Feb 08, 2017 07:45 AM EST By Chris Brandt, UniversityHerald Reporter

Emotional intelligence has become an important trait for organizations when choosing leaders. However, there are people who have very high EQ but seemed to get stuck in a career rut. That's because emotional quotient has been defined very narrowly focusing only on one or two elements when there are actually 12 of them.

In a Harvard Business Review article written by bestselling author Daniel Goleman, he mentioned that there are four domains of emotional intelligence - self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management - and each one has certain domains within them, all of which can be learned and developed.

These 12 elements are emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, positive outlook, empathy, organizational awareness, influence, coach and mentor, conflict management, teamwork, and inspirational management.

By looking at these 12 elements, a person can assess and evaluate their emotional intelligence. They will know which areas they are strong and which ones need to be developed. By being able to specifically identify the strengths and weaknesses in their EQ, it removes the frustration and confusion of what went wrong.

Therefore, if a person finds out that they have difficulty giving unpleasant feedback, that means they need to develop the elements of conflict management and influence in order to deliver bad feedback but, at the same time, use that to help people grow.

More so, if a person is able to develop the inspirational leadership element of their EQ, they will be able to successfully lead others to change. They will also be able to effectively articulate the vision and mission of the organization motivating them to work towards them.

Aside from reviewing the 12 EQ competencies, there are also some formal models of EI with their own set of tools that will help people predict leadership outcomes much more precisely. These tests will give people a full understanding of how each of these competencies work in their general personality.

Lastly, asking the help of an expert to coach areas where there is a deficit of emotional intelligence deficit is also a vital part of the process since the person is practicing a new way how they think and operate.

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