"arindam Chaudhuri" - a Collection of Personal and Social Traits Determines Emotional Maturity

Emotional Intelligence was the name that Peter Salovey of Yale University and John Mayer, of the University of New Hamshire, called the collection of personal and social abilities that they were trying to measure, when they began their research. The concept was later popularised by Dr Daniel Goleman. Thus, the emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ. is the intelligence we have that helps us to know and manage ourselves well. It is also the intelli­gence we have that helps us understand man-age and motivate other people. It has two major forms — that is intrapersonal and inter­personal intelligence.

Intrapersonal intelligence is the name of the intelligence we nave that enables us to make sense of the things we do the thoughts we have, the feelings we feel — and the relationship between all these things. With it you can learn how to slay in charge of yourself and your emotions. No more counter-productive outbursts or unhelpful emotional withdrawals that leave you misunderstood, furious and unsupported by your staff. Interpersonal intelligence is the name of the intelli­gence we have that enables us to tune into other people, to empathise with them, to communicate clearly with them to inspire and motivate them, to under­stand the relationship between you both.

With it you can inspire other people, develop their trust in you very quickly, create a team that performs rather than storms, and get innovative projects completed to dead­lines.

Two of the best examples available of the practical success of EQ tests, relate to Metro­politan Life and American Express. At Metro­politan Life they had great trouble in keeping sales staff. It cost them $ 30.000 per person to recruit and train a new representative and they recruited around 5.000 per year. Half of these would leave within one year and 80 per cent would be gone in four years Metropolitan Life decided to look at the emotional intelli­gence aspects of optimism in their prospective recruits, since this quality had been shown to equate with success. They recruited people who scored high on this EQ scale. The lest paid off big. The optimists outsold the pessimists by 21 per cent in their first year and by 57 per cent in their second. They stayed because they were doing well and could easily ride the rejections that are part of the job.

In American Express they decided to do a test. They took a group of their sales people and put them through a 20-hour training on only one aspect of emotional intelligence. This was on coping skills They also selected a control group who did not do any extra training. After six months, they measured the sales of the sales persons in these two groups The results showed the trained group had outperformed the con­trolled one by 10 per cent, adding significantly to the American Express bottom line.

Emotional intelligence can be used by man­agers to make flexible and multi-skilled teams It can help to get the best out of everyone, to motivate subordinates make them dedicated to you and your company, give them constructive feedback and understand their motivation and feelings Your people need to use emotional intelligence too so that the team functions smoothly and productively, and can solve con­flicts together rather than always involving you.

People who use EQ on an everyday-basis soon get noticed by the management. Manage­ment sees them as people who keep the team ticking, who do not invite conflict but who can manage it when it's happening. Management tends to remember the person who remained optimistic and understanding when the company went through a downturn. Having managers and company executives aware of you and your worth, is the way that one can get promoted quickly for management will not want to loose such a good team player.

Apart from all this using emotional intelli­gence also helps you during staff reviews, recruitment and managing peer relationships People with a high EQ arc people who can understand others well and keep up with them. Thus they are good and understanding hus­bands and wives as well great team players Nowadays in management, it is widely accept­ed that it is emotional intelligence which is a more important attribute to management suc­cess, than IQ which relates more to rational success and linguistic abilities A higher IQ may mean you are well suited for a computer soft­ware job. than for a job which relates to people more. Managers who need to get a job done from others need a higher EQ than IQ. IS

(The writer Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri is the dean. Centre for Economic Research and Advanced Studies, IIPM, as well as the founder of Planman Consulting)