“The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.”
Daniel Goleman
Social Intelligence by Karl Albrecht discusses the five aspects of social intelligence:
1. Situational awareness. The ability to read a situation and understand people’s feelings and intentions in a given circumstance. To improve this situational radar, learn to understand people’s use of and need for physical space, their possible behaviors in given situations, and the messages their language choices really convey.
2. Presence. How you affect people with your appearance, mood and body language. Albrecht says presence relates to whether you seem approachable and whether you project traits like shyness or hostility. Albrecht offers building blocks for improved presence, including recording yourself talking with friends and listening to your own clarity and sincerity, and asking friends to describe how they first viewed you.
3. Authenticity. Reflects how honest you are with yourself and others, how much you respect yourself, and how much faith you truly have in your own values and beliefs. To keep track of whether you’re being your authentic self, Albrecht suggests exercises such as creating a personal mission statement or keeping a record of situations in which people tried to get you to act in ways that contradicted your values and how you did or didn’t stick to your beliefs.
4. Clarity. The ability to express yourself clearly. Albrecht contrasts role-speak, the official language of a job, and real-speak, the ability to turn facts into stories that engage listeners. Guidelines include communication techniques and ways to throw negative, aggressive, sarcastic or dogmatic terms out of your speech.
5. Empathy. Measures how aware and considerate you are of others feelings. Empathy helps make an effective connection with another person, Albrecht says. Studying those who seem to connect with others, assessing how toxic situations got that way and brainstorming ways to interact with those who seem unreceptive can bolster your empathy skills.
Emotional Intelligence was popularized by Daniel Goleman in 1995. However as early as 1920, Edward L. Thorndike described what he called “social intelligence”, that basic ability to understand and motivate other people. Then in the 1940’s, David Wechsler made it clear that no intelligence test could be valid if emotional aspects were not taken into account.
Excerpts from Goleman’s Model: Â Four Components of Emotional Intelligence
1. Self-Awareness. Self-Awareness means being aware of your own emotions, and being able to identify them correctly. This is the most important of the EI skills. It allows you to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses. This is very important to managing relationships with others successfully.
2. Self-Management. Self-Management is the ability to control your emotional reactions while still behaving with honesty and integrity. A person who is emotionally intelligent does not let bad moods or a strong emotional reaction govern his or her behavior. Self-Management also means being able to direct your own behavior toward a goal. It means being able to put off gratification in the present in order to get better results at a future time.
3. Social Awareness. Social awareness has two parts: empathy, and attention (noticing how others are reacting to you). Empathy means being able to sense what the other person is feeling, and to know what their emotion feels like from your own experience. It does not necessarily mean you agree with the other person. However it does mean that you know how they feel and can communicate that you understand, and that you care. Once you have the ability to sense how others react, you can be more effective in choosing how to deliver a message. This lays the foundation for the fourth skill, relationship management.
4. Relationship Management. Relationship management includes the ability to communicate in a clear and convincing way. Being clear means being able to say what you mean simply, and being able to offer examples. A person who is emotionally intelligent can communicate ideas, information, and requests to others effectively. They pay attention to how others are reacting and adjust their approach to get a better result. The key is social awareness and flexibility in how they talk to other people. They can adjust words, non-verbal behavior, and timing to get the best reaction from others.
While IQ predicts success about 20% of the time, behavioral scientists have discovered that 80% of success depends on emotional factors."
Additional Reading
Social Intelligence by Karl Albrecht
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman
Point of Reflection
“Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That’s why they look alike.”
Daniel Goleman