There is an increasing amount of talk around the importance of soft skills and how these have been identified as key markers in whether an individual is successful after school. These can be defined as personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. Communication skills, character traits, personality and social skills are all considered soft skills, along with emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and influence emotions and is neither inherently ‘good nor bad’. Mahatma Gandhi had it. Donald Trump has it, Barack Obama has it and there is a strong likelihood that senior staff, leaders, and people in positions of trust and responsibility have it. If you have it, it can make you a great leader; alternatively, it can allow you to become a manipulator and controller. Some of history’s most despised leaders probably had high emotional intelligence, allowing them to control large groups of people or whole countries.
A study of emotional intelligence by Jochen Menges, an associate professor at Cambridge, in the late 1990s showed that “It turns out that leaders often succeed in influencing others through emotions”. Leaders who can manage to evoke emotions, and channel them towards accomplishing specific goals are more likely to succeed. An excellent example of this would be Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” 1963 speech, which captured the emotions of the time and became a pivotal point in the civil rights movement.
Experts are still debating how emotional intelligence develops over an individual’s lifetime, but recent data suggests that it can improve with learning. In the USA, The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence has developed a programme called Ruler, which is now being adopted across 2500 schools. Ruler stands for: recognising emotions; understanding their causes and consequences; labelling them with a nuanced vocabulary; expressing them in accordance with cultural norms and social context; and regulating them with helpful strategies. So why teach it? Learning how to be more emotionally intelligent allows students to identify their own emotions, channel them productively and not be derailed by them. If students can use their emotions to help them achieve goals, rather than their emotions preventing this, their chances of success rise considerably. Becoming more emotionally intelligent also allows students to identify individuals who are using their emotions destructively. Some individuals strive for personal gain through using emotions; stirring and shaping others’ emotions through false, partial or spun information; and controlling the flow of emotion-laden communication. The recent rise of ‘fake news’ and use of highly charged, distracting, emotive language by the current President of The United States is a masterclass in emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is something that will help us prepare for the future. Every change is loaded with emotion and emotional intelligence is a core competence that will allow us to navigate these changes. So, the sooner we can learn about it in school and prepare our students for the changes they will face, the better.
