Five key skills of emotional intelligence

By Dr Tareq Rasheed

International Consultant and Trainer

When it comes to happiness and success in life, emotional intelligence matters a lot. Here are the five skills to cultivate for your personal and professional development.

One of the most important types of intelligence, which all humans have, is emotional intelligence but in varying degrees. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise other peoples’ emotions as well as understand, use and manage our emotions to guide our thinking and behaviour.

Skills associated with emotional intelligence

1. Self-awareness: We need self-awareness to manage and reduce our fears and insecurities, know what motivates us, set our direction in life and make decisions. Highly self-aware people can easily define their objectives and set their action plans.

2. Managing negative emotions: Negative emotions include anger, worry, fear, boredom, depression and sadness. Rather than allow emotions to control and govern their lives, emotionally intelligent people can effectively manage them. Exercise, sleep and rest are proven ways to help with emotional regulation.

3. Motivating self: Emotionally intelligent persons are self motivated and speak, think and act positively. To motivate yourself, reward yourself for achievements and for even getting yourself through important but dull tasks. Positive self-talk and meditation are also proven ways to stay motivated.

4. Motivating others: The ability to motivate, energise and inspire people is another skill in emotional intelligence. To motivate others, we have to understand their concerns and needs to lead them towards achieving their goals in life. Here some tips for motivating others: 

• Being kind to people; opening our minds and hearts to others

• Seeking to understand first before being understood

• Relating ourselves to the problems and concerns of people

5. Social Skills: Highly emotional people have several social skills that help them affect and influence others:

• Communications

• Convincing

• Conveying emotions to people

• Emotional listening; in which they listen to feeling rather than words; that is, to put ourselves in others’ shoes then acting

• Problem-solving skills

What affects emotional intelligence?

• Age: Since self-awareness comes with maturity, our emotional intelligence increases as a result

• Culture: Some societies and cultures are more emotionally intelligent than others

• Lifestyle: There’s a positive correlation between maintaining a healthy lifestyle and emotional intelligence

• Gender: Females have higher emotional intelligence than males

• Management style: A democratic management style will increase emotional intelligence more than a dictatorship style

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine