If, if you have observed successful persons in this world, I mean the business leaders or the leaders in medicine, science, and academics, you will find one thread which is common in them – and that is Emotional Intelligence (EI).

Intelligence Quotient or IQ is your cognitive intelligence. However, to be a successful professional, you need a high level of EI. It’s not that I am discounting IQ, the measure of your (IQ), you need to leverage your IQ with EI.  IQ is the threshold. Whether IQ increases over age or is stable is still a hot debate amongst neurologists and psychologists, but one thing is certain, EI is a perpetually learnable skill.

5 Elements of the EQ Model

Daniel Goleman writes about five components or elements of emotional intelligence in his book “EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: WHY IT MATTERS MORE THAN IQ”.

1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-Regulation
3. Self-Motivation
4. Empathy
5. Social Skills

Self-awareness can be defined as “the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions”. It is the foundational building block of emotional intelligence. Regulating ourselves, having empathy for others, and so on all rely on identifying and understanding emotion within ourselves.

Self-regulation is one step further—to have high EQ, we must not only be able to recognize our own emotions, but we must also be able to appropriately express, regulate, and manage them.

Self-motivated people succeed. People who have high EQs also generally possess more intrinsic motivation. In other words, people high in EQ are motivated for internal reasons rather than external rewards like gaining wealth, respect, or fame. Those with high EQs are motivated for their own personal reasons and work toward their own goals.

Empathy is the ability to feel the feelings and the pain points of others. People feel and recognize, on an intimate level, how you would feel if you were in their position.

Finally, social skills are the last piece of the EQ puzzle; these skills are what allow people to interact socially with one another and to successfully navigate social situations. You may even consider it as a culmination of all the previous four elements.

Those with high EQs generally have higher-than-average social skills and are able to effectively pursue their goals and get the outcomes they want when interacting with others.

But today, apart from EI there are four other types of intelligence you need to master, and all are learnable skills.

1. AI – not Artificial Intelligence but Acquired Intelligence. You can enhance your intelligence by reading, writing and thinking. Intermingle with knowledgeable and wise people. Read at least 12 books a year. Invest on books rather than on luxuries. If you have a British Library in your town, spend at least four hours there every Sunday.
2. BI is Business Intelligence.  Think like business leaders – the JRD and the Ratan Tata’s, the Narayana Murthy’s, the Nandan Nilekani’s, the Azim Premji’s, the Hamied’s of Cipla,  Sudhir Mehta of Torrent or Dr. Anji Reddy of DRL or Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma. For them, it is not a 9-5 job. They continuously think about the growth of their organization. They think about the growth of their people. Their all lead learning organizations.
3. CI or Curiosity Intelligence. Curiosity has led to the development of innovative and creative products. Always start on the premise “I KNOW NOTHING”. When I know nothing, I want to learn and that makes me curious and I enhance my CI. Shree Bhagwad Geeta rolled out because of the curiosity of Arjun who kept on asking questions to Lord Krishna. And without Arjun’s curiosity, the  Shree Bhagwad Geeta may not have rolled out.
4. DI or Digital Intelligence. DI has nothing to do with skills required for developing software. That is digital knowledge. Digital knowledge is not necessarily DI. DI is using the digital tools to make our lives and the lives of others more comfortable. Use the digital tool diligently. For example, a person with a high DI will not forward WhatsApp or Facebook messages with understanding the contents. When he receives a message which does not appeal commonsense, he will arouse his CI, get answers and only then forward, or delete. Do not be a slave but become the master, the boss of digital technology.  That is DI for you.

To conclude, if you take your AI, BI, CI, DI, and EI to the next level, you will become the a very successful professional, whichever field you are in.

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