Emotional Intelligence, like mindfulness meditation in the days of yore and intermittent fasting today, gets bandied about much in the self-improvement literature. While that might fatigue readers like us, it’s not without good reason that these ideas appear to overstay their welcome. People the world over have found themselves embroiled in national emergencies, corporate failures, and familial breakdowns more times than they’d like to count. And, as we shall see, there are good reasons to think that these will continue to be the case for many in the future. Why should this be? A literary answer could suffice: things (simply) fall apart. Communication misfires, faulty assumptions, and stressful environments often converge to create fertile ground on which relational breakdowns sprout. Sometimes they make you want to shout or maybe even sing

The scientifically inclined might find an analogy with the second law of thermodynamics, or the unidirectional increase of entropy, just as penetrating: there are more ways for things to go wrong than for them to go right. When this framework is applied to the social worlds we inhabit, and which we now know from psychological science is exacerbated by the cognitive heuristics and biases we’ve inherited from our Pleistocene ancestors, the ubiquity of relational failures in our individual and collective histories can begin to make sense. Often, these failures grow into chronic problems precisely because interlocuters lack the emotional and conversational tools to navigate those circumstances, resorting instead to silence, gossip, and even violence.

This is when emotional intelligence is commonly brought-up, as a cure for this malaise. While the concept was born within the walls of social-science, with its own connections to commensurate psychological concepts that came before it, today, it is most commonly encountered in popular books and seminars aimed at helping the reader, usually a corporate employee, achieve success with his or her working relationships and develop a robust sense of emotional well-being. So many studies have now been conducted to flesh out aspects of corporate life by researchers looking to squeeze out every inch of useful data for their clients. One study suggests that middle managers stand out with the highest Emotional Intelligence (EQ) scores in Anglo-American companies. But as one goes up the corporate ladder, this starts to drop precipitously until one reaches the CEO, whose score is typically the lowest. Knowing when developing EQ might afford the greatest competitive advantage is one takeaway from a piece of data like this.

Another implication of emotional intelligence leaving the halls of the ivory tower is its newfound ability to connect with cognate concepts such as self-awareness, empathy, and perspective-taking. Self-awareness allows emotional intelligence to flourish because an accurate sense of self, which includes understanding one’s emotional triggers, will permit one to prioritize one’s strengths while keeping one’s emotions from affecting crucial decisions, especially since our emotional centers prioritize decisions for us. This is supported by the fact that 83 percent of the top performers in various companies possess high levels of self-awareness. Empathy predicts leadership trait emergence and altruistic behavior within self-managing teams. And perspective-taking correlates with lowered stereotyping which leads to better negotiation outcomes. As researchers looking to develop robust studies that stand the test of time, definitions and boundary markers to differentiate closely related concepts must be carefully delineated. No such restrictions are required for those not looking for that level of diagnostic clarity, and interesting connections which otherwise could not have been made avail themselves to us. Accordingly, while this article will offer an abridged summary of the scholarly literature on emotional intelligence for completeness sake, it will not be constrained by the definitions set forth there.

Before continuing with the article proper, it behooves us to be acquainted with the reasons emotional intelligence is a topic worth learning about, so here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons. First, emotional intelligence gives us the tools to engage in crucial confrontations with others in ways that solve problems and build relationships. There is little need for me to tell you how the costs of not engaging in crucial confrontations – or engaging in them without tact and where emotions are running high – in any relational context can be dire. From changing a family member’s counter-productive behavior to flagging issues with company SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) to superiors, positive change can only happen if these conversations, or confrontations, are held, and held well. Second, we derive sustenance and mental strength from good relationships. Individuals who possess these relationships are more likely to enjoy longer lives, stronger immune systems, lessened anxieties, suffer from fewer addictions, are less likely to be devastated by unmet expectations.

However, the connections typically required for good social relationships to flourish include mutual appreciation, vulnerability, and support. Emotional intelligence, as we shall see, catalyzes these factors for us. This is borne out by self-reported studies showing positive links between emotional intelligence and mental, psychosomatic, and physical health. Among nurses and police officers, emotional intelligence, i.e., emotion recognition and management, helped them stave off exhaustion and predicted consistent engagement with their work.

For children, having emotional intelligence, that is, having an easily retrievable emotional vocabulary, predicts satisfaction with school, leadership skills, and academic achievement. It also predicts a host of positive leadership qualities such as fair-mindedness and dependability in adults, including

1. Successfully managing difficult situations
2. Expressing themselves clearly
3. Gaining respect from others
4. Influencing other people
5. Listening to the concerns of others
6. Keeping cool and coping under pressure
7. Motivating themselves to get things done

Third, emotions matter. The psychological experience of our value judgments is a core feature of the human experience. It affects our attention, memory, health, and even our creativity. And since emotional intelligence purports to measure one’s ability to recognize, regulate, and express emotions, cultivating it should be the prime directive of anybody looking for a holistic way to improve themselves. At the very least, taking control of our emotions will help us move away from being their victims to become their owners.

Finally, emotional intelligence connects with one of the deepest human motivations: the desire to belong. As social animals, we’ve evolved to seek out groups to belong to and identify with. Along with that, our emotions evolved as a kind of intelligent system, ensuring our survival by energizing behaviors suited to protecting our reproductive fitness (on the neo-Darwinian paradigm). It helped our hunter-gatherer forebears stave off diseases they had not developed immunities for and safeguard their resources. This function, which has become (mostly) obsolete with the invention of agriculture and the modern state, manifests itself in different but recognizable ways. From entrenched ideological tribes in the Anglophone culture wars (intellectual dark web vs the regressive left anyone?) to the proliferation of cults throughout history (and our fascination with them),

anthropological data, broadly defined, converge to support this strong need for people to be a part of some group and to draw meaning from that identification.

But since people are also not uniformly hardwired to support and sign up for the Nazi party, gangs, or some sexually obsessed cult, this human desire for belonging needn’t be construed negatively. It is a genuine need that can be directed in ways that promote rather than hinder our collective emotional well-being. In other words, it must allow the follower to feel that their identification with a certain group enables them to pursue and achieve meaningful life projects without otherwise causing suffering to others or make them feel superior to others, as is the case with the Nazis, gangs, and the sexually or emotionally abusive.

Resources within emotional intelligence can empower its possessors to identify when belonging to a certain group only affords that cheap (and false) feeling of superiority which creates no lasting well-being in themselves and which are typically led by people driven by money, power, or fame, and who are great at giving easy answers to complex issues to avoid or leave those groups.

Likewise, instead of pouring one’s emotional capital into groups driven by pride, judgment, and hate, or, at the other end of the spectrum, championing the misguided notion that emotions should be removed altogether – to align with some ideal artificial intelligence that will save humanity (much in vogue in today’s technocratic discourse) – cultivating emotional intelligence permits the reorientation of our strengths in authentic groups structured – formally or informally – around a mission to help others, satiating our need to belong and find meaning in the things that we do without otherwise causing unnecessary suffering.

Given, then, that there are a host of benefits to cultivating emotional intelligence (EI), let us first explore its academic history and its relationship with cognate concepts before diving into practical application.

Excursus:

• Before continuing, you may wish to watch this webinar titled “The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership”.
• Apart from gaining some insight into the synergistic relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership from an experienced leadership development coach, listeners will also be treated to a walkthrough of the EQ-i 2.0 model, currently the best and most widely used self-reported measure of emotional intelligence.
• My recent encounter with an article about the top ten jobs that attract the highest number of psychopaths got me thinking: Occupations that can effect the most positive change in the world, CEOs, lawyers, religious leaders, etc., for that very reason (i.e., opportunities to attain power and influence), attract the kind of people least suited to effect those changes, even if they are the minority.
• On the tangential topic of leadership, check out the article I wrote about it. Leaders do much more than get people to do things they don’t like. The best ones find ways to ease the mind-numbing, frustrating, and stress-inducing work for them. Those who do not are incompetent, lazy, or just enjoy making other people miserable. This other article about what makes a great leader is worth checking out. 

EI’s History and Relation to Other Concepts

The first thing that comes to mind when seeing EQ – one way of conceiving emotional intelligence – is the Intelligence Quotient. While they were not created in tandem, the early architects of EI saw it as a cousin to IQ. One pre-cursor to EI was the concept of inter and intra-personal intelligence embedded within Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences in the 1980s. They denoted the ability to perceive the emotions of others and to understand one’s own emotions and motivations respectively. However, because these concepts could not be differentiated from each other and from general intelligence statistically, it didn’t last long in the ivory tower. Regardless, EI proper first appeared in 1986, in a doctoral student Wayne Payne’s unpublished thesis titled: “A Study of Emotions.” Four years later, Peter Salovey and John Mayer took up the term and published on the concept in an academic journal, defining it as a subset of “social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s own thinking and actions.” Their positioning of EI as a subcomponent of the older and soon-to-be-defunct social intelligence (which was also, in its own time, ignored by mainstream psychology) confirms EI’s relation to IQ. This is because social intelligence was measured with GWSI (George Washington Social Intelligence) tests, which produced highly correlated results with tests measuring general intelligence, i.e., IQ tests.

At this juncture, emotional intelligence had still not entered the wider consciousness. It took Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ in 1995 for the literature and visibility on EI to proliferate. Goleman also related EQ to IQ but emphasized the competitive advantage EQ had on determining a person’s success in life. Goleman defined EI more broadly as the ability to “motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s mood and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope.” He argued that EI was catalytic to whatever other abilities someone had and could make the greatest difference in high performing environments where everyone already had enough IQ to go around. He used the null correlation between GMAT and GRE scores and career success to bolster his point. For obvious reasons – the incorporation of personality variables that are not accepted as signs of intelligence – Goleman’s concept of EI inherits similar problems with construct validity (i.e., diagnostic clarity) that plagued the older concepts mentioned. To intelligence researchers, traits like self-control, mood, and hope could not impact logical reasoning in any measurably significant way. The reason for its popularity outside academic circles, however, is intuitive. Much like Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, the idea that some forms of intelligence can be improved with effort is naturally appealing (and true under constrained conditions).

Fortunately, since the 1990s, studies have been created with some construct validity, incorporating both consensus and expert scoring to mitigate the potentially deceptive effects of self-report questionnaires. The performance-oriented EI measure, MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), boasts such construct validity. For some at least, this vindicated EI as a distinct cognitive ability that “may be integrated as a second-order factor of intelligence in the g-model of intelligence.” Not everyone is convinced though. Some argue that the MSCEIT and other performance-based measures lack external validity, i.e., objective data about actual behaviors in real life, not in context-free experimental settings. Thankfully, the ESCI (Emotional and Social Competence Inventory), which synthesizes self and other-assessment scales have been created to address this shortcoming. We can, therefore, say with some certainty that EI has become a measurable trait that can have all sorts of meaningful insights for the world of work.

Together with IQ, they are a holistic snapshot of a person’s chances of success in life. Case in point, self-awareness, and self-management, as well as social awareness and relationship management, account for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.

EI is also been connected with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), especially in relation to improved decision-making under stress. We know that emotions play a modulatory role in cognition and decision-making, for example, under conditions where loss aversion is in play. The amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions, is a hair trigger. Operating, as it were, to be safe rather than sorry, the distressing emotions are the first signal for flight, freeze, or flight. While useful in Pleistocene conditions, they don’t function particularly well for folk living in the modern industrialized world. Chronic emotional strains to the brain lead to chronic stress, which in turn leads to elevated cortisol, anger, depression, social isolation, increased muscle pain, inhibited breathing, higher chances of heart disease, nausea, and a weakened immune system. This is where our prefrontal cortex comes in. CBT harnesses the prefrontal cortex to re-process the distressing information so that we don’t become helpless victims to them. Just as Goleman argues that our emotions can impact our rational decision-making skills, CBT channels our emotional coping resources, among other things, to radically alter the schema with which we see the world so that we can make optimal decisions conditioned by our current state of knowledge. Because we are not rational information processors – something that I hope the reader has picked up as a consistent theme in my writing – we develop idiosyncratic habits of mind that commonly lead us to feel, think, and act in ways that don’t track reality, and for that reason, cannot produce the desired outcomes. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of such habits of mind:

1. Personalization
2. Magnification or minimization
3. Mental filters
4. All-or-nothing thinking
5. Mind reading
6. Fortune telling

This ongoing video series by PBS’ Braincraft on the psychology of bad behavior has more.

In addition, we sometimes overestimate the likelihood and a bad event will occur and will have more lasting consequences than it will have. How we explain the events that happen to us are also affected by our emotions which can be realigned with CBT. Do we see our successes and failures as a one-time thing, a random luck thing, or something that is a result of an enduring quality we’ve cultivated and that we deserve? When we fail at something, do we globalize and start to think of ourselves as total failures, or do we contextualize and commit to improving on the areas that we lack? (Cf. Martin Seligman’s “Learned Helplessness”) Interventions typically invoked by Cognitive Behavioural Therapists include

1. The ABCD coping exercise for quick stress reduction
2. Adopting BREATHE for a similar effect
3. Somatic quieting for relaxation
4. Cognitive reappraisals/reprocessing for challenging habits of mind
5. Selective attention for mood management
6. Activity scheduling for doing things that one likes

As we have seen, EI has an interesting history, is connected to a host of meaningful concepts with applications in the world of work, and will, for these reasons, have a future in the self-improvement literature in the years to come. While we wait expectantly for fresh insights in the discipline, let us work through some of those insights that have already been uncovered in the following section.

Excursus:

• For details on the CBT interventions listed above, see this lecture by Jason Satterfield, Director of Behavioral Medicine at UCSF in chronic medical and stress-induced illnesses.

• Additional lectures to watch include Daniel Goleman’s talk on social intelligence, Elizabeth Phelps’ talk on emotion and decision making, and Andy Smith’s talk on emotional intelligence. All can be found on YouTube. 

The Application of EI to Life

As I read the literature on EI, the tips and strategies offered typically fall into several categories that apply to a wide range of contexts. In other words, much like the literature on leadership, there seem to be diminishing returns on practical insight after a certain point. Part of the reason for this is because EI is a skill that needs to be practiced. Beyond some critical juncture, no amount of additional reading will carry us farther up the EI ladder if we don’t put the tools we’ve learned to practice, i.e., in our personal and working lives. Furthermore, what sounds good in theory often fails to deliver in practice. By adopting them in real life situations, we quickly get a grasp of what works for us and what doesn’t. 

However, because the format of online writing offers no means of enforcing or following up on practice, this is the best that we can do.

This section will be loosely divided into three, understanding EI, developing EI, and applying EI. EI itself is usually divided into five components: self-awareness (accurate self-perception), mood management (preventing your moods from spreading like a social virus), self-motivation (how good you are at doing things you don’t like), interpersonal expertise (consensus building and conflict resolving), and emotional mentoring (helping others manage their emotions). One way to relate these components of EI is to draw a two-by-two and insert them, like so:

	Self	Others
Awareness	Self-awareness	Social awareness
Actions	Mood management Self-motivation	Interpersonal expertise Emotional mentoring

Taking these four components under one’s control helps with the emotional climate of the teams we’re in. It gets harder down and to the right because these skills stack in that direction. For example, you can’t have interpersonal expertise without the other three components. Our EI is especially influential if we’re leaders. One interesting point to note is that the better one’s frontal lobe – where the prefrontal cortex is located – functions, the more likely one can apply social knowledge in effective ways. Since the frontal lobe gets smaller with age, this might explain why some elderly individuals are more likely to act inappropriately.

Regarding social awareness, the analogy of an iceberg (see below) and the invisible forces that shape action will remind us not to make quick assumptions about other peoples’ behavior.

Observable	Results	Outcomes
	Behavior	Habits
Invisible	Emotions	What we feel
	Values and beliefs
	Thinking	What we think

While we may naturally project values and beliefs onto someone’s actions based on our own experiences, they may not be accurate. They lead to the common belief we have that other people don’t know what they’re doing (don’t worry, they’re thinking the same thing about us: Consider the fact that eighty percent of healthcare workers in America say they regularly work with people who are incompetent).

This attitude will seep into our working relationships with them and the climate it creates will have consequences. This climate is created the moment we tell ourselves an ugly story about other peoples’ selfishness or thoughtlessness, assume ignoble intentions on their part and start to telegraph our anger or moral superiority toward them. When we adopt a dispositional rather than situational view of others, we commit the fundamental attribution error. We interpret their behaviors as manifestations of their enduring character traits rather than from stressors in their circumstances or their environment. We improve a little bit each time we consider that our snap judgments are too hasty and choose to think through social infractions as a scientist rather than a trial lawyer, replacing certainty with curiosity. Self-management is not static, it needs to be renewed every day because it will be tested over and over again. Those who don’t crack under relentless pressure are positioned to succeed.

This leads us to self-management. Someone who embodies this will exhibit patience and understanding during heated, emotionally-charged meetings. While others might get caught in the flow of the argument, this person will listen attentively and respond with knowledge and wisdom. They will not speak negatively about people who think differently from them, even if it’s common in the working culture that they’re in. What about relationship management? This taps into the above three skills. This one aids in the effective handling of conflict. Those who possess good relationship management will not passively avoid festering problems, nor will they explode at people when things don’t go their way. They initiate crucial conversations to resolve conflicts and make the best out of a bad situation.

Finally, EI is not merely optimism or confidence. To become proficient with our EI, here are some preliminary things we can do. Never stop learning and growing, in theoretical and practical settings. Get motivated, find and seek others who wish to journey with us in this area. Seek frank feedback, learn to overcome defensiveness and anger, but at the same time learn to identify biased feedback. Engage our demons, be familiar with the things that trigger us emotionally and plan workarounds so that they don’t flare at inappropriate moments. And, find our authentic voice so that we can engage in crucial conversations and improve our chances of resolving otherwise intractable conflicts.

This brings us to developing EI.

So how can we develop EI? There are certain easy things we can start doing that will help. First, we should keep a journal and pen our thoughts about our feelings and circumstances at regular junctures in our lives. Looking back to our emotional states from months or even years past is an illuminating experience. I’m sure you recall when you read something you’ve written several years ago and were brought back to a mental state you forgot you ever had. The past 40 years of research concerning the relationship between writing and emotional processing is clear: people who journal about their troubles enjoy increases in their physical and mental well-being. Second, we can receive coaching from individuals we perceive to possess levels of EI that we aspire to. (Pro Tip: people with EI tend not to be the ones telling you that they are emotionally intelligent. It’s much more accurate to determine this from your experiences with them corroborated by agreement from mutual friends/colleagues). Third, we can ask for feedback from people we trust. In the same way that we can quite easily spot other peoples’ blind-spots in this area, others are able to do so for us too. Just be ready to hear things you might not like. Forth, in emotionally intense situations, pause when feeling angry, yet be fully present, open and responsive, putting yourself in other peoples’ shoes. For many, their EI flies out the window when they need them the most, i.e., in stressful situations. Fifth, surround ourselves with people who possess EI. The more we interact with them, the more emotionally intelligent we become, and the better we get at identifying and understanding emotions. Remember that, like IQ, EI is a learned skill. Sixth, following on from the previous section about finding your voice, ask yourself what truly matters to me? What am I struggling with? When meeting a prospective friend, colleague, or boss for the first time, ask yourself, what am I most excited to learn about this person? Seventh, look for positive deviants, i.e., identify and distinguish the EI behaviors of people that lead to the best results, those that reverse maladaptive cultural norms and taboos, and mimic them.

Now that we have some tools in our EI toolbox, let us see how we can go about applying them in myriad contexts.  We begin first with additional tips for developing the aforementioned components of EI. On self-awareness, the first step to activating the components of this skill is to be mindful of the mental facets of the self. Learn to listen to how you talk to yourself. Is it harsh and critical, or forgiving and open? Too much in either direction will lead to problems. Check your intentions, especially as they impinge on your actions. Note that obsessing over your intentions won’t help much either. It’ll make you needlessly anxious over things that are often out of your control. Some more tips for self-awareness include:

• Leaning into your discomfort (recognize this to change).
• Feeling your emotions physically.
• Knowing who and what pushes your buttons.
• Watching yourself like a hawk.
• Stopping and asking yourself why you do the things that you do.

When we improve our self-management, we reduce the chances that we are frustrating other people and making them resent or dislike us. These are some of the things we can do. We can create an emotion-versus-reason list when making decisions and sleep on it. We can speak to someone who is not emotionally invested in our problem for an objective (relatively) perspective. We can make our goals public so that we can use others’ expectations to keep us motivated. We can get advice from skilled self-managers. We can take control of our negative self-talk and visualize ourselves succeeding in tasks that require EI. We can take control of our sleeping habits (check out my post about sleeping). Commit to learning something valuable from everyone we encounter. Schedule mental recharges with mindfulness meditation or anything else that helps us to relax. Finally, accept that we can change and that this change is just around the corner.

Moving on to social-awareness, the first thing we can do is to greet people by name (something I’m really bad at). Watch our body language, and make sure that we are not telegraphing negativity toward anyone. In social situations, be fully present and engage with the people talking. Live in the moment, don’t look like you planned everything you were going to say (even if you did). Develop empathy through reading and watching fiction. Practice the art of listening, and whenever possible, observe the ins-and-outs of the social dynamics of other people. The American reality television show Survivor may be illuminating in this regard. At the very least, you don’t have to engage in creepy “people-watching” in real life. Understand the rules of the culture you are entering. If, for example, you’ve just been headhunted for a position in a Japanese company and you are American, learn about their culture and be willing to adopt them (to the extent that you are expected to as an outsider) before signing on. This has been mentioned before, but it’s worth mentioning again: ask other people about the state of our self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management skills. If they’re from trusted and candid sources, they’re usually quite accurate.

On relationship management strategies, be open and curious about what other people are saying. Use your natural communication style when speaking and tweak it to fit the context. People can spot artificiality in your tone. Clarify miscommunications as quickly as possible and avoid giving out mixed signals. Remember that the littlest of things can pack the biggest punch when delivered without tact. Recognise and support others as individuals with their own aspirations. Show respect for others’ opinions and admit when you’re wrong quickly and emphatically.

Now that we’ve covered the core components of EI, let us consider some scenarios.

1. Handling Crucial Confrontations

These have the tendency to go awry, especially when they are treated with aggression or an accusatory tone. The first thing one can do, if you are superior in the relationship, is to create safety. Do not make your interlocutor feel like they are under attack. Do not start with a complaint. Start by letting the other person know that you truly care about their problems and that by extension, you care about them. It must be authentic. If it isn’t then you shouldn’t be confronting that person at all. If the confrontation is about the violation of trust, consistency is key. Promise-breaking and lack of accountability make just about everyone mad. Convey the disappointment but also allow the other person some leeway. If, for example, they tend to not keep their commitments, ask them to let you know if something comes up and they are unable to comply to your request as soon as they can. Consider adopting AMPP: ask, mirror, paraphrase, prime. Ask in a neutral and curious tone to get the conversation rolling. Mirror by gently pointing out the disparity between what someone says and how they are saying it to encourage them to open up. Paraphrase by rephrasing in your own words for mutual clarification and understanding. Finally, prime by offering what you think is going on with them so that they feel safe speaking out. Priming shows that you have no intention of demeaning your interlocutor. This gives them the safety and permission to honestly discuss important issues with you. One way to do this naturally is simply to choose to see others as people you want to help succeed. It will show in your body language and tone of voice.

2. Dealing with Broken Promises, Missed Deadlines, and Bad Behaviours

Don’t play tit-for-tat games. This backhanded approach will only exacerbate the problem. Don’t play “read my mind” either. Be nice but deal with bad behavior firmly. In so doing, never come across as morally superior. It will destroy whatever might be left of the relationship. People-pleasers and hard-hitters, or agreeable and disagreeable people, are located at the ends of the communication spectrum. Try to achieve some balance between the two. Rest assured, this isn’t easy for anyone. Our natural dispositions gravitate us toward one or the other. Maintain mutual respect, ask for permission before launching into the confrontation, and speak in private. When consensus has been found, agree on a plan and follow up. Finally, do not accept other peoples’ gossip or stories as fact or act on them until you gather reliable first-hand information, where feasible.

3. Motivating Others as a Leader

Do not motivate with fear or manipulation. I wrote about how this tends to backfire in my post on leadership. Avoid leading with charisma or with force. They kill relationships and galvanize resistance. Limit extrinsic motivators like perks. They help but cannot be the driving force of motivation. Link motivation to values. Connect short-term benefits with long-term pain. Place the focus on long-term benefits and show how an employee’s current conduct is stopping them from aligning with those long-term benefits. Carrots and sticks need to be mentioned but don’t use them as threats. Use company-sanctioned discipline only as a last resort. If you decide to do so, be consistent and don’t back off under pressure. Note that some are unable to comply with your requests because they lack ability, not motivation. Be sure to know when these scenarios apply.

4. Receiving and giving feedback

We’ve already mentioned this. Ask people close to you about your best EI traits. Ask also how you can improve. Describe the EI goal that you intend to meet, ask for a few suggestions, listen carefully, respond with gratefulness and action, and repeat the process with more people. For managers, consider allowing others in the organization to give anonymous feedback about how to improve the organization, overall happiness, and work-life balance. An open forum for feedback can sometimes turn ugly. There is a risk that disgruntled or attention-seeking individuals hijack the forum to voice their unshared and unproductive peeves. Anonymous feedback, done well, solves this issue without preventing any dissenting voice from being heard. When giving feedback, strive to help the employee grow rather the harp on the fact that he or she was wrong. Mirror positive energy, since that is contagious, and invite them into the problem-solving process so that they are invested in the change.

5. Diffusing a challenging interaction

Unlike a crucial confrontation that you initiate, these are cases where interactions you weren’t expecting to be challenging become challenging. Getting out of our heads is the first step to engaging these types of interactions. Get a grip on your interlocuters intentions and on the facts. Honestly examine your contributions to whatever is irking them, and question your assumptions along the way.

6. Writing resonant emails

We’ve all read emails that came across as overly emotive or needlessly disrespectful. We’ve also probably written things ourselves that we only realized later, with horror, that they sounded inordinately snarky. Because nuances of tone and body language aren’t available for the recipient to interpret, readers can also perceive negative intentions from the most innocent or neutrally-toned pieces of writing. Regardless, we can’t change how something we write is received on the other end. We can, however, do everything to make sure there are no miscommunications on our side. Pause to re-read whatever you’ve written in the eyes of the person you are sending the email to and imagine how they are likely to interpret your message. Think from their perspective, keeping in mind their goals and life experiences aren’t the same as yours.

7. Recognizing and applying the different kinds of empathy

There are different kinds of empathy. All of them are required to make good connections with people. Cognitive empathy allows you to understand someone’s intellectual perspective. Emotional empathy allows you to feel what other people are feeling. And empathic empathy is the ability to sense what other people need from you intuitively. It’s worth thinking about how to develop these.

8. Developing resilience

Resilient people coolly accept the harsh realities facing them. They find meaning in terrible times and are able to cope with anything life throws at them. They are not passive. They believe that they have some measure of control over their lives and continually seek to engage with the world around them. Feeling that life is essentially unfair and that one has no control over one’s life can only lead to despair. EI cannot flourish in this atmosphere.

Excursus:

Resources related to the content covered in this section include

• A section within Harvard Business Review’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence (pg. 59) offers suggestions for how one might respond to different types of unproductive behaviors.
• Pages 94-95 of the same book which offers a checklist for identifying red flags that stop you from making optimal decisions.
• A questionnaire on pages 25-27 to get a score on your self-understanding concerning EI.
• Widening our emotional vocabulary, including degree and intensity, which will allow us to more accurately identify the causes of our emotional states. Here’s a list:

Angry	Sad	Anxious	Hurt	Embarrassed	Happy
Grumpy	Disappointed	Afraid	Jealous	Isolated	Thankful
Frustrated	Mournful	Stressed	Betrayed	Self-conscious	Trusting
Annoyed	Regretful	Vulnerable	Isolated	Lonely	Comfortable
Defensive	Depressed	Confused	Shocked	Inferior	Content
Spiteful	Paralyzed	Bewildered	Deprived	Guilty	Excited
Impatient	Pessimistic	Sceptical	Victimized	Ashamed	Relaxed
Disgusted	Tearful	Worried	Aggrieved	Repugnant	Relieved
Offended	Dismayed	Cautious	Tormented	Pathetic	Elated
Irritated	Disillusioned	Nervous	Abandoned	Confused	Confident

• An (emotional) energy audit to improve energy management. This one was crafted by folk at the University of Michigan.

Appendix

Some points of note before we finish. While EI has been described thus far as something wholly positive, it does have a dark side as well. Because emotional intelligence includes a measure of one’s ability to understand one’s own and other peoples’ emotions, people high in EI can be more profoundly affected by the emotional suffering of others. Another drawback to EI is the fact that some choose to use it as a tool to gain authority and influence for themselves. They may develop their EI merely to satisfy their own hungers and vulnerabilities, for example, their need to be liked, or to be in control, to feel important, etc., which inclines them to grandiosity and all the negatives that come with it. Unfortunately, this cannot be helped.

Not everyone will heed Uncle Ben’s advice to Peter Parker.

We decide to live in the painful worlds we know because they’re familiar. In a strange way, we choose not to change because we feel safe in our discomfort. When we choose to grow our courage, authenticity, vulnerability, adaptability, and compassion, the initial hurdles will seem intimidating. Not only will you feel deeply uncomfortable at times, you may also be penalized for your new-found behavior at home and at work if the cultures there aren’t amenable to the changes you’ve initiated in yourself. In the long run, however, leading with EI will yield dividends in lasting happiness, even if it does not immediately translate into an improved working environment. In the last analysis, that may be all that matters.

If you’ve managed to get this far, you might also be interested in the resources available on this topic:

• Travis Bradberry’s Emotional Intelligence 2.0.
• Joseph Grenny’s Crucial Confrontations.
• HBR’s Guides to Emotional Intelligence.

Finally, if you think this article might be helpful to someone, share it with them!