EQ Part 1

This video is part one of two on emotional intelligence. So, let me tell you a quick story about emotional intelligence. I was, I think, about 16 or 17 years old, playing goalkeeper for my indoor soccer team. I’m playing, I got scored on, and it was kind of a bad goal in the sense that the person who scored it wasn’t very good. It just went right by me, and I was pretty upset, whatever.

Maybe 5 minutes later, the same girl is dribbling down, she shoots, hits right off my glove, and goes into the back of the net. I turn around, boom, punch the wall as hard as I can. A few days went by, and my hand was pretty much the size of a grapefruit. After that, I had to go to the hospital, get scanned, and I basically dislocated all the backs of these knuckles—they kind of popped out. So, I spent my junior year in a cast, right in time for the ACT and SAT. I took the ACT and SAT in a cast, which was miserable.

But, being very wise at that age, I learned from that. A few months later, I was going into it with a kind of giving a hard time, let’s say, with my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Basically, he kind of showed up, and if you’ve ever seen two young men who neither of them really know how to fight nor want to fight but don’t want to admit that, what do they do? It’s kind of like, “Hey, you do something.” “No, you do something.” “No, no, you do.” So, we go back and forth for a little bit, and finally, he swings on me. I kind of freak out, shove him off, right? I walk back inside, and my arm was stuck up here. I ended up having to go to the emergency room, pop my shoulder back in—it was dislocated—and I got to spend the summer after high school in a sling.

The reason I share those two stories is because, as my mother asked me so wonderfully, “If you’re so smart, how can you be so dumb?” What’s the common theme of those two stories? Well, it was really a lack of self-control, social awareness, or emotional intelligence. That’s exactly the point. You can be, and I was, pretty nerdy and had really good test scores and grades, so my IQ was pretty good, but my EQ wasn’t very good.

So, the point is, there are two distinct types of intelligence: IQ, which is intellectual, and EQ, which is emotional intelligence—the subject of this video. I’m going to show you a model that comes from a social scientist named Daniel Goleman, who is one of the founding fathers, so to speak, of emotional intelligence. Here it is:

You can see we can kind of break this down. There are two parts: awareness and management. Awareness is the ability to recognize emotions, and management is the ability to regulate or control your response to them. At the same time, you can break it down into self and social.

So, self-awareness: What is my emotional state? How do I recognize what’s going on and have some sort of self-confidence and self-awareness? Then, self-management: How adaptable am I? How do I respond to situations? How do I practice anger management, self-control, and staying optimistic?

The same goes for social awareness. First, that’s empathy—the ability to understand how others are feeling and also understand the broader context of the situation. Then, of course, managing social interaction—that intersection is the ability to influence, motivate others, deal with conflict, etc. So, when you have this kind of two-by-two box together, you have a clear picture of emotional intelligence.

I’ll share briefly the importance of emotional intelligence. When you look at the longest-running psychological study of its kind that looked at happiness for a group of adults across almost 80 years into their children and their children’s children, they found the number one thing that predicted happiness and even how long you live is the quality of your relationships. I would posit that quality relationships rest on a foundation of emotional intelligence.

When you think about your friends, there are people you can count on who will be there for you, who are supportive, who you like to be around. They tend to have solid emotional intelligence. If you think about a partnership, studies have shown that the key factors predicting how positive or high-quality a romantic relationship is and how long it lasts include perceived partner commitment, perceived partner satisfaction, appreciation, and conflict management.

When you think about how well you’re perceiving your partner, how much they appreciate you, or how committed they are to you, that idea of perception, along with being appreciative or managing conflict well, all ties back to emotional intelligence.

The purpose of this video, one of two, is to share the significance of emotional intelligence, how it sets you up for personal happiness, and of course, it’s essential to being a leader. I just gave you a little overview of what’s included in emotional intelligence.

So, here’s what I want you to do in small groups. Number one, I want you to, similar to what I did, think about a time when you lacked a little bit of emotional intelligence. What did it cost you? What happened? What was the significance of that? What would it mean to have that not happen again or to change that? To show up with a higher EQ?

That’s part one: share a story and how that could change now. Then, the second piece of this, I want you to pick one of those squares—self-awareness, social awareness, self-control or self-management, or working with others. I want you to pick one and say, “Hey, this is the one I want to focus on.” Pick one of those and share how you might start to increase EQ in that area.

There’s your assignment. In part two of this mini-series, we’ll share more practical tools and things you can implement to start improving EQ. But that’s your assignment for now, and I’ll see you next time.