Emotional Intelligence

Chitra Panikker

10 Dec 2020

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Emotional Intelligence is the key to being a good leader. Self awareness is not only crucial to happiness and success, but also the road to being emotionally intelligent. Paying attention to the way we think, feel and behave is the path to self-awareness. Its important to understand and accept that we all are different – each of us have different strengths; comparison and one-man-up-ship will only bog us down. I'll quote Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, the fish will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.

Unless we live on an island, it is unlikely that we'll develop a happy life just by managing our own mind. Other people play a large role in our existence and only by managing our social interactions with them can we hope to live a fulfilled life. Emotional intelligence fosters good social interactions because it helps us put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Knowing how we'd feel in a certain situation helps us to gauge how others will feel in a similar environment. Empathizing plays a key role in becoming Emotionally Intelligent.

Our emotional intelligence also helps us discover the emotions of others by analysing their nonverbal signs. We can judge a person’s mood just by looking at cues like their facial expressions or body language. Understanding nonverbal communication is of utmost importance in our path to being Emotionally Intelligent. References from the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Coleman.