When it comes to intelligence, you as students are highly aware of developing and enhancing it by learning new things at a fast pace. However, the overwhelming focus of student life is placed on increasing Intelligence Quotient (IQ).
While IQ is important to achieve success and holds you in good stead when it comes to technical or hard skills, it is the presence of Emotional Quotient (EQ) or Emotional Intelligence that will support you when you face hard times.
The importance of Emotional Intelligence cannot be overemphasized. The way it works is to help you become self-aware of your emotions, while also giving you the ability to control, express and evaluate them in the context of both challenging and successful academic outcomes.
At times, EQ can matter much more than IQ, with coverage of areas like self-motivation, self-awareness, relationship skills, emotional control and empathy. These EQ skills, when developed proactively during a student’s formative times in college, can be the pillar for future success during the course of their lives and careers.
We list the reasons why students need a healthy dose of emotional intelligence in this phase:
Leadership Skills
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Leadership skills, in general, are quite fairly recognizable when you see it. Be it in the classroom, organizations, family and politics, it is quite evident that leadership skills are a must-have for anyone who wished to strategize, plan and achieve their vision in every sphere of life. In this context, the role played by emotional intelligence or EQ is highly crucial.
Emotional intelligence, which involves precisely perceiving your own and other’s emotional state of mind, managing and understanding those signs, is a key skill that is inherent in every leader.
Without the presence of EQ, a leader is unable to make himself and his team click. You, as a student, need these skills to not only develop leadership abilities but also to think like one.
As an example, think of any good manager you have had a working relationship with. There is a high probability that your manager was quite approachable, and someone whom you could go to for questions, needs, support and concerns.
The above traits, which constitute a vital part of emotional intelligence, are indispensable for the development of leadership skills.
Emotional Intelligence in Personal Development
Emotional intelligence is an essential trait for every student who is keen to develop his personality, soft skills and technical skills. A positive personality is reflected in motivating oneself and others around you, building confidence and trust, resolving conflicts and controlling anger. These traits are effectively learnt and facilitated by the development of emotional quotient or emotional intelligence among students.
Personal development not only encompasses technical skills, but also soft skills like effective communication, empathy, courtesy, grace and other personal attributes. Social skills are yet another attribute of personal development which is incomplete without honing your emotional intelligence.
As an example, if you lack the personal touch and tact needed to work your way out of a difficult situation, it shows the absence of key personal development metrics. These metrics are widely covered in the development of EQ.
Optimizing Performance
Performance optimization is yet another aspect of life that is connected to emotional intelligence. An effective performer is the one with high IQ and stability of mind and body to channelize that IQ into action.
This stability of the mind, happiness and content is achieved with the presence of a high emotional quotient. Thus a student with optimum performance has to balance both his IQ as well as EQ in order to operate at that level for continuous periods of time.
As an example, if you are brilliant at science and mathematics but not able to handle your emotions, then it is very probable that you might achieve subpar performance when you are tested for your knowledge and skill.
Therefore, it is important to achieve a mindset to segregate and deal with both positive and negative emotions, so that they do not get in the way of effectively utilizing other hard skills or IQ to achieve performance-oriented results.
Achieving Success
Success is relative, as they say, but if there is one thing absolute in the path toward success, it is the presence of strong values, social skill, motivation and empathy. These attributes, coupled with zeal to excel in your chosen field, lay the foundation of success for every student.
However, success is a journey and not a destination, students must learn to upgrade their emotional intelligence and its associated skills like regulating oneself, managing emotions and handling tough situations.
Learning emotion management and self-regulation – coupled with other attributes that define a person with a considerable amount of emotional intelligence – takes a fair amount of patience, effort and time on the part of the student undergoing the learning process.
Successful students always thank the presence of EQ as one of the most critical factors leading to effective people management, stress control and the ability to analyse one’s actions effectively. This, in turn, is helpful to achieve long-term success in every sphere of life.
Reduce Stress
Stress is the hallmark of everyone’s life these days. Increasing competitive landscape, technology and hectic lifestyles have led to undue stress for people in all spheres of life. Students are also a particularly vulnerable set of individuals when it comes to stress.
However, by learning the skills associated with emotional intelligence, students can learn to tackle and considerably reduce the amount of stress in their lives. Managing one’s emotions is the single big factor in achieving a stress-free environment.
Thinking about the bigger picture, taking small losses in your stride and maintaining the zeal of winning until the very end are foundations in developing EQ that can act as a stress killer.
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence for students can be summarized as below. EQ helps students to:
- Manage their emotions and think rationally
- Communicate effectively like a leader
- Increase their decision-making prowess
- Build new relationships
- Motivate oneself
- Reduce stress
- Sympathize with others
- Advance their career to new highs
The above observations indicate and confirm that Emotional intelligence is one of the core skills that need to be mastered by every student. However, doing the same requires students to treat EQ at par with IQ in terms of importance and focus.
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