EQ vs. IQ: This is How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
Perhaps one of the best public examples of emotional intelligence and self-awareness that I have ever seen came from the late, great Steve Jobs.
Let’s take a trip back in time to 1997 when Jobs had just returned to Apple after being ousted from there over a decade earlier. He was answering questions at an Apple Developer Conference when someone in the audience got up and asked a question.
The man began by saying, “Mr. Jobs, you’re a bright and influential man.”
To which Jobs responded with a laugh, “Here it comes!”
From there, the man let him have it, saying:
“It’s sad and clear that on several counts you’ve discussed, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I would like, for example, for you to express in clear terms how, say, Java and any of its incarnations addresses the ideas embodied in OpenDoc. And when you’re finished with that, perhaps you can tell us what you personally have been doing for the last seven years.”
Before we discuss how Jobs handled the situation, let’s first discuss the concept of emotional intelligence.
There is no doubt that at that moment Jobs was going through a struggle that we have all faced at some point in our lives.
The Struggle Is Real!
That struggle is the one that occurs in our brains between reason and emotion. And the reason it is a struggle is that our brain is biologically wired to give the upper hand in this struggle to our emotions.
Without getting too technical and scientific on you, the reason that happens is because of how our brains work. As we perceive things around us, electric signals enter our brains near the spinal cord, they then pass through our limbic system, where our emotions get processed, before they make their way to the rational/reasoning part of our brain. This is what causes us to react emotionally and sometimes without even realizing it!
While the rational/reasoning part of our brain cannot prevent the emotions experienced by our limbic system, the two can influence each other and keep in constant communication. This communication that exists between our emotional and rational brains is what makes up what is known as the physical source of emotional intelligence.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
As Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves say in Emotional Intelligence 2.0,
“Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.” 2
The term ‘emotional intelligence’ first appeared in a paper by Michael Beldoch in 1964 but really first became popular in a book called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman. I have read Goleman’s book a couple of times and loved it, the only complaint I have is that there is not a lot of actionable advice that we can use to improve our emotional intelligence.
After reading many books and papers on the subject, I really liked the work done by Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves in several of their books and will base the actionable recommendations in this series of blog posts on their great work.
I say, ‘series’ of blog posts as this blog post is the first of 5 and you will see the reason why I split it up into 5 parts in a hot Miami minute.
What is EQ and How Does It Differ From IQ?
Whereas IQ reflects your intellect and your ability to learn, EQ reflects your emotional intelligence. Your IQ or cognitive intelligence is fixed, meaning you cannot improve it. On the other hand, EQ is a skill that can be learned, improved and developed.
According to Bradberry,
“When emotional intelligence was first discovered, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while people with average IQs outperform house with high IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the source of success—IQ. Scientists realized there must be another variable that explained success above and beyond one’s IQ, and years of research and countless studies pointed to emotional intelligence (EQ) as the critical factor.” 2
Why is EQ Important?
Making great decisions requires much more than us having the correct facts. It also involves us being able to manage our emotions when we face challenging situations in the heat of the battle. That is what emotional intelligence is all about!
The way we are wired causes our first reaction to be an emotional one as we just discussed, we have no choice in the matter. What we do have a choice over is the thoughts that follow those emotions as well as how we react to them.
EQ is so instrumental to our success that it affects almost everything we do or say every day. According to the authors, it accounts for 58% of performance in all types of jobs, it is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and it is the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence. 2 Not only that but “the link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to an annual salary.” 2
Furthermore, emotional intelligence is not taught in school, so we are on our own in figuring out how to manage our emotions in those critical situations once we enter the workforce.
What Are the 4 Skills of Emotional Intelligence?
There are four skills that comprise emotional intelligence. The first two, self-awareness and self-management, are what the authors call ‘personal competence’; they are based on how we interact with ourselves. The second two, social-awareness and relationship management, are what the authors call “social competence” and are based on how we interact with others.
(1) Self-awareness: Deals with how accurately we perceive our emotions and reactions to various situations or incidents in our lives.
(2) Self-management: Deals with how we act or don’t act in response to being aware of our emotions.
(3) Social-awareness: Deals with understanding what others are thinking and feeling and picking up on their emotions. This involves being a good listener and a keen observer of others.
(4) Relationship management: Lastly, we come to relationship management which draws on our abilities in the first three skills to manage our interactions with others successfully.
Each of these skills is not only substantial on their own but they also build upon each other.
Since we cannot cover them all in depth in one blog post, you can think of this as ‘Emotional Intelligence Week’ at Prime Your Pump where we will dedicate one blog post to each of the four skills for the remainder of the week, starting with self-awareness tomorrow.
You may be wondering how Steve Jobs showed emotional intelligence in dealing with the public attack.
Well, you will have to come back tomorrow when we discuss self-awareness to find out!
Until next time, remember – your emotional intelligence can be improved and this week we will show you how, and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick
Use it or Lose It
The 4 components of emotional intelligence that we will cover this week are:
(1) Self-awareness
(2) Self-management
(3) Social awareness
(4) Relationship management
When to Use It
Always! It is always important to utilize emotional intelligence.
What Do You Think?
Are you familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence and the 4 skills that we will discuss this week? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
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References
1 Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.
2 Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional intelligence 2.0. San Diego, CA: TalentSmart.
3 Bradberry, Travis. (2005). The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book: Everything You Need to Know to Put Your EQ to Work. New York: Simon & Schuster.
I agree that EQ is very important. Most people react instantly in the heat of the moment. We can’t control what people say or do but we can control how we react. This is often easier said than done. If we just stop and reflect on what is being said or done and let our brain think about it, our response might be more controlled and sensible. Good topic
Hi Eileen, We definitely can control how we react and we will discuss some strategies we can use to do that this week, so stay tuned! Thanks, Rick
So this is the first in a series of five, eh? Here is my initial take on the subject. You are born with an IQ, a magical number ranging somewhere between Einstein and a house plant. Your place on the intellectual bell curve will never change. Not everyone will be able to solve differential equations, and 95% of us could care less as it’s not relevant to our lives.
However, emotions can be controlled but it takes practice. Some people will explode into a session of screaming and ranting, others will say “who gives a healthy crap”. In my opinion, most of us are naturally in the screaming and ranting group. If you recognize that, you can control it; but it takes realization and forethought.
So IQ be damned, we who lean towards the screaming and yelling persuasion anxiously await chapters two through five.
Hi Dave, You are bang on as always in your assessment re: the IQ bell curve, can’t change where you fall on it. And yes, you definitely can improve your EQ. EQ is such an important and comprehensive topic, as you will see, that I had to split it into 5 blog posts, otherwise it would have ended up in a novel! They will all be linked to each other, so people will have the option to read them all together by the end of the week and in the future. Thanks as always. Be good (and careful!), Rick