Emotional Intelligence: An Element of Success

Herbert P. Macabali

“Emotional intelligence, more than any other factor, more than I.Q. or expertise, accounts for 85% to 90% of success”

- Warren Bennis

An individual experiences variety of emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and affection; one of the main functions of the human brain is to respond to these emotions. This is when emotional intelligence of a student and any other people comes into play and provides guidance to individual into acting in rational manner. Emotional intelligence is described as an individual’s ability to realize, feel and judge emotions or understanding one’s own feelings, directing emotions, and empathy for the feelings of others in order to enhance life. Same as the general intelligence, emotional intelligence is also developed in a person by birth. The achievement of a learner in his/her study depends not only on his intellectual quotient (IQ), but also on his emotional quotient (EQ).

Emotional Intelligence is vital in balancing our daily living such as in relationships, conflict resolution, success, and leadership. For instance in relationship, by better understanding and managing our emotions, we are enhancing our interpersonal skills and we are able to communicate our feelings better in a more positive way. We can also have a stronger bond to those, whom we are in relationships by understanding their feelings, needs and responses that may lead to a more secured and fulfilling relation. Emotional intelligence also plays a vital role in conflict resolution. The thing about conflict is that it is two opposing individual disagrees with the perspectives of one another so the result leads to dissimilitude. If an individual has a high emotional intelligence, he/she can discern people’s emotions and empathize with their perspective, it’s much easier to resolve conflicts or maybe avoid them before they even start. Lastly, having a higher emotional intelligence makes a person excel in leadership. An efficacious leader can able to read and understand what the needs of his members are; these needs can be met in a way that motivates higher performance and workplace satisfaction to all the members. Moreover, an effective leader is also able to build stronger teams by strategically using the emotional diversity of their team members to benefit the team as a whole.

Emotional intelligence is still not completely understood by many people, but what we do know is that emotions play a very crucial role in the entire quality of our daily lives such as in personal and professional lives.

The author is Teacher

--oOo-

III at Pampanga High School