IQ or EQ - Why Can't We Have Both?

SUMMARY

We've all heard that age-old question, “Which is most important? Is it IQ or is it EQ?” My experience is that it's neither. So, stick with me in this episode because I'm going to help you to answer that question so that you know exactly what to do and what to focus on so that you can develop your Social and Emotional Intelligence.

There are 3 Key Principles that I teach that will help you to become more emotionally intelligent, to take on this area of learning and enable you to get value that you can then implement.

Number one is it's not a dichotomy. Not everything is black and white, sad or happy. Nothing that we look at as a dichotomy will give us the full value.

The second principle I want to talk about is focus on agreement. Right now, there are so many opportunities in the world for us to have an opinion that's different to other people. We're either this or we’re that. If you look at the underlying teaching that I do around Emotional Intelligence, moving past that roadblock of needing it to be this or that will allow you to have the results that you want.

The third principle is it's all about taking small steps. When we realise that Emotional Intelligence or any other skill that we're learning is all about incrementally making changes on a daily basis, we will actually go from where we are now to where we want to go.

So, to become more socially and emotionally intelligent, we have to shift from mindsets that we've already got.

When we look at the topic of Emotional Intelligence, let's look for things that we can agree on and we can work on right now. I'm really excited in about four weeks’ time, we have our annual Emotional Intelligence Online Summit. It's a two-day program that I've put together for people all around the world, and you can be a part of it and join us. It's something that I do as a gift to the community on Emotional Intelligence. I pulled together some great speakers. So, come and learn one thing from that summit that you can then put into your life right now. If you are a coach or a trainer and you are looking to become a subject matter expert in Social and Emotional Intelligence, then I can help you with that as well and help you to be able to fully understand what it is, why it matters, and how to develop it in yourself and in other people.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Make sure that you subscribe, you hit the notifications, and you join me again next week as I continue this conversation and incrementally take you through the 26 competencies of Social and Emotional Intelligence so that you can remove those fears and anxieties and the things that are holding you back and navigate your emotions in a positive and healthy way. I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

We've all heard that age-old question, “Which is most important? Is it IQ or is it EQ?” My experience is that it's neither. So, stick with me in this episode because I'm going to help you to answer that question so that you know exactly what to do and what to focus on so that you can develop your Social and Emotional Intelligence.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Master Coach Trainer, and today, I want to have a conversation with you, and I want to answer the question around IQ versus EQ with, “Why can't we have both?” Wherever I go in social media or around the world, where people are having a conversation around Emotional Intelligence, I hear those questions all the time that really are stopping the value that can come out of the conversation. And those questions are things like, “Which is most important? Which comes first?” And these are what I believe to be the biggest roadblocks for you to be able to become more emotionally intelligent. Now, I'm going to talk about Emotional Intelligence today because that's what I do. However, what I'm going to teach you today, you can use in any subject area at all.

We've had conversations before, where I've helped you to understand that roadblocks come from beliefs. Roadblock comes from particular learnings that you've had over the years and the meanings that you've put on those things and therefore that's the framework that you have to go forward with. So, before we get back into our conversation around all things Social and Emotional Intelligence over the coming episodes, I want to lay some ground rules around it that's going to really set you up to get the most value.

There are three key principles that I teach that will help you to become more emotionally intelligent, to take on this area of learning and enable you to get value that you can then implement. Social and Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of your own emotions and the emotions of others in the moment and then to use that information to manage your responses and therefore have better relationships. However, when we focus on the wrong thing, we miss out on the true value. So, let's have a look at these three key principles in any sort of learning that we can employ to get the most out of it.

Number one is it's not a dichotomy. Not everything is black and white, sad or happy. Nothing that we look at as a dichotomy will give us the full value. So, if we take the question, “Which one's most important IQ or EQ?”, we have to make a choice and therefore we decide which one we're going to put our focus on. Now, by the way, I'm wearing this shirt today, because it's got some formulas all over it and it makes me look smarter than I actually am. And a lot of times, focusing on those things alone will make us miss out on the other elements that put it all together. So, a dichotomy says that it's got to be either this or that, and there's no middle ground. Well, in answering that question, “Which one is more important, IQ or EQ?”, by the way, E is your Emotional Intelligence Quotient, I would say, “Well, why can't we have both?” And the reason I say that is that they are equally important. It's not a competition.

Further than that, we go beyond IQ and EQ. We are an emotional intelligent being, emotional being. However, there are many intelligences that we operate. Some of the great works of people like Howard Gardner show that we have multiple intelligences. The thing I want us to understand is we actually need to use our IQ, our cognitive intelligence, to reason, and therefore employ the strategies of Emotional Intelligence. If we just had Emotional Intelligence alone, we wouldn't be able to do anything with it. So, it's not a question of either or. It's how do we use them together. How do we take what our emotions are telling us and filter through a healthy process of navigating the emotion so that we can have the feelings that will empower us? And how can we use the logical processes of our brain to make great decisions? So, that's the first point. It's not a dichotomy.

The second area I want to talk about is focus on agreement. Right now, there are so many opportunities in the world for us to have an opinion that's different to other people. We're either this or we’re that. And the challenge with that is that that's where conflict can come in. What I like to do in the area of Emotional Intelligence is have a look at what we agree on. Emotional Intelligence, like anything else, is a science and therefore there are different findings and different opinions around these things. So, if we look at emotions themselves, people will ask, “Well, hang on, which comes first? Is it the emotion or the feeling?” And are emotions and feelings the same? Depending on who you talk to as to whether or not they'll agree with one or the other. But what the scientists agree on is that an emotion is physiological and therefore the feeling that comes out of that is dealt in the psychological.

So, by realising and agreeing on the point that the scientists agree on that emotions happen physiologically, when we look for those cues, and that's what they are, we will look for feelings in our body. We will look for changes in our physiology that give us those clues. So, whether were trying to decide which is more important, or which comes first, what we want to do is look at what we agree on. And when we find that point of agreement, we can work on that. It doesn't matter whether or not you call an emotion an emotion or a feeling. If you look at the underlying teaching that I do around Emotional Intelligence, moving past that roadblock of needing it to be this or that will allow you to have the results that you want.

And the third principle, now that we realise it's not a dichotomy, it's looking for agreement, is that as we take on this journey of learning to become more emotionally intelligent and more socially intelligent, it's all about taking small steps. When we take away the dichotomy, I'm either someone who's not emotionally intelligent or I am. When we look for that middle ground, when we give ourselves space to grow, when we realise that Emotional Intelligence or any other skill that we're learning is all about incrementally making changes on a daily basis, we will actually go from where we are now to where we want to go. We'll actually become more emotionally intelligent as we take on and develop more of the strategies.

I work with the four-quadrant model of self-awareness, self-management, which is all about us, our personal competencies, and the social competences, which are in social awareness and relationship management, all in all, I train coach and certified people as coaches in 26 competencies of Social and Emotional Intelligence. But it's not about getting all those things and going, “Thank you, Grant. Let me just install those now, and I am this.” No, it's about starting a journey from self-awareness and incrementally getting more self-aware, incrementally being more accurate in our assessment of our Emotional Intelligence, incrementally becoming more confident and building our Personal Power and changing our identity back to one of self-approval. So, the third point that I want you to really focus on is take small steps and do it incrementally.

To become more socially and emotionally intelligent, we have to shift from mindsets that we've already got. We have to prepare ourselves and unlearn some of the things that we've already learned. We have to stop looking for exact science in a dichotomous sort of way, and we need to look at what we can do right now. We look at what it is that we agree on, and we take that thing, whatever it is, that learning, we look at a strategy around it and then we implement that into our life on a daily basis. The neuroscience of emotions is the same as the neuroscience of everything else that we do in behaviour change. It's about recognising the things that we are doing now, that we are thinking and believing now, that are not serving us. It's about rejecting those and replacing them with healthier strategies, the strategies of Emotional Intelligence, and then to incrementally grow by repeating those strategies over and over again, just like we did the old ones that were creating the challenges for us. Over a period of time, we will build new neural pathways and rewire the brain, and we've talked to, we've had that before.

So, when we look at the topic of Emotional Intelligence, let's look for things that we can agree on and we can work on right now. I'm really excited in about four weeks’ time, we have our annual Emotional Intelligence Online Summit. It's a two-day program that I've put together for people all around the world, and you can be a part of it and join us. It's something that I do as a gift to the community on Emotional Intelligence. I pulled together some great speakers. So, come and learn one thing from that summit that you can then put into your life right now. If you are a coach or a trainer and you are looking to become a subject matter expert in Social and Emotional Intelligence, then I can help you with that as well and help you to be able to fully understand what it is, why it matters, and how to develop it in yourself and in other people.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Make sure that you subscribe, you hit the notifications, and you join me again next week as I continue this conversation and incrementally take you through the 26 competencies of Social and Emotional Intelligence so that you can remove those fears and anxieties and the things that are holding you back and navigate your emotions in a positive and healthy way. I'll see you then.