Part I: What is Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence, often referred to as EI, fascinates me. EI gives us the ability to understand how our emotions influence the words we use in communicating with others. Whether we’re sharing ideas, expressing beliefs, rallying our teams around important initiatives or having difficult conversations, words matter! Our most unique ability as humans is how we verbally communicate, and developing skills to increase our emotional awareness and effectively manage emotions is paramount in our leadership of others. The most effective, rewarding one-on-ones that I have with my team are exhausting. Engaging for greater understanding, remaining curious to allow space for figuring things out, all while managing the underlying emotions that are trying to surface, takes a lot of brain and heart power. I know that when I’m able to navigate conversations well, true impact is being made. Leaders with high EI understand how to leverage emotions in developing relationships of trust. When people trust each other, our missions take flight. 

So what is Emotional Intelligence? EI is simply our ability to understand and manage our emotions and feelings, as well as those of others, in guiding our thinking and then our actions. It is different from the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, in that it is specific to recognizing emotions and the impact these emotions have in our relationships. IQ gauges our logical ability to solve problems as well as our ability to understand and communicate complex information. As technology continues to become smarter, with advances in AI and robotics, we will begin to see IQ diminish in importance and EI become even more important. Critical thinking and creativity powered by our emotions make us uniquely human, while IQ is more easily replaced by AI. Both EI and IQ are important—we can’t be emotionally smart and logically dumb—but the tolerance for low EI in the future of leadership becomes less and less.

There are many brilliant people leading the way on the subject of Emotional Intelligence, but I’d have to highlight Dr. Daniel Goleman, and his book Emotional Intelligence as the most influential. Goleman’s emotional intelligence theory highlights five primary components:

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Motivation
• Empathy
• Social skills

In my next blog, I’ll touch on each of these components, including what they are, how they show up within our companies and some resources for growing emotional intelligence.

ABOUT

Pam Dooley began working in the green industry at the age of 13, spending Indiana summers in cornfields before joining her grandfather at the local nursery/garden center. In 2005, Plants Creative Landscapes was born. In 2021, Pam expanded Plants Creative into the North Georgia mountains, opening a second location in Blue Ridge, Georgia.
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