Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, manage and communicate feelings.
At Hanna Perkins Center, emotional intelligence is regarded as a key to happiness and success in life. We’re not alone in this.
Earlier this spring, Richard Boyatzis – a highly regarded professor at Case Western Reserve University – offered a free online class called Inspiring Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence. According to The Plain Dealer, more than 65,000 people registered to take it.
The following 2-minute video is how Boyatzis himself describes emotional intelligence as a foundation for leadership and success.
Modules in the course syllabus have such titles as:
- Emotions are contagious
- Stress and renewal: becoming open to learning and change
- Emotional Intelligence and its link to Leadership
- The battle between the Ideal Self and Ought Self
Different people master various facets of emotional intelligence at different times in their lives. But the sooner children begin this work, the better positioned they’ll be for success in school.
In one popular Hanna Perkins blog post, Deborah Paris, LISW, listed 19 things that children need to learn in preschool. If you read it from the perspective of emotional intelligence, the list is really a catalog of feelings. And success for all of us – no matter how old we are – depends on a learned skill of recognizing these feelings when they occur and managing them constructively.
For 65,000 people taking Boyatzis’ class, that would seem to make sense.
14
MAY
2013
MAY
2013
About the Author:
Bob Rosenbaum manages the website and other communications functions for Hanna Perkins Center.