My students and I; teaching, learning EI
I am inspired to write this note after reading Consultant Psychiatrist- Prof. Raveen Hanwella’s column on the “Importance of Teaching Emotional Intelligence in Our Schools” in the Sunday Times MediScene magazine of August 22. I have been teaching, rather conducting workshops on Emotional Intelligence (EI) for the undergraduates of the Faculty of Business, SLIIT for nearly five years.
Incident at the restaurant: A student's experience becomes a lesson for others
To me, EI is a skill or a competence that can be developed within any one of us. It amounts to changing his or her behaviour or the way of living, the way a person faces issues and things that happened in the environment and how they react to such issues. For example, the way a person who is ‘emotionally intelligent’ ( i.e. a person with higher Emotional Intelligence Quotient- EQ) would react to a situation where some outsider being rude, blaming and pointing finger at him/her might be totally different to one who has a poor EQ.
Although there are a number of approaches to explain EI, here are the five elements of EI.
a. Self-Awareness: It is the ability to understand your own emotional make-up. It is the recognition and understanding of your own moods and motivations and their effect on others.
b. Self-regulation: This is the competence or skill to manage your emotions and the reactions brought about through such emotions. It amounts to controlling your impulses. One who is competent in self-regulation would think before responding to something that happened to you, instead of being quick to react rashly; you express yourself appropriately.
c. Internal Motivation: This is marked by an interest in learning and developing yourself. It is also self-improvement vs. a pursuit of wealth and status. Pursuit of wealth and status is an external motivator. Emotional Maturity in this trait shows perseverance in the face of adversity and commitment towards achieving your goals.
d. Empathy: This is the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings. In other words, it is the ability to understand another person’s emotional reaction. This is only possible when you have achieved self-awareness, as one cannot understand others until one understands oneself.
e. Social skills: It is the skill of identifying social cues to establish common ground, manage relationships and build networks. Those who have emotional maturity in this trait would show strong communication skills including ability to listen and respond appropriately, ability to guide others and the ability to diffuse difficult situations using persuasion and negotiation.
In my teaching sessions, I generally cover this subject in three workshops of two hours spanning three weeks. My experience shows that participants need some time to understand, digest and practise the skills related to EI. In these sessions, I first explain the difference between IQ ( i.e. Intelligence Quotient) and EQ because it is easier to start from IQ, the familiar concept and then move onto EQ. Then the emotions and feelings we experience are discussed.
Having introduced ‘Self-Regulation’, I give time to the students to reflect on the events and situations they have undergone.
In my EI classes, for instance, I have met many who get angry easily even for little things. One student said he scolded a waiter for delaying serving his meal when he went to a nearby restaurant to dinner. The incident was so blown up, the manager and other waiters intervened and even attempted to manhandle him. Ultimately he had paid and left without having a proper meal.
Another girl who is short-tempered had had a big fight with her younger sister for wearing one of her dresses without her consent. When these incidents were analyzed in the class, it was revealed that challenging her ego and self- esteem were the reason for getting angry. They all write down these stories and the analysis and share them with the class participants. That sort of knowledge sharing is a good learning experience. The end result is that they change their attitude and behaviour for the better.
All in all I have seen many positive improvements of the attitudes and behaviours of the participants of my EI workshops for undergraduates. My main purpose in writing is to demonstrate that unlike cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence can be taught and be used to make improvements to people’s behaviour.
An interesting thing about EI is that you can train your brain by repeatedly practising new emotionally intelligent behaviours. That way your brain will build the pathways needed to make them into habits. With such a practice for some time, you will begin responding to your surroundings with emotional intelligence without even having to think about it. Further, as you repeatedly practise the new behaviours, the connections in the brain cells supporting the old, destructive behaviours will fade off.
The other point I realized is that ‘teaching’ EI is not as easy as other traditional subjects. Here the teacher or the coach needs to be emotionally mature. The objective should be to inculcate certain attitudinal and behavioural changes in the participants rather than merely sharing information. I strongly believe that all walks of the community need to be emotionally mature. Everyone can immensely benefit from learning Emotional Intelligence.
(The writer is a senior member of the Faculty of Business, SLIIT- Malabe Campus)