What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

Effective and timely decision-making is at the heart of good performance. To improve performance, we need to understand how to make better decisions. At the most basic level, our ability to make good decisions and, in turn, perform well is captured by our competencies. Competencies are the things we know how to do and what we are good atour capabilities. This is where the majority of performance management processes lie, built on the concept that competencies are the direct antecedent or predecessor to good decision making and high performance. But lets dig deeper; what determines our competencies?

Preceding our competencies are our behaviors. Behaviors include our day-to-day activities that determine where we focus our time and where we focus our energies. Cognition precedes behavior. Slightly oversimplifying this concept, cognition refers to ones intellectual capacities, thoughts, knowledge, and memories. This is the rational part of our brain. What finally precedes cognition in this physiological sequence to high performance is ones EQ. EQ refers to a body of personal characteristics and social abilities that are closely tied to success in both our professional and personal lives.

EQ is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions to facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity (Cooper).

Read our Emotional Intelligence fact sheet.

The history of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

• EQ has been studied since the 1930’s
• EQ was more widely introduced to corporate America in 1995 by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence
• Harvard Business Review published an EQ article in 1998 – one of its most read articles in the history of the publication
• Learning about EQ in books, seminars, and training courses has yielded minimal success. The only proven way to enhance one’s EQ is to (i) learn from someone who has walked your path and (ii) learn over a committed and extended period of time. For thousands of years, skills were learned only through an apprenticeship model where for example, a young carpenter honed his skills from years of working with a seasoned carpenter. And the learning was much more than making chairs and tables – it was about dealing with people too … it was about EQ!