Discover the 9 Characteristics of Emotional Intelligence We Should All Develop

To talk about emotional intelligence is necessarily to talk about Daniel Goleman. He sees it as the key to professional and personal success.

Why might an intelligent person with the skills for a particular job fail to achieve the expected success? The answer to this question, if Goleman were to give it, would be emotional intelligence. In other words, for professional success it is not enough to be intelligent and to have specific abilities; in addition, we must possess that emotional intelligence which is what makes the difference between a star employee and just another worker among all the rest. This intelligence is not measured by the usual intelligence tests. It is the intelligence of the emotions, how I manage and handle them and how I relate to the emotions of others.

But what exactly is emotional intelligence?

It is a set of skills, among which stand out self-control, the enthusiasm, the empathy, perseverance and the capacity to motivate oneself. While some of these skills may come configured in our genetic makeup, and many others are shaped during the first years of life, the evidence backed by abundant research shows that emotional skills can be learned and perfected throughout life, provided the right methods are used. So there is still time.

The concept of emotional intelligence was used for the first time by the American psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990; it was Goleman who, thanks to his best-seller Emotional Intelligence (1995) Amazon link in case you are interested, made this construct famous.

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For anyone who wants to delve deeper into the subject. What I am going to do in this article is much more practical than theoretical. It is what I most enjoy doing:

“acercar la psicología y la teoría a la vida cotidiana para poder aplicarla en nuestro día a día”

9 characteristics of people with emotional intelligence

They express their feelings clearly

They know their emotions and do not repress them. They are able to feel them, identify them and express them. They are authentic and sincere. They are not afraid to show what they feel. That is why they are clear about their feelings.

They listen to and analyze their emotional needs

They are people who pay attention to their emotions, whether they are the same or different or why I feel this toward a certain person or situation. They do not simply feel them without more thought; they listen to them and analyze them. When we like something, we tend to be more attentive to it. And people with emotional intelligence are interested in emotions.

Furthermore, they listen to their needs, what motivates me, what I need to feel good… It is important to know what I need in order to move toward there.

They know how to position themselves well between the glass half full or half empty

They know well the theory of yin and yang. Everything has its good side and its bad side. If I focus my attention only on the bad side, pessimism will govern me, and if I pay attention only to the good side, optimism will blind me. That is why they can see at the same time the glass half full and half empty.

That is why they try to direct their attention by focusing on criteria of usefulness for themselves, and they do not fall into the trap of entering a loop of optimism or pessimism that traps the way they perceive things. Put another way, they govern their focus of attention so that it does not govern them.

They analyze the viability of their projects and their dreams

Do not think that by talking about emotions, we are only talking about letting ourselves be carried away by what I feel. People with emotional intelligence know how to reason about what they feel, and when they have a project they do not throw themselves into it without more. They carefully weigh where they put their efforts, the probabilities of success; they do not like to work within an unreal framework of possibilities. That is why neither success nor failure catches them by surprise.

That said, they listen to their dreams and somehow always head toward them.

They tend to avoid thinking that others want to harm them

When a person in their environment does something that harms them in some way, they do not usually think that the purpose was precisely to harm them; rather, they think it has been a collateral effect. They do not believe that others' plans or motivations involve harming them, as if this in itself were a sought-after objective. That is why they rarely take incidents as something personal. This helps them not to remain stuck on an event, with negative thoughts about the harm that others want to do to me

They engage in self-criticism

Self-criticism is probably the best of criticisms because it makes you improve and learn. It is very important to learn from one's own mistakes, and it is something that sometimes seems to be difficult for us. People with emotional intelligence have a tendency toward self-criticism. They analyze certain situations from the past and know what they have done wrong and in what they should improve. This makes them know themselves better and, above all, improve.

They like to know what other people are like

They pay attention to how they express their emotions and what they are like, especially among the people in their environment. It is not something they do forced; it is that it interests them, and that is why they show interest and attention. This helps them relate better to others.

They like to meet new people but surround themselves with people they connect with

They do not waste time trying to be liked by everyone. They enjoy meeting new people but end up surrounding themselves with the people with whom they feel affinity.

They like meeting new people because they see other ways of seeing the world and of expressing emotions and surrounding themselves with people they connect with brings them wellbeing. Not getting stuck in a relationship that does not quite work saves a lot of time and discomfort.

They self-motivate easily

When they like something, they get excited and immerse themselves in learning things about that new thing they have discovered. Moreover, there is no better way to learn than to experiment with what turns out to be motivating and with what does not. They usually have several motivations at once and change them in a flexible way. Staying stuck in something that motivated me a lot at age 20 but no longer motivates me makes us feel nostalgia and think that we no longer get excited as we used to. But the problem is not that we have lost the capacity to motivate ourselves with something; the problem is that we keep looking for excitement in the same things.