Sean's Blog about Dev Academy

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is a person’s ability to feel, understand, express, and empathize with emotions. EQ is the measurement of that.

It is different to IQ in that IQ measures problem solving skills, ability to use logic, and general knowledge.

Emotional intelligence is important because it generally makes a person more pleasant to be around, communicate with, and work with. If you can understand and empathize with other people you can usually work with them more productively. If you can express your emotions in productive rather than destructive ways, then you yourself will be understood better.

Examples

Ian has an employee under him who is calling in sick a lot. Using his massive IQ he learns that the employee doesn't have any sort of underlying health problem, and when questioned they don't seem to have any real excuses. Thus this employee must be lazy and taking advantage so Ian fires him. Unfortunately that employee turned out to be the fire warden. Using his massive IQ Ian realizes this and decides to test if they even need a fire warden via a surprise fire drill. Ian is trampled to death in the ensuing chaos.


Eric has an employee under him who is calling in sick a lot. Using his massive EQ he talks to the person and though the employee insists nothing is wrong, through empathy and kindness Eric learns that the employee is being bullied by another employee called Ian because he thinks that fire wardens are unnecessary. Eric uses his massive EQ and realises that simply firing Ian will not fix the problem since the idea of unnecessary fire wardens has already been implanted in the other staff. Eric uses his not as massive IQ and hatches a plan with the employee to call a surprise fire drill,to show the importance of fire wardens to the staff. Ian is trampled to death in the ensuing chaos.