Emotional Intelligence: Ethics | UPSC Mains: Ethics, Integrity & Aptitude PDF Download

Emotional intelligence

Emotions: The Essential Constitute of Human Psyche

An emotion as a strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others' also, 'an instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge'.

Emotions are complex reactions, that involve both intense subjective feelings such as joy, anger, sorrow etc., and also emotional expressions and the ability (or abilities) to understand emotional information i.e. the ability to "read" the emotional reactions of others. In other words, emotions are generally understood as intense feelings, favourable or unfavourable, that are directed at someone or something.

• Some theorists have also described emotions as discrete and consistent responses to internal or external events which have a particular significance for the organism. They are biologically given due to evolution because they provided good solutions to ancient and recurring problems that faced our ancestors. Therefore, they are the essential constitute of human mind. It is a well-established fact that it is almost impossible for humans to live without emotions.

Structure of Emotions

Though, there is no unanimity, but it is generally believed that emotions, as complex reactions, consist of three major components. These are: 

1. physiological changes within our bodies- like shifts in heartbeat, blood pressure etc. 
2. subjective cognitive states- the personal experiences we label as emotions; and 
3. expressive behaviour- outward signs of these internal reactions.

➤ Types of Emotions

• Certain emotions like joy, interest, contentment, love, and similar that are pleasant and rewarding, are called positive emotions. They open up new possibilities and build up our personal resources.
• On the other hand, negative emotions are associated with actions that probably helped our ancestors save their skins: escaping, attacking, expelling poison. 
• Negative emotions can also be valuable and constructive. For example, persistent distress may motivate a person to seek help, mend a relationship, or find a new direction in life.

There is a natural tendency that people enjoy positive emotions while treating negative emotions as misery.

Intelligence: Concepts, Utility, and Types

➤ Concept of Intelligence

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination" - Albert Einstein.

"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing" - Socrates.

• Intelligence is defined as an individual's capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with his environment. In other words, it is the mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one's environment. 
• It can be more generally described as the ability to perceive or infer information and retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.

Although, different investigators have emphasized different aspects of intelligence in their definitions, they all emphasised upon some sort of cognitive energy as the ultimate ground of intelligence. This cognitive ground enables a person to effectively use his abilities.

However, their emphasis on the rational component as the most important constituent of intelligence, was discarded by some later thinkers.

➤ Utility of Intelligence

• The most important use of intelligence is adaptation to one's environment. For the most part, adaptation involves making a change in oneself in order to cope more effectively with the environment, but it can also mean changing the environment or finding an entirely new one. 

Such adaptation may occur in a variety of settings:

• For example, a student in school learns the material he needs to know in order to do well in a course.
• A physician treating a patient with unfamiliar symptoms learns about the underlying disease.
• An artist reworks a painting to convey a more coherent impression.

Effective adaptation involves a number of cognitive processes, such as perception, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. The main emphasis in a definition of intelligence, is hence, on the fact that it is not a cognitive or mental process per se but rather on a selective combination of these processes that is purposively directed toward effective adaptation. Thus, the physician who learns about a new disease adapts by perceiving material on the disease in medical literature, learning what the material contains, remembering the crucial aspects that are needed to treat the patient, and then utilizing reason to solve the problem of applying the information to the needs of the patient.

➤ Types of Intelligence

• It was believed that intelligence was something we could detect for a long time through testing. It was believed that a person could be compared to another through their IQ test results. It was acknowledged that there are different types of intelligence they are all correlated—if people tend do well on some sections of an IQ test, they tend to do well on all of them, and vice versa, and hence, a general intelligence factor could be developed for people. However, over time, many began to question the IQ test results.
• More recently, researchers have been trying to understand the different areas of intelligence. Through new ways of exploring the workings of the brain, they began to consider 'additional intelligence factors' such as: Discipline, Persistence, Interpersonal Relationships etc.
• This brought to the forth, different types of intelligence. They recognized that each of us is biased toward one type/group, but we can develop the remaining types of intelligence through practice. In this context, psychologist Howard Gardner discussed the theory of Multiple Intelligences. The theory discusses the existence of different intelligence types, not necessarily corelated. Everyone has a small part of all within them. However, over the years each person develops one area more thoroughly and that area then supersedes the others. Thus, a person may possess emotional intelligence without being gifted analytically. Originally he proposed seven different types but later added naturalistic and existential intelligence to his list.

These are discussed below:

1. Linguistic Intelligence: People who develop linguistic intelligence tend to demonstrate a greater ability to express themselves well both verbally and in writing.
2. Logic Intelligence: People with sound logical intelligence have the ability to manage Maths and logic with ease.
3. Kinesthetic Intelligence: Kinaesthetic Intelligence relates to the ease of bodily expression. This kind of person has a great sense of space, distance, depth and size. With greater control of the body, this person can perform complex movements with precision and ease.
4. Spatial Intelligence: Those who have heightened spatial intelligence have the ability to create, imagine and draw 2D and 3D images. Professionals in gaming, architecture, multimedia and aerospace normally display a high level of spatial intelligence.
5. Musical Intelligence: Musical Intelligence is a rare kind of intelligence. People with this profile have the ability to listen to sound and music and identify different patterns and notes with ease.
6. Interpersonal Intelligence: People who display Interpersonal intelligence are practical and exhibit great sense of responsibility towards others. They are calm in their ways, they know how to listen and speak but above all, they know how to use their own knowledge and power to influence people. People who are acknowledged as born leaders are usually the ones known to possess Interpersonal Intelligence. Someone with Interpersonal Intelligence can easily identify the qualities in others and know how to bring that quality out.
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence: Intrapersonal Intelligence is a characteristic of those who are deeply connected with themselves. This type of person is usually more reserved but at the same time commands great admiration from their peers. Among each of the seven types of intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence is considered the rarest.
   • Thus, the earlier notion of intelligence as a monolith, with the logical-mathematical concept of intelligence, gave way to the theory of multiple types of intelligence. Gardner's concept of inter-personal and intra-personal intelligence came to have profound impact on the understanding of and literature on intelligence. From these emerged the notion of social intelligence and finally the concept of emotional intelligence.
   • Later, Robert Sternberg, of Tufts university, put forward his Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, which argued that previous definitions of intelligence are too narrow because they are based solely on intelligences that can be assessed in IQ test. 
   • Instead, Sternberg believes types of intelligence are broken down into three subsets: analytic, creative, and practical. He also argued that intelligent tests were wrong to ignore creativity, and there are always other important characteristics like cognitive processes, performance components, planning and decision-making skills, and so on.

Key functions in different aspects of Tri-archic theory of Intelligence:

1. Componential - Analytical Intelligence: Analytical Intelligence can also be referred to as being book smart. This form of intelligence is more in terms with the traditional definitions of IQ and academic achievement. It's also called componential intelligence. Because of its analytical nature, the person with high analytical intelligence is good at problem solving. These people are generally more able to see the solutions not normally seen, because of their abstract thinking and evaluation skills.
2. Experiential - Creative Intelligence: The ability to invent new ideas and solutions when dealing with new situations is regarded as creative intelligence. It's also referred as experiential intelligence. This form of intelligence is associated with using existing knowledge and skills in order to deal with new problems or situations.
3. Practical - Contextual Intelligence: Practical intelligence can be defined as street-smart in simple words. A person's ability to adapt in an environment or change it accordingly to best suit the personal needs is dubbed as practical intelligence. Another way to understand such type of intelligence is as common sense. Dealing with the everyday tasks in the best possible manner shows the person's intelligence.

The Social Aspect of Intelligence

➤ Definition

• Social Intelligence (SI) is the ability to get along well with others, and to get them to cooperate with you. These are sometimes simplistically also referred to as "people skills." Edward Thorndike gave the original definition in 1920 as "the ability to understand and manage men and women and girls, to act wisely in human relations".
• Social intelligence is a person's competence to understand his or her environment optimally and react appropriately for socially successful conduct. 
• Thus, SI includes an awareness of situations; the social dynamics that govern these situations, and a knowledge of interaction styles and strategies that can help a person achieve his or her objectives in dealing with others. It also involves a certain amount of self-insight and a consciousness of one's own perceptions and reaction patterns. Thus, SI is the ability to connect with people and influence them effectively.
• It is equivalent to interpersonal intelligence, one of the types of intelligence identified in Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Some authors have restricted the definition of social intelligence primarily to deal only with the knowledge of social situations, perhaps more properly called social cognition or social marketing intelligence, as it pertains to trending socio-psychological advertising and marketing strategies and tactics.

➤ Developing Social Intelligence

• Since SI is a combination of skills expressed through learned behaviour, it can be developed by assessing the impact of one's behavior on others. This can be measured as the degree to which one successfully deals with others. One can experiment with new behaviors and new interaction strategies. 
• In the simplest terms, this is the ability to "get along with people," which - it is assumed - people learn as they grow up, mature, and gain experience in dealing with others. Some examples of the people high on SI include Mahatma Gandhi, Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela etc.
• Unfortunately, many people do not continue to learn and grow as they age, and many people never acquire the awareness and skills they need to succeed in social, business or professional situations. It is quite clear that adults who lack insight and competence in dealing with others can make significant improvements in their SI status as a result of understanding the basic concepts and assessing themselves against a comprehensive model of interpersonal effectiveness.

➤ From Social Intelligence towards Emotional Intelligence

• While some practitioners have included "people skills," or Social Intelligence in EI theory, but in practical terms it makes more sense to think of EI and SI as two distinct dimensions of competence. Social intelligence (Gardner's "interpersonal intelligence") is separate from, but complimentary to emotional intelligence (Gardner's "intrapersonal intelligence"). 
• But we need both models in order to understand ourselves and the way we interact with others. Some SI deficits arise from inadequate development of EI; conversely, some deficits in SI may lead to unsuccessful social experiences that may undermine a person's sense of self-worth, which is part of EI.

The Emotional and Social Intelligence Model

Relation Between Emotions and Intelligence: 

➤ The Traditional Perspective

• The traditional notion of intelligence as logical or mathematical ability invariably reduces it to cognitive ability. Cognition refers to processes such as memory, attention, language, problem solving, and planning. 
• Many cognitive processes often involve so-called controlled processes, such as when the pursuit of a goal (e.g., maintaining information in mind like retaining some facts) needs to be protected from interference (e.g., a distracting stimulus like a nagging noise).
• Traditionally, it was believed that emotion, being non-cognitive, can't facilitate the cognitive processes. In fact, it was believed that emotions, were counter to cognitive task, because they are intense feelings. 
• Thus, the earlier notion was either of no relation between emotion and intelligence or negative relation. For example, when experiencing negative emotions, like anger or depression, it becomes very difficult to perform a constructive task, like solving a puzzle, or making good decisions.
• However, Mayer and Salovey, in their concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI), discarded this necessarily negative relation between Emotions & Intelligence. It was realized that emotions aren't necessarily bottlenecks in our thinking or decision making. This leads us to the topic of Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence: Integration of Emotions and Intelligence

• The term EI was introduced in 1990 by Mayer and Salovey. It is described as a set of skills that involve the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings/emotions, discriminate a mong them, and use that information to guide one's thinking and action. 
• Thus, it integrates emotions and intelligence. Simplistically speaking, it is the ability to channelize emotions for constructive purposes. It must be known that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence. It is not the triumph of heart over head, rather, the unique intersection of both.
• Mayer and Salovey introduced this concept as a challenge to the traditional notion of intelligence as monolithic ability, i.e. only focused on cognitive ability and the thinkers who held emotions as obstructive to cognitive activity. EI includes the intra- and inter-personal intelligence, i.e. the ability to know oneself and others' abilities, current emotional state.

➤ An Example of Emotional Intelligence

1. Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by emotional intelligence. When Martin Luther King, Jr. presented his dream, he chose language that would stir his audience's hearts. He promised that a land "sweltering with the heat of oppression" could be "transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice." 
   • Delivering this electrifying message required emotional intelligence—the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions. Martin Luther King demonstrated remarkable skill in managing his own emotions and in sparking emotions that moved his audience to action. King delivered "a perfectly balanced outcry of reason and emotion, of anger and hope. His tone of pained indignation matched that note for note."
2. Similar was Gandhi's contribution to Indian national movement. His slogan of "do or die" on the eve of Quit India Movement electrified the Indian masses, and resulted in massive movement in human history. This skills of managing one's own and others' emotions is what comes with EI.

A perspective on Intelligence Quotient (IQ) versus Emotional Quotient (EQ)

• IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a numerical score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess an individual's intelligence. It measures the numeric-linguistic and logical abilities. Since IQ is the measure of 'intelligence' or general intelligence, which is believed to be inborn therefore, high IQ can't be developed if one is not endowed with it already.
• EQ, on the other hand, is not a numerical score. EQ stands for emotional quotient, which represents the relative measure of a person's healthy or unhealthy development of his innate potential for emotional intelligence (EI). Two persons with the same level of EI may have different EQ levels because EQ is the product of socialization. The development of EQ takes place because of the emotional lessons obtained from parents, teachers etc.
• EQ is believed to be a better indicator of success at the workplace. People with high EQ usually make great leaders and team players because of their ability to understand, empathize, and connect with the people around them. 
• According to Goleman, success at workplace is about 80% or more dependent on EQ and about 20% or less dependent upon IQ. As a result, many persons, high on IQ, may not be successful in life, while contrary to this, most successful people are high on EQ. The success of most professions today depends on our ability to read other people's signals and react appropriately to them.
• It's not the smartest people that are the most successful or the most fulfilled in life. There are academically brilliant and socially inept and unsuccessful people at work or in their personal relationships. Intellectual intelligence (IQ) isn't enough on its own to be successful in life. Ones IQ can get him into college, but emotional intelligence manages the stress and emotions when facing final exams or during an interview.

IQ is primarily genetic. However, there are several ways to tap an individual's IQ to its highest potential through brain-food and mental ability exercises like puzzles, lateral thinking problems, and problem-solving techniques that make you think outside the box. 

On the other hand, EQ is the ability to effectively use IQ and all other potentialities that an individual possesses to the greatest advantage. Thus, in a way, IQ is like a vehicle, but it is EQ which determines the destination. As a result, EQ is more important than IQ in reaching the highest potential development.

➤ Importance of Emotional Intelligence

• The chances of succeeding are skewed towards people who are better able to manage themselves and others emotionally, one's who are likeable and trustworthy. 
• Research shows that more than 80% percent of success is due to skills in "human engineering," personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. 
• Additionally, Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don't, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.
• Hence, instead of exclusively focusing on conventional intelligence quotient, one should make an investment in strengthening his/her EQ (Emotional Intelligence). The concepts of EQ may be difficult to measure, but their significance is far greater than IQ.
• Emotional intelligence is that "something" within us that helps us sense how we feel and enables us to truly connect with others and form a bond. It gives us the ability to be present and listen to someone when they most need it. It is that sense of internal balance within us that enables us to keep our composure, make good decisions, communicate successfully, and maintain effective leadership even when under stress. To be specific, EI is important for the following reasons:

Know Your Emotions

Emotions are powerful reactions. If one is not aware of his emotions he can't make a sound moral judgment. Further, knowing one's emotions is the pre-requisite to express inherent feeling/affection.

Managing Emotions

Managing emotions is very important for our mental health and for keeping our interaction with others efficient. Moreover, managing emotions is the key to motivate oneself and others.

Greater Self-Awareness

It is necessary for understanding one's emotions, setting realistic goals. These are very essential for success and remaining happy.

Self-Regulation

EI enables one to exercise high degree of self-control. Therefore, EI leads to the creation of climate of trust and fairness in which infighting is reduced and chances of success are increased.

Empathy

EI enables one to thoughtfully consider the feelings of others and behave in an appropriate manner. Empathetic people are able to think of the things from others' perspective. Therefore, they are able to pick up subtle social signals indicating what others need. People with high EQ thus have greater service orientation.

Social skills

It refers to adeptness in inducing the desired behaviour in others.

Skills Required for Being Emotionally Intelligent

➤ Self-Awareness

Emotionally intelligent people are aware of how they feel, what motivates and demotivates them, and how they affect others.

➤ Social Skills

Emotionally intelligent people communicate and relate well with others. They listen intently and adapt their communications to others' unique needs, including diverse backgrounds. They show compassion.

➤ Optimism

Emotionally intelligent people have a positive and optimistic outlook on life. Their mental attitude energizes them to work steadily towards goals despite setbacks.

➤ Emotional Control

Emotionally intelligent people handle stress evenly. They deal calmly with emotionally stressful situations, such as change and interpersonal conflicts.

➤ Flexibility

Emotionally intelligent people adapt to changes. They use problem-solving to develop options.

Qualities of people with Emotional Intelligence

• Authenticity and legitimacy
• Improved inter-personal relationships and therefore better satisfaction of social and esteem needs.
• Acting with integrity. Because integrity means consistency in what we think and what we do. Therefore, if one is emotionally intelligent, he would be aware of his inner self and the surrounding environment. Therefore, there would be minimum chances of mismatch.
• EI leads to reduced stress levels. It is because the emotionally intelligent people are good at managing and regulating their emotions.
• Improved career prospects. It is because, every organization is a social system where people form an inter-related and inter-dependent organic whole. People with higher EI are better at social relationships.
• Improved communication with others is the very basic attribute of EI.
• Feeling confident and positive, because of self-awareness and self-regulation.
• Respect from others: It is because EI brings in tactfulness, sensitivity, cooperativeness, and good listening qualities etc. which are necessary for favourable rapport.
• People with high EI are more empathetic, because understanding others' emotions and their perspective is also essential for EI.
• Learning from mistakes, because EI makes a person assertive, bold, and responsible for their deeds. Therefore, EI reduces the tendency of individuals to repeat mistakes.
• Benefit from criticism: Nobody enjoys negative feedback. But you know that criticism is a chance to learn, even if it's not delivered in the best way. And even when it's unfounded, it gives you a window into how others think. When you receive negative feedback, you keep your emotions in check and ask yourself: How can this make me better?
• Increased creativity, because it is believed that the positive emotions facilitate creativity. On the other hand, EI enables one to manage their stress levels, and be optimistic in the face of adversities.
• Managing change more confidently. It is because change is, generally, resisted by the stakeholders and a person high on EI is able to bring the stakeholders on board through persuasion and conviction.
• Fewer power games at work, because of increased cooperation and coordination induced by emotionally intelligent people at work.
• Protecting oneself from emotional sabotage: Emotional intelligence also has a dark side-­such as when individuals attempt to manipulate others' emotions to promote a personal agenda or for some other selfish cause. And that's why one should continue to sharpen his/her own emotional intelligence--to protect oneself.
• Needs and Wants: The emotionally intelligent mind is able to discern between things that they need versus things that would be "nice to have" that cla ssify more aptly as wants. A need, particularly in Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs", is the basic level of safety, survival, and sustenance. Once those things are met, then we can progress to other needs and of course, wants. A "want" is a big house, nice car, a smartphone, etc. We do not need those things to survive, but rather we want them based on our own personal desires or what we perceive to matter to society. Emotionally intelligent people know the difference between these two things, and always establish needs prior to fulfilling wants.

Can Emotional Intelligence be Developed?

• There are differing perspectives on the ability of people to develop EI. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic.
• In this context, some thinkers make distinction between emotional intelligence (EI) and emotional quotient (EQ). EI refers to innate potentiality, such that each individual is born with some innate potential for emotional literacy and emotional learning ability, and this potential is realized only when he gets favourable environment. 
• The core of this favourable environment constitutes emotional lessons. These emotional lessons are given to us through socialization by our parents, teachers, peers etc., during our childhood or adolescence. 
• The result of which is what is called as EQ. EQ is hence the relative measure of one's healthy or unhealthy development of innate EI. It is possible that two children with the same EI may have different EQ or vice-versa, depending upon the socialization experiences. However, it must be clarified that neither of them is a numerical entity, like IQ.
• The emotional quotient is best inculcated from an early age by encouraging qualities like sharing, thinking about others, putting oneself in another person's shoes, giving individual space and the general principles of cooperation. There are tools like toys and games available to increase emotional quotient, and children who do not do well in social settings are known to perform significantly better after taking SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) classes. ALTHOUGH TO A LIMITED EXTENT, adult EQ can also be enhanced through effective coaching.
• There are some medical conditions like high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger's where one of the symptoms may be low-empathy. While some studies found that adults with Asperger's have low-empathy, there are have been studies with control groups that indicate EQ can be changed in individuals with HFA or Aspergers.

➤ Developing Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

• Leadership is a process of social interaction where the leader's ability to influence their followers' behaviour can strongly influence performance outcomes. Leadership is intrinsically an emotional process, whereby leaders recognize followers' emotional states, attempt to evoke the right emotions in followers, and then seek to manage followers' emotional states accordingly.
• Leaders increase group solidarity and morale by creating shared emotional experiences. EI is a key factor in an individual's ability to be socially effective and is viewed as a key determinant of effective leadership.
• A big part of being a leader involves being credible, honest, and trustworthy. Being credible helps us to earn respect from others. People also listen to someone who they feel has their best interests at heart.
• In emotional-intelligence terms, one earns this trust by using empathy. If a person is empathic, one is more likely to gain the cooperation of others because they show concern about others' welfare. If someone acts in a self-serving or callous manner, people are more likely to avoid the person. As part of the strategy for getting people to follow, one should try to win over them. This can be done with following attributes:
• Self-regard: Having high self-regard means that one has a good understanding of his strengths and weaknesses. Acting on this understanding requires that you have good self­knowledge and effectively strike a balance between being confident and being arrogant. People are more comfortable helping others who demonstrate the right amount of humility.
• Optimism: People find optimism and happiness attractive attributes. People are more likely to cooperate with someone who's optimistic.
• Happiness: Happiness, like optimism, attracts people. When we're happy others are more pleasant to be around. Being happy add to "likability" factor.
• It can also be contagious. Everybody likes to be happy, and being around happy people contributes to one's own happiness.

➤ Role of Emotional Intelligence in Administration and Governance

Many civil servants despite being extraordinarily talented, conceptually brilliant and having a very high IQ., are not particularly likeable people. Many of them are aggressive and brutal in their response to the outside world. They have little or no feeling for people around them.

They feel physiologically awkward in their relationships; have no social graces or even a social personal life. Being uncomfortable with themselves and making people uncomfortable becomes a routine response in their life.

• Apart from this, it has also been noticed that risk taking behaviour, and bold decisions are needed in discharging the responsibility of public services, especially in a developing country like India. Civil servants need to be adept at handling people effectively since it forms a major part of their responsibilities. 
• Further, the civil servants are the trustees of public interest and are entrusted to make policies. Therefore, they need to be high on EI because without EI, it would be difficult to be empathetic to different sections of society, be firm in their approach, and be good change agents.

➤ Emotionally Intelligent Administrator

Emotionally intelligent leaders are centered and grounded. Such leaders display a stable mood, aren't erratic or extremely unpredictable in their behaviour, and they tend to possess these traits:

• High self-regard: Good leaders have high self-regard. Leaders who claim to know it all tend to be poor leaders. Good leaders know their strengths and capitalize on those strengths and know their weaknesses and fill the gaps with people who have strong skills in these areas.
• Maintain balance in life: Good leaders also seem to know how to balance their personal and work lives. They tend to avoid burning out by managing their time well. If a person can manage his own life well, including stress, home life, fitness, and diet, he can manage the workplace well.
• Model the way: Successful leaders say what they want to accomplish and get it done. The leader needs to walk the talk if he wants others to follow. In emotional i intelligence terms, this practice involves assertiveness and independence. People who are assertive and articulate have no difficulty expressing their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Also, people, who are independent, listen are to and take in the advice of others, but in the end, make their own informed decisions. Independence implies acting in order to carry things out.
• Inspire a shared vision: As a leader, one must convince others that he/she understands others needs and have their best interests at heart. Inspiring a shared vision requires a good deal of empathy and optimism for it gives our vision a positive and desirable flavour so that others want to share in it. Our empathy ensures that we hit the right chord in terms of what others want to see and hear from us.
• Challenge the process: An emotionally intelligent leader strives for change. He looks for opportunities to improve and grow and also to experiment and take risks. One of the key emotional intelligence skills needed to challenge the status quo is flexibility. Flexible people are more likely to try new things, take risks, and face new challenges without fear.
• Enable others to act: Success requires a team and leaders, by definition, require followers. Leaders can empower others in a variety of ways. They enable others by fostering collaboration and building trust. Successful leaders share power, delegate well, and do what's necessary to help others perform. In terms of emotional intelligence, there is a need of self-regard and interpersonal skills to enable others to act. In order to build successful relationships, you need the skills to engage and relate to others in a meaningful way.
• Stay composed under pressure: Good leaders don't flare up or lose control under difficult circumstances
• Encourage others: A key component of this practice involves recognizing the contributions of others. Rewarding people for their participation goes a long way in motivating them to be part of our team. Leaders who encourage others need to know how those people feel but need to be capable of building relationships with them.

➤ Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence

• Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has a dark side as well. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you're good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests. Especially when they have self serving interests, EI becomes a weapon for manipulating others.
• Social scientists have begun to document this dark side of emotional intelligence. In emerging research led by University of Cambridge professor Jochen Menges, when a leader gave an inspiring speech filled with emotion, the audience was less likely to scrutinize the message and remembered less of the content. Ironically, audience members were so moved by the speech that they claimed to recall more of it.
• One observer reflected that Hitler's persuasive impact came from his ability to strategically express emotions—he would "tear open his heart"—and these emotions affected his followers to the point that they would "stop thinking critically and just emote." Leaders who master emotions can rob us of our capacities to reason. If their values are out of step with our own, the results can be devastating.

➤ To Conclude

• Succeeding in life largely depends on succeeding socially, and a large part of social success depends on EQ. But as a growing body of research shows, EQ can be used to orchestrate 'win - lose' as well as 'win-win' outcomes. Of course, people aren't always using emotional intelligence for nefarious ends. More often than not, emotional skills are simply instrumental tools for goal accomplishment.
• The appropriate level of EI demands capacity for appreciation of 'interconnections' of matte rs which are seemingly unrelated but together influence the outcome of a public policy or project. Emotional Intelligence, thus, has to be factored in administrative justice, and it may even be called 'constructive emotional intelligence'.