EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – What’s your Quotient?

Monday Message from Jerry Houston, President and CEO of HPISolutions

Over the next several weeks we are going to focus on a critical topic for Leaders… Emotional Quotient (EQ).

I will focus on what Emotional Intelligence is, and ask you to examine where you are at on the Emotional Quotient spectrum.

The definition of Emotional Intelligence is “the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power and acumen (keen insight) of emotions to facilitate higher levels of collaboration and productivity, but what does it really mean?

• EQ is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply Cognition.
• Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses. This leads to Behavior.
• Behavior is the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others. This requires Competency.
• Competency is the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
• When you put together Emotional Intelligence, Cognition, Behavior, and Competency it will lead to improved decision-making and superior performance. 

Knowing that, how do you make it happen?

This picture is a metaphor for a person’s emotional state.  The clear bottle symbolizes being emotionally calm, while the red bottle symbolizes being emotionally troubled or agitated.  Because the water in the bottle turns red, some people describe being angry as being red.  This is useful because it is already a familiar metaphor for anger, as in “waving a red flag at a bull”, or “she is seeing red.”

While you are looking at our graphic, think of a time when you have made a decision and your emotions have “clouded” your judgment.  Then think of a time when you have made a decision and your emotions were clear.  Do you think you made the best decision when you were cloudy or clear?

Emotional Intelligence can help you improve your people skills, strengthen important relationships, and reduce conflict.  The essence of Emotional Intelligence is the ability to go from cloudy to clear, red to green, or to go from 10 back to 1 using a scale that works for you.

Next week, I’ll talk more about how you can understand your emotional triggers and how you can better manage your emotional quotient.