Emotional intelligence has two components - individual and interactive. The individual components, related to yourself, have been described as having the ability to identify and handle your emotions, the ability to motivate yourself towards your own goals. The interactive components or social aspects of emotional intelligence include the ability to feel empathy for others and social skills.
There is a great deal of research on emotional intelligence and it shows many, many benefits of having higher emotional intelligence. Higher ability to handle or manage your emotions can allow you to take care of your health. For example, people who get to the gym regularly, even though they don’t want to, keep going because they know the health benefits. Generally speaking people with higher EI are healthier. People who have the same high ability to manage their emotions are much less likely to get into difficult disagreements with others, but even if they do they can manage their own responses, so as to not make any conflict worse than it has to be.
People who have the ability to respond empathically let us know that they care about us, that they are there to help. They seem to know the right things to say, and don’t have it go off track by making your painful experience about them. People with good social skills know how to be pleasant, considerate, and show interest in others.
Emotional intelligence, unlike IQ, can be improved. All of the aspects of EI are skills-based, which means that they can be learned, and can be enhanced through practice. There may be some areas in your life that are working as well as you would like, creating negative emotions, such as disappointment, when enhancing your EI might just make the difference.
Coaching or counselling in the EI strategies can benefit your life in many different ways.