Emotional Intellingence

¶ … Queendom.com free Emotional Intelligence Test, I was surprised to see that my score was only 67 out of 100. Because I consider myself a fairly empathic and understanding individual, I was expecting a score closer to 80. The results indicate that I have a lot of room to grow and should work on improving my awareness of my own and others' emotions.

The official interpretation of the score states, "You are reasonably skilled when it comes to the core ability of identifying, perceiving and expressing emotions in yourself and others." This means that I do have a "reasonable" degree of emotional intelligence, which I rely upon in my daily life. I believe that my weaknesses emerge during times of conflict. During times of conflict, I can occasionally react in ways that are dysfunctional. I am prone to either getting angry and having outbursts, which I regret later, or doing the complete opposite and shutting down. When I shut down, I become what can be called passive-aggressive because I have not dealt with the underlying emotions. I find it challenging to deal with conflict when I feel stressful and would appreciate some concrete learning in this area.

Emotional intelligence has to do with "the process of reading others, understanding how they feel, and effectively identifying your own emotions," (Queendom.com). These are the three main areas of emotional intelligence, and I think that my strengths lie in the first two areas. I can read others fairly well and understand how others feel. Identifying and addressing my own emotions seems to be the most challenging part. While I cannot say how "accurate" the results are in an objective sense, I do now see that the test highlights areas of weakness that I have denied or failed to address. Emotional intelligence is not simply about being a caring or empathetic person. It also means monitoring, managing, and mitigating my own strong emotions like anger and frustration.

By taking into account what the test has to say about emotional intelligence, I can learn how to cultivate greater self-awareness during times of stress or conflict. I may need to enroll in anger management or similar courses that can help me to identify strong emotions when they arise, and develop constructive strategies with dealing with those emotions instead of letting feelings get the better of me. The Queendom.com website states that emotional intelligence is linked to performance outcomes and to health, which makes improving my emotional intelligence score important.

One thing I noticed while taking the emotional intelligence test was the preponderance of questions that dealt with feelings of frustration and anger. The tendency to give up when feeling frustrated comes up a lot in my life, and I never associated this before with the concept of emotional intelligence. Similarly, I had never before associated feelings of low self-esteem and low self-worth with emotional intelligence. There were several scenarios described in the test that I could relate to. For example, one scenario described a situation in which a colleague stole an idea and presented the idea as if it were his own. I imagined myself in the situation, and could not come up with a constructive way to respond. I think I would have been too upset, and might have ended up embarrassing myself further by having an angry outburst. I need to learn how to become a stronger and more dignified person even when confronted with difficult circumstances such as these.