Professional Documents
Culture Documents
"The ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a
source of human energy, information, connection and influence" - Robert Cooper and Ayman
Sawaf, Executive EQ (1997).
"The ability to perceive, to integrate, to understand and reflectively manage one's own and other
people's feelings" - John Mayer
Daniel Goleman describes emotionally adept people as those who "know and manage their own
feelings well, and who deal effectively with other people's feelings"; and Malcolm Higgs suggests
emotional intelligence is "Achieving one's goals through the ability to manage one's own feelings and
emotions, be sensitive to and influence other key people, and balance one's own motives and drives
with conscientious and ethical behaviour".
My definition, which combines reflection of my understanding distilled from a variety of published
sources, plus extensive debate with participants and others on leadership development programmes
is: "To recognise and understand the influence of emotions on ourselves and others, and respond
using intuition and principles to guide our behaviour".
The main components of emotional intelligence suggested by Goleman are: self-awareness,
"emotional management", self-motivation, empathy, managing relationships, communication skills and
personal style. The model developed by Malcolm Higgs and Vic Dulewicz suggests the following 3
components:
Drivers - motivation and decisiveness (energising and driving towards goal achievement)
Constrainers - conscientiousness and integrity (the fit between principles, values and behaviour)
Enablers - sensitivity, influence and self awareness (performance traits which contribute to
success)
The principles and values that influence our behaviour, and reference to them as guidelines for how we
manage our own emotions, as well as recognise and deal with others' emotions and behaviour, are
fundamental to the EQ concept. Intuition is also recognised as a measure of EQ, and can play a key
role in how effectively we manage both our business and personal relationships.