Emotional intelligence is knowing how to assess emotions and react accordingly. It means accomodating and understanding the effects of other’s emotions too. Concept of emotional intelligent has been elaborated by Daniel Goleman. He speaks of attributes that help one practice emotional intelligence.

Attributes like self awareness, self managed, empathy, management of relationships, self motivation. All these are not just part of one’s personality but also a part of emotional intellect of a person. Thinkers like Max Weber have talked of dehumanisation of behaviour in governance in organisations.

They believed that the more robotic one is the more helpful it will be to make rational decisions. But emotions don’t necessarily ensure irrationality. They are necessary to create a linkage of trust between people and leaders.

Be it professional life or personal life, we all need to understand the importance and balance that emotions provide us with. Emotions help one to attach to the problems of people and practise empathy. This helps to find solutions more creatively. This has been backed by modern neurosciences on emotions.

Since the turn of this century, organisations have started valuing emotional intelligence accompanied with intelligence quotient of candidates. Candidates with mere intelligence quotient can’t succeed for long because they may lack skills to harness their talents to the best of their abilities. Therefore many times we see people with lesser IQs succeeding more than their peers.

Not everything in life is about talent alone. Many times overall management and personality matters more. This holistic development of personality must be done since childhood through parents and teachers.

Only focussing on STEM subjects and ignoring extra curricular activities like sports , reading can be detrimental to development of an individual. Hence, today the world is evolving and so must our thinking about emotions and their management.