Intelligent Emotions

For many years in the past, there was a great deal of importance given to cognitive intelligence. Success was directly related to one's intelligence. Be it exam scores, college admission, jobs, everyone sized you up based on how intelligent you were.

Then came the wave of Emotional Intelligence somewhere in the 1990s. Researchers suddenly (and thankfully), realised that being brainy isn't just enough. The brand new term of EQ began to be touted so much that organisations today have an EQ test before hiring people for leadership roles.

The most important component of EQ is empathy. I would rank it the most useful in not just human interaction but also solving many problems that humans have brought onto themselves and the world around them. Be it poverty, environment, education, abuse... the list can go on.

But then a very high EQ without IQ is just a lone ornate pillar without purpose.

One's heart might break to see an abandoned puppy but it takes practical thinking and intelligence to ensure the safety of the puppy. A highly emotional person is bound to suffer from heartaches and trust issues but one needs to work their way around it intelligently to help themselves. At a global level, one might understand the plight of children with no access to education but the solution lies in taking concrete action and finding out how to help them. What we need is a beautiful mesh of multiple skills and talents.

Empathy is the first step to problem-solving and application of knowledge is the second step. One cannot exist without the other. Highly emotional people tend to look too closely and highly intelligent people sometimes have only an aerial view. One needs to have the ability to look closely and then step back to take the right action. This is the balance all of us need to work on. The human mind is not just a 'test score'. With the right guidance, we can feel, think and create, all at the same time. Nerdy, needy, techie, touchy - instead of sweating out to remove these labels, a better thing would be to acknowledge these different facets in the human spirit. We must try to nurture these qualities, in their natural proportions, in all humans. An engineer could be highly empathetic. A caring nurse could be technically skilled. A powerlifter could master embroidery. This is as important as getting people with different kinds of intelligence to collaborate with each other.  That is when we can become useful for ourselves and for the rest of the world.

What do you think the world needs the most today - EQ or IQ?

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