What are the 5 components of emotional intelligence? Before we list them let’s define what Emotional Intelligence (EI) means. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a tool to help our awareness of our current capacity for resilience, empathy, stress and self management. EI also informs our social interactions and how we handle conflict. If you want to learn more about what EI is, we wrote more it here. Growing our EI has considerable benefits for individuals personally and it also is a significant teamwork advantage as it is a practical tool that teams can use to grow towards high performance.
5 Key Components Areas of Emotional Intelligence
The 5 key components, or competencies, of emotional intelligence in the EI assessment tool EQi2.0 that Summit uses are:
- Self-Awareness and the way we see ourselves
- Self-Regulation and the ways in which we express ourselves
- In our interpersonal relationships and interactions with others
- How we make decisions using emotional information
- How we manage stress
All 5 of these key competency areas break down further into sub-competency areas for a total of 15 components that make up a person’s Emotional Intelligence. They are all inter-related, no one competency is more important than the other and together they make up our level of emotional and social functioning.
Questions to Ask Ourselves to Grow our Emotional Awareness
We can grow our emotional intelligence through intentionality over time. The questions that are listed with each of the 5 components can be a starting place at self assessing how we are doing in each of these key areas.
Self-Awareness and the ways I see myself:
- How do I think about myself?
- Can I accept my strengths and weaknesses and still like myself?
- Do I pursue meaning and growth?
- Can I recognize my own feelings?
- How do my feelings impact others?
Self-Regulation and the way I express myself:
- Am I able to assert or express my emotions in a healthy way?
- Am I even aware of the emotions I am expressing?
- Do I need the approval of others in ways that aren’t healthy for me?
In interpersonal relationships:
- Do I have mutually satisfying relationships or meaningful/rewarding social interchanges?
- Am I aware of the feelings of others?
- How do I contribute to the welfare of others?
How I make decisions:
- How well do I understand and find solutions to problems when emotions are involved?
- Do I see and understand objectively?
- Am I able to resist or delay rash behaviours?
How I manage stress:
- Am I adaptable to changing situations or conditions?
- How well do I withstand and cope with adverse situations?
- What is my outlook even under stress?
The more aware we are in these five main competency areas, the better chance we have to improve how we interact not only in relationships with other people, but also within ourselves.
We Need More Than Self Awareness for Change
Raising self awareness is a great first step, but it isn’t often enough to make sustainable and significant changes. If you want to deepen the learning and grow your high performing team, an Emotional Intelligence in person or virtual training workshop the way to go. A Summit EI workshop is custom designed to your team’s needs and will go into much greater depth to help your team to understand where each person currently is and what happens to all of us under stress and pressure. Each person will get a 20 page individualized report and discussions can focus on action planning, accountability and ongoing next steps. Summit can help your team take their new awareness into continued action to extend the learning as well as continuing to build trust and relationships within your team.
Take into consideration whether you and your team have the time, resources, and competency to implement an emotional intelligence training program internally or whether you should bring in someone externally like Summit.
Need Some Help?
There’s a lot to consider when it comes to emotional intelligence training and we’re here to help. Contact us and talk with one of our team building experts and we’ll help you, your team and company pick a path focused on improving the performance and wellbeing.