Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence has become a very popular topic that, unfortunately, suffers from the problem that almost all trendy concepts encounter.  Its meaning and measurement have become very confusing and ambiguous.  One way to clarify this problem is to differentiate between emotional intelligence and emotional competence.

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to diagnose, understand, and manage emotional cues.  Emotional competence refers to the noncognitive capabilities and skills, including social skills, which affect human functioning.  These noncognitive skills and abilities are, in fact, among the most important factors in explaining why some people succeed as leaders and managers and others do not.

Emotionally intelligent people are able to get in touch with and accurately diagnose their own internal feelings.  Emotionally intelligent people are able to regulate and control their emotions.  Emotionally intelligent people are also able to accurately diagnose and empathize with the feelings of others.

In a worldwide study of what companies were looking for in hiring new employees, 67 percent of the most desired attributes were emotional intelligence competencies (Goleman et al., 2002).

What is Self-Awareness?

It is impossible to accurately select the few best or most central aspects of self-awareness because the alternatives are just too numerous.  However, for the purposes of this discussion we will focus on five of the most critical areas of self-awareness that have been found to be key in developing successful management.  They are: emotional intelligence, personal values, cognitive style, orientation toward change, and core self-evaluation.

Research on the concept of emotional intelligence, the ability to manage one ’s self and to manage relationships with others, has been identified as among the most important factors in accounting for success in leaders and managers (Boyatzis, Goleman & Rhee, 2000).  In particular, self-awareness has been identified as a crucial aspect of emotional intelligence, and it is more powerful than IQ in predicting success in life (Goleman, 1995).  Emotional intelligence identifies the extent to which people are able to recognize and control their own emotions, as well as to recognize and respond appropriately to the emotions of others.

Personal values are included here because they are “the core of the dynamics of behavior, and play so large a part in unifying personality” (Allport, Gordon &Vernon, 1931).  That is, all other attitudes, orientations, and behaviors arise out of an individuals’ values.  Values identify an individual’s basic standards about what is good and bad, worthwhile and worthless, desirable and undesirable, true and false, moral and immoral.

A third area of self-awareness is cognitive style, which refers to the manner in which individuals gather and process information.  Researchers have found that individual differences in cognitive style influence perception, learning, problem solving, decision making, communication, and creativity (Cools & Van den Broeck, 2007; Hayes & Allinson, 1994; Kirton, 2003).  Cognitive style identifies individual thought processes, perceptions, and methods for acquiring and storing information.  It determines not only what kind of information is received by an individual, but how that individual interprets, judges, and responds to the information. 

Orientation towards change focuses on the methods people use to cope with change in their environment.  Two important dimensions, locus of control and intolerance of ambiguity, are important considerations for evaluating your ability to cope with change.  Orientation towards change identifies the adaptability of individuals.  It includes the extent to which individuals are tolerant of ambiguous, uncertain conditions, and the extent to which they are inclined to accept personal responsibility for their actions under changing conditions.

Core self-evaluation is a recently developed construct that captures the essential aspects of personality, and it identifies the general personality orientation that guides behavior.  It uncovers levels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, emotional stability, and self-control that have important effects on individuals’ happiness as well as managerial effectiveness.

My next discussion will concern itself with the first of these five areas, emotional intelligence.