Emotional Intelligence (EQ) as a keyingredient of a GREAT leader.

Typically, the intelligence of an individual is measured based on their IQ or intellectual coefficient, which measures our ability to solve logical, mathematical and verbal problems.

These intelligence tests were created around World War I by Lewis Terman, as a tool for classifying the intelligence of soldiers and recruits.

A person’s IQ has always been a synonymous of intelligence. However, more recent studies show that cognitive skills only contribute with a 20% of what is needed for success in life. What does the other 80% depend on?

According to Daniel Goleman, a very well recognized psychologist who has written a lot on the subject, acknowledges that it depends on emotional intelligence (EQ).

EQ involves our ability to manage our emotions correctly.

Our most intense feelings are involuntary reactions and we cannot predict when they will occur, they just happen.

Even the primary ones, which are not taught but innate to human beings and linked to survival. These are joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust, which from our experiences, learnings, stimuli, environment, culture, etc. may increase in intensity and sharpness.

But emotional intelligence does not imply putting emotions aside, but managing them properly, an undoubted characteristic of an exemplary leader.

To achieve this, or start working on it, Goleman talks about the 5 dimensions of EQ.

1. Self-awareness.

How well do you know yourself? How do you get along with yourself? What gives you a certain emotion? And is this emotion positive or negative?

What do you start to feel every time you experience it? What happens to you physically?

Asking yourself these questions implies the beginning of becoming aware each time you experience a certain emotion. So instead of it taking over you, you can control it. This brings us to the second dimension.

2. Self-control.

How can you control yourself? What do you do to control yourself and react appropriately?

Due to the media impact it had, we all witnessed the punch that Will Smith gave Chris Rock at the Oscars Ceremony in 2022.

He had an aggressive reaction, without taking a pause to think that he was in a live event, with a gigantic audience worldwide, and that his action was going to have serious consequences.

When something like this happens, it is when Goleman says we suffer an “amygdala hijack”. Our thinking "clouds" we are not thinking beyond our feelings, and we simply act instinctively...

Practicing mindfulness, meditating, taking a break (time out), counting to 20, can be key to calming down and not losing control at the mercy of our emotions.

3. Motivation.

What keeps you moving? What fulfills you? What makes you want to keep going on?

Keeping this in your mind and heart will help you stay focused on what you want and what makes you feel alive without losing your compass.

4. Empathy.

Empathy is our ability to think like the other, feel like the other. To put yourself for a moment in the place of the other or as we typically learned the term "getting into other’s people shoes”.

This will give you a different and interesting perspective. Not only see the world from your eyes but from the eyes of others.

It will allow you to know and understand other people better; your collaborator, your colleague, your partner, your friend... and thus achieve better interpersonal relationships, which leads us to the last dimension.

5. Social skills.

Your strength to assume a leadership role, your ability to work in a team, and your communication skills. All of them are a matter of practice, of putting aside the ego and thinking about doing good to others, kindness, which is precisely the philosophy behind

EQ.

Using these 5 dimensions properly will help you trace your path to success as a leader, but also as a human being.