“Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and the ability to use this awareness to manage your behaviors and the behaviors of others,” was the formal definition given by Stacey Zimmerman, assistant director of Called to Lead, at the organization’s event on Jan. 27.
A self-evaluation quiz was given to each student present to gauge their emotional intelligence (EQ) level. Zimmerman stated that EQ is connected with both intelligence quotient (IQ) and personality; however, individuals are limited in their ability to change their IQ or personality, but EQ can always be developed. Some statistics that Zimmerman gave on the importance of EQ were that 90 percent of top performers in the work place have high EQs. In addition, people with high EQs make $29,000 more annually and are promoted more often than those with high IQs. Zimmerman stated that people with high EQs “are the ones who tend to be popular at the workplace … that type of person tends to get promoted more often.”
Zimmerman explained that EQ involves four criterion: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Self-awareness is the ability to articulate one’s own emotions. Zimmerman said that people with low self-awareness tend to get frustrated with their inability to explain how they feel. Self-management involves being able to control one’s emotions. People who have low self-management will be the people who explode with the slightest provocation or “fly off the handle” Zimmerman stated.
Social awareness is how well an individual can read the social cues of those around them. People with low social awareness may seem like they do not know how to act in a group setting. The final criterion of relationship management involves how well an individual is able to read social cues in others and respond to those social cues. People with low relationship management often pick up on social cues but do not consider or care about other individuals’ emotions.
Since EQ is 58 percent of one’s job performance, Zimmerman gave ways to improve one’s EQ. She said that personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs test, are useful to build self-awareness. Additionally, she said that instead of grouping emotions into bad or good categories, it is important to “view it as the emotion it is.” Building self-management skills can be done through what Zimmerman referred to as “meditative responses”, such as taking deep breaths or counting to 10.
One way to improve social awareness is simply by calling a person by his or her first name. Another tip was to always have a “back-pocket question.” This could include asking people about a similar interest they have or about a common class. Zimmerman said that this question can help to end a lull in conversation and prevent both individuals from feeling awkward. Relationship awareness is one of the hardest skills to improve because it requires intentional thought. Zimmerman stated that building a relationship with someone could involve doing small things, such as sending someone a text message or asking how they are doing. It is also important to recognize an individual’s feelings, and offering to help someone aids in building and maintaining a relationship.
Zimmerman briefly explained some of the physiology of emotional responses to situations. She explained that before anything enters the frontal lobe where conscious thought occurs, the thought or event passes through the limbic system, which is a person’s emotional center. Thus, there is a physical reason why people often react emotionally before they consider a situation. Zimmerman also demonstrated that there are these five central emotions: happy, sad, angry, afraid and ashamed. All feelings are a variant of these five core emotions. The amount of emotion an individual demonstrates depends upon the intensity level of the emotion.
One exercise conducted was to show a series of images, varying from a picture of Justin Bieber to the Olympic symbol to Nelson Mandela. Students wrote down their basic emotional responses to these images in order to see that some individuals have different reactions to the images based on their feelings about the image. Zimmerman also wanted students to see that they could comprehend emotions from the physical appearance of the individuals in various pictures. She wanted students to think about “how our emotions play a role in how we process the world around us.”
