EQ, IQ & Personality
Primary competencies of EQ
Core skills of EQ
EQ and performance
EQ and development
EQ, IQ & Personality
Human beings are multidimensional as well as multifaceted beings. There are many sides to you, as well as many hidden aspects of your life, that even you may be unaware of. There is Emotional intelligence (EQ), Intelligence quotient (IQ) and you have a Personality, all key aspects of humanity. A nexus of sorts, exists between all these 3 parts of man.
Emotional intelligence EQ, is an essential part of the whole person. EQ taps into a fundamental element of human behaviour that is distinct from your intellect. There is no known connection between IQ and EQ, you simply can’t predict EQ based on how smart someone is.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ), or intelligence on the other hand is your ability to learn, and is the same at age 13 as it is at age 63. However, EQ is a flexible set of skills that can be acquired and improved with practice. Even though some people have naturally more EQ than others, you can develop higher EQ levels even if you were not born that way.
Personality, is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It is the distinct flavour and uniqueness that defines each of us. Personality, is the result of hard wired preferences, such as inclination towards introversion or extroversion. Personality just like IQ cannot be used to predict EQ, and is also stable over a lifetime and does not change. IQ, EQ and personality each cover unique aspects of human nature, and help explain what makes a person tick. The key thing to remember is that EQ, IQ, and personality are different.
Well documented studies have shown EQ is linked to performance, and is made up of at least 4 core skills that pair up under 2 primary competencies.
Primary competencies of EQ
Emotional intelligence has 2 primary competencies namely:
- Personal competence
- Social competence
1- Personal competence: This is made up of your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focuses more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. It is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavioural tendencies.
2- Social competence: This is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills. It is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behaviour and motives in order to improve on the quality of your relationships.
Core skills of EQ
Emotional intelligence has 4 core skills namely:
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship management
#1 Self-awareness: This is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.
#2 Self-management: This is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behaviour.
#3 Social awareness: This is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.
#4 Relationship management: This is your ability to use awareness of your emotions, and the other person’s or other people’s emotions to manage interactions successfully.
These 4 core skills pair up under the 2 primary competencies mentioned earlier
EQ and performance
Does EQ have any major impact on your professional success? Yes it does, in fact a lot. EQ is a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction with tremendous result. Competent bodies in the field of human behaviour, tested EQ alongside 33 other important workplace skills and found out that EQ is the strongest predictor of performance. Infact, it was discovered that EQ fully explained a 58% success rate attained in all types of jobs, across all kinds of fields of endeavour, and areas of human achievement.
EQ is the foundation for a host of critical skills, it impacts virtually everything you say and do every single day of your life. 90% of top performers, exhibited high EQ levels while just 20% of bottom performers had similar high EQ scores.
It is possible to be a top performer, without extremely high EQ levels but the chances are very slim. Research also shows it is normal for people with high EQ to make more money- an average of $29,000 (10,440,000 Naira) more per year, than counterparts with much lower degrees of EQ. The link between EQ and earnings, is so direct that every point increase in EQ, was found to correspondingly add $1,300 (468,000 Naira) to an annual salary.
These findings hold true for people in all industries, at all levels, and in every region of the world. Researchers are yet to find a job in which performance and pay, aren’t closely associated with EQ.
EQ and development
The communication between your emotional and rational “brains”, is the physical source of EQ. The pathway for EQ starts in the brain at some point in the spinal cord. Your primary sensations enter here and must travel to the front of your brain before you can think rationally about your experience. However, the signals first travel through the limbic system, which is the place where emotions are generated.
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So you always have an emotional reaction to events, before your rational mind is able to engage. EQ requires effective communication between the rational and emotional centres of your brain. EQ is, therefore, a balance between your rational and emotional brain.
“Plasticity”, is the term neurologists use to describe the brain’s ability to change. Your brain grows new connections as you learn new skills. The change is gradual because your brain cells develop new connections to speed up the efficiency of new skills learned.
Using strategies to increase your emotional intelligence EQ, allows the billions of microscopic neurons lining the road between the rational and emotional centres of your brain, to branch off small “arms” (very much like a tree’s branches) to reach out to the other cells.
A single cell can grow 15,000 connections with its neighbours. This chain reaction of growth ensures it’s easier to kick this new behaviour into action in the future. Once you train your brain by repeatedly using new emotional intelligence strategies, emotionally intelligent behaviours then become ingrained habits.
In conclusion, emotional intelligence, intelligence quotient and personality form-critical facets of a human being. There are 4 core skills that pair up under the 2 primary competencies of EQ. Furthermore, EQ is a standard, tested, proven accurate predictor of stellar performance. Best of all, EQ can be developed, thus enhancing productivity, and delivering dividends of success which are usually exponential in nature.