WHAT CHARACTERIZES PEOPLE WITH HIGH AND LOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

People with high emotional intelligence understand themselves at a deeper level, they have strong social skills and seem to manage the complexities of life with ease and grace. This post looks on what characterizes people with high and low emotional intelligence.

This Article Contains:

• EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – SHORT INTRO
• CHARACTERISTICS OF LOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
• THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING HIGH EQ
• CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
• DOWNSIDES TO HIGH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

About Emotional Intelligence

Emotions and emotional intelligence are in the spotlight of psychology and personal development lately and they are more and more considered the foundations to personal development and psychological change. Emotional intelligence refers to the set of skills that help us recognize, process and present our own emotions and recognize and respond constructively to the emotions of other people. Although the expert community cannot find agreement on the definition of emotional intelligence and they are still discussing whether it is a trait or a skill there are some characteristics and commonalities we can naturally recognize. We kind of “know” whether a person is emotionally intelligent or not.

Don’t miss: A Simple Introduction to Emotional Intelligence – getting started with emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a large topic. Some people might think that they are emotionally intelligent just because they have good capacities in one field of emotional intelligence, but they might be lacking important competencies in all the other aspects. There are 4 important facets to emotional intelligence and being good in only one doesn’t make you an emotionally intelligent person. The emotional intelligence comes together form having understanding and competency in all four domains: self-awareness, self-control, social awareness (empathy) and relationship management.

CHARACTERISITICS OF LOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

When your emotional intelligence (EQ) is low you may find that you are either totally disconnected from your emotions or you are overwhelmed by your emotions, especially in stressful situations.

People usually do not lack emotional intelligence. It isn’t that they miss it all together. It is often the case that they have some emotional intelligence and are performing better in some dimensions of emotional intelligence and are lacking competencies in the other domains. In most cases what we identify as low emotional intelligence refers to the lack of capability to process strong emotions. A strong emotion that people often struggle with processing is anger. People with low emotional intelligence may avoid conflict because they didn’t learn to handle discords constructively.

When your emotional intelligence is low you will find it hard to calm down after a fight with a loved one or a colleague. You may struggle to build strong working relationships. Managing your emotions becomes easier once you become more conscious of how you feel and how you react to situations. No matter how emotionally out of control you feel now, by practicing mindfulness and actively learning and applying self-control tools you can get emotionally more and more intelligent.

Another typical example of low emotional intelligence is the lack of empathy. Some people just do not want to listen to the opinions of others, they are highly opinionated and think that they are always right. These are all signs of low emotional intelligence.

People with low emotional intelligence will often cause problems that they do not want to take accountability for. Since they have a poor understanding of group dynamics and they have difficulty of interpreting the emotional atmosphere around them they will often end up causing trouble in family situations and in the workplace. The complexity of certain situations overwhelms them and they will say the wrong things at the wrong time, joke disrespectfully, and present all kind of inappropriate behavior in inappropriate situations. Moreover, they won’t be able to understand why all this is their fault. If they could understand the mistake they would be able to behave better in the first place. So they will just simply point fingers and blame others.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING HIGH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotions fuel your decision making and your emotional intelligence is the engine behind your performance, success and results. Emotions influence how confident you are, how optimistic and open you are to facing challenges and taking up opportunities. Your emotional energy is influencing your interpersonal skills and behavior and affects your social life. Understanding and efficiently managing your emotions can accelerate workplace success but it can also increase your ability to feel more gratitude and satisfaction in your personal life.

• As you develop the capacity to read and interpret your own emotions, you will find it easier to play, laugh, and experience joy. Emotional intelligence is not only about sociability, outgoingness and likeability. It is also about mindfulness and self-discovery. Developing emotional intelligence includes developing your knowledge of yourself and deepening the understanding on who you really are. This can help you make better decisions when choosing a profession, a life partner, friends, travel destinations, clothes and so on.
• Emotional intelligence can come handy also in stressful situations and can help you navigate the complexities of a relationship and/or a workplace. Developing emotional self-control can lead you to a place of experiencing life on another level. You will recognize how much easier life becomes when you can think before reacting to situations. And as you bring your thoughts and emotions into balance and learn to tolerate even unpleasant emotions temporarily, you’ll discover more and more of your strength and empowerment.
• Challenging your thought patterns by opening up to the views and perspectives of others can make you discover new latitudes of your own intelligence and personality. As you develop the capacity to better read and interpret your own emotions, you’ll find it easier to accurately recognize and understand other people’s emotions. When you are capable to put yourself in other people’s shoes, often you’ll become more sensitive to what that person is experiencing and are less likely to judge, criticize or bully them. Improving your emotional intelligence improves your communication skills that can make both your personal and professional relationships to flourish.

CHARACTERISTICS OF PEOPLE WITH HIGH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Having high emotional intelligence doesn’t mean that someone is always happy, in a good mood and liked by everyone they meet. It refers to the capacity to process and manage constructively their behaviors and make meaningful decisions even when things are not working out. The typical traits mentioned in the list below can provide a good starting point to discovering the level of your emotional intelligence.

This list was compiled to help you get an idea even without an EQ test about what is considered as high emotionally intelligence. Feel free to explore your own level of emotional intelligence but bare in mind that that this wasn’t made to give you the false impression of being better or worse than others. It is better if you take it more like a game, an adventure in self-discovery, because emotional intelligence can be learned and trained. There is nothing wrong with you or with others if you currently lack some of the capacities.

10 typical traits of the emotionally intelligent people

KEY POINTS

• People with high emotional intelligence will often practice SELF- AWARNESS AND MINDFULLNESS.
• High emotional intelligence is revealed when a person is capable of taking responsibility for how they feel.
• They practice a positive attitude, gratitude and thankfulness.
• Emotionally intelligent people know how to set goals and stay motivated.
• They are open to opportunities, challenges and interested in taking action
• They are approachable and interested in other people
• They have good communication and excellent listening skills
• High EQ people can differentiate between constructive criticism, envy and bullying
• They know how to respond vs react to stress and conflict
• People with high emotional intelligence are empathetic
• They will find that people approach them for advise and counselling

1. People with high EQ will often practice SELF- AWARNESS AND MINDFULLNESS.

They will be able to root themselves in the present and perceive emotions as they appear. Our emotional life is dynamic and flowing so staying in the present is important for perceiving the emotional flow. Emotions are used by them as indicators, as signs and clues to understand life at a deeper level. Loosing touch with our feelings and emotions will result in distancing ourselves from the active flow of life energies, and thus not being fully present in the events. An important part of being present, being aware is the ability to focus and pay attention. There is so much going on in life that it takes practice to learn to bring that focus back to ourselves. So an emotionally intelligent person will be able to disconnect their attention from the loud, noisy, bright and shiny data of their environment and perceive their own physical and emotional indicators as the important data to focus on instead. To some people it might come naturally but this can be efficiently trained with breathing exercises, meditation, conscious walking and journaling.

2. High EQ people take responsibility for their emotions

High emotional intelligence is revealed when a person is capable of taking responsibility for how they feel. It is one thing to recognize, become aware of how you feel and it is another thing to accept responsibility for feeling that way. It is one of the first steps towards developing emotional intelligence to understand that your emotions are your creations. Others can trigger and influence your mental workings but you are free to let that trigger pass you by. You are free not to react. You are free to choose your reactions. Emotionally intelligent people will not say things like ” he/she makes me angry” because they inherently know that, that person only triggers thoughts in the mind and the feeling of anger is self-created from that mental pattern. They will get angry sometimes but they know that they are not victims of their anger. They won’t be distracted from their path by their surroundings or their own stay thoughts. They will not feel powerless and victimized by feelings and emotions. They know that they can create their own emotional atmosphere.

3. People with high emotional intelligence usually practice ways to maintain a positive attitude.

A positive outlook on life is a valuable competency that can be learned. People who seem to make the best out of every situation aren’t born like that. They might come with tendencies in that direction but they have learned how to keep standing up after every time they fall dawn and fail. People with high emotional intelligence are usually grateful, feel content with where they are and they will be happy with how far they have come. They consider the past meaningful and finished. They have learned the lessons and moved on so they can be enjoying what life has to offer them now. Including a regular gratitude and thankfulness practice in our daily routine can help build the foundation of a more massive positive perspective on life. They will be interested in new things be it personal hobby or things that come up at their workplace.

4. Emotionally intelligent people know how to set goals and stay motivated.

The precursor to setting goals is the ability to believe that the future holds nice things for us. People with high emotional intelligence will have a positive expectation embracing their outlook on their future life. They expect thing to turn out well for them, so they are not afraid to dream, to visualize and to plan. They are not perfectionist. Perfectionism is often rooted in the fear of criticism and being shamed. Many perfectionist strive to perform outstandingly because they are afraid that otherwise they will not be good enough to be appreciated and loved by others.

5. They are open to opportunities, challenges and interested in taking action

People with high emotional intelligence will be open to opportunities and are willing to be proactive. This characteristic follows the one mentioned before because it is nice to be able to plan and visualize, but it takes another skill to actually be able to act on those plans. Emotionally intelligent people use planners and other efficient tools to stay on schedule. They will break the tasks in manageable and finish-able pieces. They will set realistic milestones and are able to leave their comfort zones when necessary. Emotionally intelligent people realize that change is a part of life. And most importantly they will want to do things, to ACT, to get out there and take part in life. . They will be able to do things and not procrastinate.

6. Emotionally intelligent people will stay approachable and sociable.

People with high emotional intelligence are able to share emotional connections with others. They are able to develop mutually beneficial relationships with others and tend to have great friends. It doesn’t mean that they are popular and everyone likes them, or they have a lot of followers. They are just simply not afraid of others and are willing to cultivate a curiosity in humanity. High emotional intelligence is about the willingness to immerse yourself in another culture and be open to get into conversation with people who are not in your usual social circles. They are interested to understand ways of lives that are different from their own. It is also about the ability to open yourself up. Emotionally intelligent people will not be afraid to start conversation or to talk in public. They are characterized by a positive presence and an authentic smile.

7. People with high EQ utilize good communication and listening skills

Emotionally intelligent people have great interpersonal skills and know how to communicate. In conversations, they know how to communicate their opinions and needs in a direct way while still respecting others. They pay attention and show respect for the person they are speaking to even if their opinion is different. They are also good in reading the body language and processing the cues of nonverbal communication like the tone of voice of a person. They also understand that it’s not what you say but how you say it that really matters.

8. High EQ people can differentiate between constructive criticism and bullying

High EQ people can take criticism constructively. Instead of getting defensive or offended people with high emotional intelligence are able to understand and process where the critique is coming from. This refers to the skill of understanding where the other person is emotionally and intellectually when they criticize and dealing constructively with the information offered. They can handle criticism without denial, blame, excuses or anxiety. All the criticism that is usually hard to take is that which is matching our self-criticism patterns. Emotionally intelligent people deal with their own self-criticism programs regularly – through journaling, meditation, calibration – and so they are able to deal with the critical data coming from others. they are also able to give their opinion in constructive ways.

9.They know how to respond vs react to stress and conflict

The emotionally intelligent person knows how to respond instead of reacting to conflict or stress. Reaction, in essence, is being in auto-pilot mode. Our reactions come instinctively form the subconscious mind, from that part of the brain that is responsible for survival. In many cases when survival mode is triggered the fight, hide or run program initiates, that overwrites the presence and awareness of an untrained mind. Emotionally intelligent people become aware of the impulse as it is happening and can decide in the moment whether the situation is really that serious or it was a false alarm. Throughout life we all get into situations that provoke us into negative emotional reactions and the high EQ people aren’t exempt from that. The difference is that they will recognize that they are provoked, so they will take a step back, pause and calibrate their emotions instead of spinning into an emotional spiral.

10. People with high emotional intelligence are empathetic.

Empathy is a trait that help us relate to each other on a basic human level. Empathy opens the door to understanding that we do not all react the same way to the same situations. Some people can face difficulty where others cope easily. People with high emotional intelligence are able to show empathy without loosing their grounds. They can set healthy boundaries and say no. Sometimes their commitments to themselves clash with commitments expected by others and even under such circumstances they will be able to respect their own needs without becoming selfish.

11. They are the leaders, educators and visionaries

High EQ people will often practice leadership, coaching, consulting. They will find that people approach them for advise. Emotionally intelligent people usually act with genuine kindness. They can relate to others genuinely and they understand what drives others, what motivates them and what fears and difficulties they are facing. They know how to praise and inspire others. They are the visionaries, the ones who see the bigger picture.

Disadvantages of high emotional intelligence

So far we have been discussing the sunshine and roses part of the emotional intelligence, but let’s see if there are some shadows that might be hiding on the dark side of this topic.

Well, of course there are many issues to consider. People with high emotional intelligence can have a tendency to manipulate others. People with high emotional intelligence and good communication skills might influence the reality around them. Their presence influences those around them and that can lead sometimes to poor decisions in the workplace. They are so convincing because of the emotional energy amassed, that others with less EQ but more IQ might be out ruled.

They can also become overly diplomatic and reluctant to give negative feedback. People with high EQ tend to be great at building relations and working with others so they are great in networking and sales. They risk to compromise too easily for the sake of maintaining good relationships. They are sensitive to peoples needs and they might be overwhelmed by the emotional charge in team or family situations where there are competing needs and expectations between the members.

Emotional intelligence is a huge gift, but it can sometimes lead to poor choices and hinder our cognitive intelligence. It is so interesting and important how high emotional intelligence can cause problems in one’s life, that there is a separate post dedicated to the questions and answers related to the downsides of high emotional intelligence.

Check out: 

• Are there downsides of high emotional intelligence and what to do about them?

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