Interpersonal and Digital Communication

Interpersonal and Digital

Communication
HI1003
Week 4(ii)
Emotional Intelligence

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Emotional Intelligence

What does Emotional Intelligence mean to you?

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 Types of Intelligence
• IQ - Intelligence Quotient
▪ Measures academic intelligence.
▪ Developed by Alfred Binet in 19C France.

• RQ - Rationality Quotient E RQ
▪ Measures experiential wisdom and reasoning.
▪ Keith Stanovich 1990s
Q

• EQ - Emotional Quotient
▪ Measures emotional intelligence. IQ
▪ Stephen Stein 1990s

▪ Howard Gardner – Multiple Intelligences 3

What is EI?

EI is the ability to perceive, use,

understand, manage, and handle
emotions.

People with high EI make better

decisions and have a greater level
of life satisfaction.

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 EI - Feel, Think and Behave
• EI is about connecting how we feel to our thoughts and resultant behaviour.

▪ Feel
▪ Know your mood and understand WHY you feel the way you do.
▪ Being able to regulate your more intense feelings.
▪ Think
▪ In social situations thoughts are focussed on other people.
▪ Active listening is a key skill.
▪ Consider the context of the environment and see the big picture.
▪ Behave
▪ Plan for and defuse stress before it arises
▪ Stay calm under pressure

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 Empathy vs Sympathy

• Sympathy is about feeling for someone:

seeing their distress and realizing that they
are suffering.

• Empathy, is about experiencing those

feelings for yourself, as if you were that
person, through the power of imagination

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Characteristics of High EI

1) Manage difficult situations

2) Gain respect from others
3) Express themselves clearly
4) Influence others and negotiate effectively
5) Remain calm under pressure
6) Have strong intrinsic motivation
7) Remain positive in the face of pressure
8) Look forward to finding a solution rather than
dwelling on a past problem.
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 Characteristics of Low EI

1) Low emotional self-awareness

2) Do not connect emotion, thought and behaviour
3) Emotionally out of sync with people around them
4) Self-defeating behaviour
5) Poor impulse control
6) Low empathy and self-centred
7) Poor social skills
8) High level of unhappiness and generally pessimistic
9) Poor problem solving and decision skills
10)Difficulty maintaining relationships
11)Frequently change jobs/ difficulty holing a job
12)Bring out the worst in others and people avoid them
13)Poor goal setting 8
EI Exercise

• EI can be developed just as we can develop

IQ and RQ.

• Numerous studies have shown both

meditation and exercise to increase your EI.
▪ In one study 30 minutes of exercise 3 to 4
times each week had significant benefits.
▪ 15 minutes meditation every day has also
been shown to increase your base EI.

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4 domains of EI

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 Measuring self-awareness
The Big 5 Test

• Openness - How open a person is to new ideas and experiences

• Conscientiousness - How goal-directed, persistent, and organized a person is
• Extraversion - How much a person is energized by the outside world
• Agreeableness - How much a person puts others' interests and needs ahead
of their own
• Neuroticism - How sensitive a person is to stress and negative emotional
triggers

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 Measuring self-awareness
The Big 5 Test
Differences:
• Neuroticism is renamed as emotional
stability (opposite of neuroticism)
• Openness is renamed as
intellect/imagination

Vocabulary:
• Shirk (v) – Avoid or neglect (a duty or
responsibility)
• Exacting (adj) – precise, meticulous 1
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Reading your results
The Big 5 Test

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Reading your results
All scores are /100
1. Extroversion:
High score suggests: more social, talkative, more likely to seek social situations.
Low score suggests: more reserved, chooses to spend more time alone

2. Emotional stability:
High score suggests: calmness, resilience, better at coping with stress
Low score suggests: struggles with negative emotions, stress, anxiety

3. Agreeableness score:
High score suggests: kindness, consideration, empathy, co-operative, (Very high score suggests a lack of assertiveness)
Low score suggests: More competitive, sceptical of others, opinionated

4. Conscientiousness score:
High score suggests: disciplined, organised, responsible, hard-working (Very high suggests perfectionism, lack of flexibility)
Low score suggests: disorganised, impulsive, less likely to set and stick to goals

5. Intellect/Imagination
High score suggests: curious, open to new ideas, creative
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Low score suggests: traditional, conservative, enjoying the familiar more than the new 4
Happiness

• Pleasure is a short term feeling. That is often

confused with happiness. For example the
pleasure we get from making a purchase. The
pleasure from a new car is gone after 3 months.

• True Happiness is a state of mind and is long

term.
• Happiness is intrinsic while pleasure
depends on external stimuli such as a
purchase.

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Happy People

▪ … are constantly curious. They look for the

‘new’ in everything. They see adventure.

▪ … see difficulties as challenges/puzzles not

problems

▪ … have a growth mindset (Dweck, 2017)

▪ … are more successful

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Authentic Happiness
• Authentic Happiness is a concept developed by Martin
Seligman, past president of the APA.

• Authentic happiness occurs where Pleasant life, Good

life and Meaningful life overlap to create a Full life.
Meaningful

• Pleasant Life - Pleasures, instant gratification

FULL
• Good Life - Having the things you want or desire Pleasant Good

• Meaningful Life - Belonging to or serving something

larger & more worthwhile than just your own pleasures
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or desires. Seeing the world beyond your horizon. 7
Seligman’s Exercises
• Seligman developed the following exercises to create
sustainable long-term happiness.

▪ Three Good Things

▪ At the end of every day write down the three best
things that happened to you.

▪ Signature Strengths
▪ Find new ways to apply your best skills.

▪ Giving Back
▪ Community involvement, donation, volunteering 1
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Improving Your EI – Self Awareness

• Become more self aware

▪ This is the first step from which all others follow
▪ Mediation helps to notice your feelings
▪ Have a note book to record your more intense
emotions and the circumstances in which they
arose. Become aware of triggers.

• Express your thoughts feeling and beliefs

▪ Under expression (keeping your emotions locked up)
and over expression (sharing everything with
everyone) are just as damaging.
▪ Assertiveness, the middle ground, is the appropriate
sharing of feelings, thoughts and beliefs.
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 Improving Your EI – Self Management

• Be socially responsible
▪ There are three levels of social responsibility with increasing time
investment.
▪ Donations
▪ Collecting money
▪ Contributing skills.

• Manage your impulses

▪ Distract your self from the emotional stimulus.
▪ Analyse the situation by pausing, reflecting and asking questions.
▪ Coping may be the best strategy when the intense emotion cannot be
avoided.
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 Improving Your EI – Empathy
• Identify common ground with others
▪ Finding common ground makes us feel belonging to the “group” of the
other, even if it’s created in the moment, it motivates us to get inside the
mind of the other person

Reading fiction
▪ To understand stories, we have to understand characters, their
motivations, interactions, reactions, and goals – this is practice for real
world empathy

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 Improving Your EI – Social skills
• Be interested, not interesting
▪ Try to make others the focus of your conversations
▪ Ask open-ended questions to let the others speak

Pay attention to your non-verbal communication

• It allows others to be comfortable around us, and feel listened to

Give genuine compliments

• We often judge people by the intentions behind the words more than the
words themselves

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 Improving Your EI

• Be more flexible
▪ The more flexible you are the more options you have and the more
you control the situation.
▪ You can choose to stick or switch. (Status quo or go with the flow)
▪ Flexibility stops you from being an obstacle to change.

• Be happy
▪ If you work through the previous ways to build your EI you will be
happier.
▪ At various points during the day rate your happiness from 1 to 10 and
become conscious of the circumstances that make you happy.
▪ Work at introducing more of those moments and the elements they
contain into your day. 2
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Sources
Bradberry, T., Greaves, J. & Lencioni, P.M. (2009) Emotional
Intelligence 2.0. Har/Dol En edition. San Diego, CA, TalentSmart.

Dweck, D.C. (2017) Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing The Way

You think To Fulfil Your Potential. Robinson.

Goleman, D. (2009a) Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter

More Than IQ. 1st edition. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Goleman, D. (2009b) Working with Emotional Intelligence. 1st

edition. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Robson, D. (2020) The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your

Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions. London, Hodder Paperbacks.

Stein, S.J. (2009) Emotional Intelligence For Dummies. 1st edition.

Mississauga, ON, For Dummies. 2
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