.

Consequently, if emotional intelligence will prevail as an important measurement of job qualification, future research, investigating how to enhance the assessment of emotional intelligence, is certainly necessary.

Critics also argue that the assessment and development of emotional intelligence skills is a time and cost intensive endeavor, wasting money that could be used otherwise.

Finally, critics feel uncomfortable “assigning a numerical yardstick to a person’s character as well as his intellect,” fearing that this will invite misuse.

It does not make sense to take an average of emotional skills, as, for example, some people can deal with anger but not with fear, and others might be unable to enjoy pleasure; hence every emotion has to be seen in its own right .

Moreover, critics contend that emotional intelligence, as cognitive intelligence, is a morally neutral concept - both can be used to accomplish good or evil deeds. Someone with a great understanding of his/her co-worker’s feelings could use it to inspire them or to take advantage of them. Thus, without a “moral compass” for guidance, emotional intelligence skills are essentially useless.