Is Emotional Intelligence More Important than IQ?

Happy Monday and welcome to our newest theme, Emotional Intelligence! We’ve talked about emotional intelligence and related topics a few times. Now we wanted to focus on it for the next several weeks and add to what we’ve talked about so far. Today, I wanted to give an overview of emotional intelligence and where it helps (and maybe doesn’t help) in your work and personal life. Is emotional intelligence better than IQ? Let’s have a look!

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, sometimes called EQ or EI, is the ability to identify and understand the emotions of those around you. It’s also the ability to get along with others, and to manage your own emotions. Throughout history, many different psychologists have talked about emotional intelligence in one way or another.

Mayer and Salovey

In a paper called Emotional Intelligence from 1990, psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey presented four branches for emotional intelligence:

• Identifying emotions on a nonverbal level
• Using emotions to guide cognitive thinking
• Understanding the information emotions convey and the actions emotions generate
• Regulating one’s own emotions, for personal benefit and for the common good

Goleman

Later, journalist-slash-psychologist Daniel Goleman reframed the idea with five elements, in his book called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ [affiliate link]:

• Emotional self-awareness — knowing what one is feeling at any given time and understanding the impact those moods have on others
• Self-regulation — controlling or redirecting one’s emotions; anticipating consequences before acting on impulse
• Motivation — utilizing emotional factors to achieve goals, enjoy the learning process and persevere in the face of obstacles
• Empathy — sensing the emotions of others
• Social skills — managing relationships, inspiring others and inducing desired responses from them

For more on Mayer, Salovey, and Goleman’s theories, check out these resources:

• Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Theory Explained | Concordia University Portland
• Emotional Intelligence Theories | Positive Psychology
• What Is Emotional Intelligence | VeryWellMind

Bradberry and Greaves

In Emotional Intelligence 2.0, authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves describe four pillars of emotional intelligence:

• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Relationship Management
• Social Awareness

These four pillars seem to cover most of what Mayer, Salovey, and Goleman were talking about.

Your degree of emotional intelligence is based on how skilled you are in those areas. I kind of think of these as “soft” skills. They are different from knowing how to, say, build a house or fix a car. However, they are still skills that can be learned with effort.

EQ vs IQ

The idea of emotional intelligence has gained popularity in the last several years. Not only in academics, either! I hear about it a lot at work, and see it in education as well. In many cases, the question seems to be, “is emotional intelligence more important than IQ?”.

For example, I came across an article called Why Emotional Intelligence is not Essential For Leadership in Ivey Business Journal. It says that when you think of leaders, as opposed to managers of people, their emotional intelligence is not as important. It says that their speech-making skills and ability to challenge the status quo is more of what makes them leaders. These types of people may not always get along well with others.

Another article in Psychology Today called Emotional Intelligence is Overrated, by Adam Grant, cautions against hiring just for emotional intelligence skills. The idea is that cognitive thinking skills heavily influence one’s performance in a job. Maybe even so much that emotional intelligence has no impact. In a position where the job calls for the ability to analyze data, build software, or something highly scientific, it may not matter how well you can relate to others. If you are skilled in more of the “hard” skills, you may perform better regardless.

In a job like being a therapist, psychologist, teacher, or other similar occupations, your emotional intelligence probably matters more than your ability to build a rocketship. I think in the debate about “which is better”, the answer is…it depends on what you’re trying to do, and how you want to show up while you’re doing it.

EQ and IQ

In everything I’ve read, I believe that these two ideas are not in conflict. I don’t think you have to be one or the other. I believe they complement each other. In the case of a leader, one’s ability to influence the minds and opinions of others will be enhanced with a greater degree of emotional intelligence. In this case, someone may be incredibly intelligent. However, if he or she can’t get along with others, his or her ability to influence people is decreased. Likewise, you may be the kindest and most empathetic person in the world. But depending on your job, you may not go anywhere if you can’t also process and analyze information quickly and accurately.

I don’t believe it is a question of how far you can go on just IQ or EQ alone, or whether emotional intelligence is more important than IQ. I think the question is, how far can you go with both? How can you develop both your EQ and your IQ in order to succeed in the areas you want to succeed in?

How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You

But this theme is about emotional, and not cognitive, intelligence! I wanted to wrap up with a look at how increasing your emotional intelligence can help you. We will be talking about these topics over the next several weeks.

Self Awareness

Emotional self-awareness is the ability to understand, process, and respond to the emotions you yourself are feeling. This is an important skill when being empathetic to others. It also helps ensure you’re taking good care of yourself and helps in avoiding and managing stress. It can help give you a general sense of mental and physical well-being.

Self-Management

Self-management is the ability to regulate your emotions, motivate yourself, and interact well with others. It’s the ability to respond rather than react, to be disciplined in how you approach listening to and responding to others, and how well you understand yourself and your goals. Maybe also the ability to set goals for yourself, motivate yourself, and your ability to achieve what you want to accomplish. Being skilled in this area will help your interactions with others. It will also help with your satisfaction with your life and relationships.

Relationship Management

This is the ability to manage relationships with other people. No one in this life can stay completely free from interpersonal relationships. The ability to manage your relationships, including showing empathy, listening well, and responding to others’ needs is a skill that is in some degree necessary no matter what you do for a living. Whether you have kids or not, whether you have close family or not.

Social Awareness

I found a lesson on study.com called Social Awareness: Definition, Example, and Theories. It defines social awareness as “the ability to comprehend and appropriately react to both broad problems of society and interpersonal struggles”. So basically, the ability to understand and empathize with others. Getting better at this will help you get along better with others. This is true whether they are coworkers, family members, friends, or kids.

Over To You

How about you? Do you think emotional or cognitive intelligence is more important in where you are in your life? Do you think something like this is worth working on? What challenges do you face in developing or working on your emotional intelligence?