Emotional Intelligence 2.0: by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves | Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review

Researchers discovered that average EQ scores increase the higher in an organization the person tested is, up to middle management. A finding that might not surprise those middle managers is that EQ drops precipitously for their supervisors and up. In fact, CEOs tested with the lowest average EQ scores, even lower than the lowest ranked employees tested in the study.

One might expect that a CEO could hardly expect to get that far in business without being emotionally intelligent but, in reality, the findings of the EQ researchers might provide an explanation to trends of increasing CEO pay while average pay for lower-level workers remains stagnant. The researchers thought that perhaps CEOs seldom interact with their employees and may become too emotionally detached from their needs, which supports the idea that CEOs do not consider their employees' income needs when making balance sheet calculations. Another related trend may be the capacity for corporate executives with high income levels to feel the need to embezzle from their companies. By becoming detached from the business and losing the relationship management skills and social awareness skills to realize how white-collar crime impacts so many people, and by losing personal competencies when they no longer have to defer to bosses or ask nicely to get something accomplished, company leaders can become understandably unconcerned with the consequences of their actions.

Emotional intelligence research discovered that EQ rises steeply from generation to generation. Scores between men and women have also become more equal, instead of women having higher scores in almost every category. The trends indicate that overall EQ skill is increasing, and that younger generations are not necessarily worse at understanding their own emotions or those of others, but will probably pick up these skills as they work and learn throughout their lives.

For example, a parent with high personal competence understands exactly why, after a long day with too few snack breaks, they might feel grumpy and short tempered. The parent takes steps to remedy that with a nutritious meal, and then consciously checks the decision-making process to ensure that the grumpiness is not making them more pessimistic or cynical than usual. The parent monitors their tone and responses with the children, reminds themself to be upbeat rather than short with them, and takes a deep breath before reacting if one of them makes a mistake. Similarly, if the parent is in a very good mood and one of the children does something worthy of discipline, the parent does not brush off the incident or ignore the consequences of the mistakes.

The benefits of this parent's emotional self-control are many. For one thing, the children know they can rely on the parent to be level-headed in any scenario and know that they can safely acknowledge their mistakes without getting an irrationally upset response. They know that if the parent is bothered by something unrelated to the task at hand, it will not prevent the parent from doing the best at whatever needs to be done. If the same parent were less emotionally self-aware, that person would be less likely to respond to obstacles in a reasonable way. Instead, the parent’s reaction would be altered by lack of sleep or a bill that came in the mail that day. The parent might displace anger, frustration, or fear onto the children and treat them as if they have knowingly done something wrong or have some looming threat over their heads when, in reality, there is nothing wrong.

Humans are born with a limited EQ and develop it as they socialize with others throughout their lives. However, some characteristics of EQ are apparent at very early ages, such as a child’s ability to understand others' facial expressions. Other parts of EQ, such as empathy, may never develop in a person due to psychological disorders like sociopathy, or simply because of a lack of exposure or value placed on that trait. Nonetheless, nearly everyone has the ability to develop and improve EQ traits, and they often do when they read books, watch movies, have conversations, meditate, and engage in religious practices. Reading literary fiction specifically is correlated to improved emotional intelligence because it requires the reader's imagination to understand the characters and their emotional motivations [1]. Any practice that encourages the practitioner to consider another's perspective, or tells a story from a particular point of view, could have a similar effect.

The personal competence portion of EQ can be broken into the categories of self awareness, or understanding of one's own emotions, and self management, control over the way those emotions impact behavior.

The social competence portion of EQ involves social awareness, or understanding of others' emotions, and relationship management, which is how one treats others based on their emotional states.

Of the three factors that make up a person's behavior, EQ can be changed, while IQ and personality are less malleable

consistency in intention and action

understanding timing and appropriateness in conversations

and developing listening skills and empathy.