EQ vs IQ: why emotional intelligence is more important than intellect, and how to nurture it in your children
Emotional skills are a better predictor of success in life than intelligence. Psychologists says parents need to know how their children’s brains work to help them reach their full potential
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, emotional intelligence will be one of the top 10 employment skills in 2020. Harvard trained psychologist Daniel Goleman first raised awareness of EQ, in his book Emotional Intelligence.
Since its release in 1995, studies have proven that emotional intelligence predicts future success in relationships, health and quality of life.
Enlightened Entrepreneurship author Chris Myers would argue the same. Finding himself surrounded by more intelligent colleagues he somehow moved ahead of them in the workplace. Years later, he noticed that although his son Jack was exceptionally bright, with an IQ of 145, he struggled to achieve success. Myers concluded that success in both life and business is a matter of “emotion, relationships and character rather than raw intelligence.”
Myers quotes US civil rights activist and author Maya Angelou’s belief that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people with never forget how you made them feel.” He states that people “buy emotions, not products”, teams “rally around missions, not directives” and entrepreneurs “take on challenges because of passion, not logic”.
Ultimately, it is the individuals with the high emotional quotient (EQ) – a person’s ability to express and control emotions, over intelligence quotient (IQ) – the ability to think and reason, that speaks “to the soul” of another person and most effectively influences their behaviour.
