Emotional Intelligence : Ladies you have got an edge

Many of us are aware of IQ (Intelligence Quotient). But have yoy heard about Emotional Intelligence? Designed to measure intellectual intelligence, it gives a score from a series of tests. Higher IQs indicate better cognitive abilities, or the ability to learn and understand. People with higher IQs are more likely to do well academically without exerting the same amount of mental effort as those with lower IQ scores.

A logical assumption, therefore, is that people with higher IQs will be more successful at work and throughout life. This assumption has been proven incorrect – there is more to success than simply being ‘clever.

Emotional Intelligence: Definition

Emotional Intelligence is the measure of an individual’s abilities to recognize and manage their emotions, and the emotions of other people, both individually and in groups.

Benefits of Higher Emotional Intelligence

• People with higher emotional intelligence find it easier to form and maintain interpersonal relationships and to ‘fit in’ to group situations.
• People with higher emotional intelligence are also better at understanding their own psychological state, which can include managing stress effectively and being less likely to suffer from depression.

There is no correlation between IQ and EI scores.

Five Components of Emotional Intelligence

Self-awareness

• When we’re self-aware, we know our strengths and weaknesses, as well as how we react to situations and people.

Self-regulation

• Because they are self-aware, emotionally intelligent people can regulate their emotions and keep them in check as necessary.

Motivation

• People with high emotional intelligence tend to be highly motivated as well, which makes them more resilient and optimistic.

Empathy

• People with empathy and compassion are simply better at connecting with other people.

Social Skills

• The social skills of emotionally intelligent people show they genuinely care for and respect others and they get along well with them.

The Female Advantage in Leadership: Emotional Intelligence

Despite the small gender differences for EQ, as a group, women tend to have higher EQs than men do. The effect has been reliably found across virtually all measures of EQ. In addition, three important leadership competencies that are enabled by higher EQs have been found at higher rates in women: transformational leadership, personal effectiveness, and self-awareness.

• Transformational leadership

Both male leaders with higher EQs and most women leaders display a more transformational leadership style. With this style, the leader focuses on changing followers’ attitudes and beliefs and engaging them on a deep emotional level rather than telling them what to do. Leaders better able to identify and manage emotions are also better able to motivate others, and most of the variability in transformational leadership arises from levels of EQ. Transformational leaders excel at turning a vision into an actionable plan for change, and they are strong role models for their subordinates and followers. Moreover, leaders and other people with higher EQs are also better at the transactional elements of leadership. Such as assigning tasks, monitoring and managing employees’ performance, and setting rewards and incentives. A recent study showed that gender affects leadership outcomes and effectiveness because of the gender differences in EQ. Largely because women have higher EQs, women’s teams are more engaged and outperform those led by men. Perhaps more surprisingly, even leadership styles purportedly associated with men, such as entrepreneurial or disruptive approaches, are more likely to emerge in higher-EQ leaders.

• Personal effectiveness

Female leaders have more empathy than male leaders do. Regardless of the type of empathy evaluated, most women, from a young age, have more empathy than men have; this difference between genders is larger than for most other personality traits. Empathic leaders’ ability to see problems from other people’s perspectives makes them less self-centered and more flexible in problem-solving. A big part of personal effectiveness, including resilience, is self-control, and decades of psychological research show that from an early age, women display higher levels of self-control than men do. In leaders, self-control is an important antidote to abuses of power and other toxic behaviors. In fact, most antisocial behaviors are partly indicative of people’s inability to contain their short-term impulses. Instant gratification—in favor of less problematic and more beneficial long-term goals.

• Self-awareness

Self-awareness has historically been defined as introspection or the process of looking inside yourself to enhance your self-knowledge. While this aspect of self-awareness is no doubt useful, a more consequential side concerns understanding how you affect others and, in turn, what others think of you. As the poet Maya Angelou noted, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” In that sense, self-awareness is really about other-awareness, and people with higher EQs are better able to understand how their actions affect and are perceived by others. Such understanding provides the foundations for any development and coaching interventions. 

Discussion continued…

Women tend to be better at emotional empathy than men, in general. This kind of empathy fosters rapport and chemistry. People who excel in emotional empathy make good counselors, teachers, and group leaders because of this ability to sense at the moment how others are reacting.

Neuroscientists tell us one key to empathy is a brain region called the insula, which senses signals from our whole body. When we’re empathizing with someone, our brain mimics what that person feels, and the insula reads that pattern and tells us what that feeling is.

Here’s where women differ from men. If the other person is upset, or the emotions are disturbing, women’s brains tend to stay with those feelings. But men’s brains do something else. They sense the feelings for a moment, then tune out of the emotions and switch to other brain areas that try to solve the problem that’s creating the disturbance.

Many men are also high in EQ. Successful men have developed and learned the art of emotional intelligence.

We hope you’ve found this article useful and you are one step closer to your solo adventure! You can only learn from it and discover new things about yourself, if you travel alone.

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