EI International
Emotional intelligence has been sold as a single capacity that explains almost everything about people. The parts of it that hold up are narrower, slower and much less impressive,
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Emotional intelligence has been sold as a single capacity that explains almost everything about people. The parts of it that hold up are narrower, slower and much less impressive, which is exactly why they are worth attention.
The phrase entered general English quickly and never really settled. It now covers self awareness, patience, warmth, tact, resilience, negotiating skill and the general quality of being pleasant to work with. A term that covers that much covers nothing in particular. When someone says a colleague has high emotional intelligence, they usually mean the colleague is easy to be around, which is a judgement about their own comfort rather than a description of any ability. That is not a scandal. It is simply the ordinary drift of a useful word into a compliment. But it does mean that arguments about whether emotional intelligence matters are often arguments about four or five different things at once, with nobody saying which.
This magazine takes a narrower path. Underneath the broad term sit a handful of specific, unglamorous habits: noticing that you are reacting before you act on the reaction, finding a reasonably accurate word for what you are feeling, holding back on your first interpretation of somebody else, asking instead of assuming, and choosing a response you would still defend an hour later. Each of those is small enough to practise and small enough to fail at visibly. None of them requires believing that a single trait explains careers or marriages. They are more like handwriting than like a gift.
The broader the term became, the more people agreed with it and the less it told them.
Having a reaction is automatic; identifying it is a separate step that often does not happen.
The evidence available about another person's inner state is thin, and confidence in it is misplaced.