Emotional Intelligence
The “How to Boost Your (and Others’) Emotional Intelligence” article reviews the importance of emotional intelligence, its nature and the ways to enhance it. Emotional intelligence can be paralleled with personal values and ethics and can also be used to increase personal and group performance.
In their article, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Michael Sanger review the phenomenon of emotional intelligence. They define it as the ability to identify and manage emotions, both own and others’ (Chamorro-Premuzic & Sanger, 2017). While many see it as yet another buzzword, the authors draw evidence that the emotional intelligence level directly impacts both professional and personal life. Employability, entrepreneurship, job performance, leadership skills, as well as mental and physical health, relationship success, and happiness, make up the list of high emotional intelligence benefits (Chamorro-Premuzic & Sanger, 2017). While scientists concluded that emotional intelligence is mostly a result of genetic makeup and personal experience, they draw strategies that lead to higher emotional intelligence level. First of all, they advise to concentrate to self-deception and turn it into self-awareness. Since self-analysis may lead to a distorted understanding of own strengths and weaknesses, the authors propose to turn it into a group exercise. This way ensures a complete feedback and suggests strategies improve personal performance. Another strategy is to switch from self-focus to other-focus. This can be done through analysis of other people’s actions. Apart from these strategies, the authors suggest to be more rewarding to deal with, that is to be more cooperative, friendly, and trustworthy. Controlling temper through postponing negative reactions is another techniques. Additionally, studies show that it is more rewarding to display humility and confidence in others, even if it's fake (Chamorro-Premuzic & Sanger, 2017). Following these strategies will increase emotional intelligence and overall performance in both professional and personal life.
The Harvard article can be paralleled with chapter 3 in numerous ways. First of all, personal values and ethics are also a result of genetic makeup and personal experiences. Yet, like emotional intelligence, these can be changed with practice (“Chapter 3. Establishing Goals Consistent with Your Values and Ethics”). Such tactics for improved personal values as setting goals, clarifying values and needs, and developing a mission statement, resemble first two strategies to enhance personal emotional intelligence. Indeed, in order to make goals and values more specific and successful, it is of supreme importance to be self-aware of personal strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, other-focus enables a thorough understanding of reasons that shape other people’s and, ultimately, own values. The second portion of advice to increase emotional intelligence resemble actions to enhance personal ethics. Indeed, being more rewarding to deal with, controlling temper, and displaying humility display high emotional intelligence. At the same time, they impact the efficiency of teamwork and can be developed through personal and even corporate ethics (“Chapter 3. Establishing Goals Consistent with Your Values and Ethics”). Thus, like ethics, these strategies apply to other people and guide the best conduct in a group. …
