Emotions may be new key to success

Success is not exclusively paired with smarts, UCLA professionals say.

It has been shown that emotional intelligence, the ability to be aware of and manage our emotions, can propel individuals to success.

Linda Newcomb, the manager of the training programs for the campus human resources, said she believes that emotional intelligence is crucial for future career success and relationships.

Newcomb trains staff members in management development and interpersonal skills in the workplace. She said that one aspect of high emotional intelligence is having motivation and resilience.

While motivation signifies the effort people invest into something they want, resilience means that they will pick themselves up after not obtaining what they want, she said.

Having high emotional intelligence is especially vital for college students and their future careers.

“With emotional intelligence, you can tune into others, read others and respond to them more appropriately,” Newcomb added.

Jorge Cherbosque, the co-director of the Staff and Faculty Counseling Center at UCLA, counsels UCLA staff members who want to develop their emotional intelligence skills. He said he has explored emotional intelligence for the past eight years, and in 2004, he created the Emotional Intelligence and Diversity Institute to help individuals lead emotionally healthy lives.

Cherbosque said that resilience is crucial for college students because, he finds, many students lack the resilience to endure their stressful problems.

“Successful people not only need to be intelligent ““ that helps, but definitely they need (to know how) to communicate, how to resolve conflict, how to create teams, how to work in teams,” Cherbosque said.

“So emotional intelligence is about not only being bright, but it’s about being bright and effective with other people,” he added.

Deborah Barber, a counseling psychologist for UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services, said that she finds that students who lack the motivation to achieve their full potential have a common trait. “There’s a lack of self-knowledge and maybe an inability to ever become aware of themselves and their identity and their emotional makeup,” she said.

While there are tests that can give people a sense of their emotional intelligence, which is measured as an emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ, the field has not been perfected to the same degree as the standardized IQ, Newcomb said.

However, broad exercises and assessments can be used to examine emotional intelligence tests, generally measuring four areas: how self aware one is and how much self-governance, social awareness and interaction capacity one has, Cherbosque said.

Emotional intelligence, just like other competencies, varies for every individual, he added.

Cherbosque said that the fundamental difference between those with high and low emotional intelligences is how people govern their emotions.

“I like the word “˜governing’ because, when you govern the emotions, you use wisdom. When you control it, you just push them.

“(In) America, they say don’t bring your emotions to work or to school, and I think that’s impossible. I think what we need to tell people is, “˜Use your emotions,'” he said.

“There is a lot of research that shows that emotions are very, very contagious,” Cherbosque said. While the most recent research shows that optimism is very contagious, negativity can also influence people around us, he added.

Like any other skill, emotional intelligence can be developed over time, Newcomb said.

“It’s becoming aware and then making some changes,” she added.

Newcomb highlighted the importance of understanding the cause and effect of emotions, which constitute the essence of emotional intelligence.

“We feel emotions in response to something. There is cause and effect. That’s the bottom line. Emotions come about for a reason. … It just doesn’t drop out of the sky,” she said.

The first step of emotional literacy is to understand how our emotions originate.

Many people struggle to identify the specific emotion they feel, but having emotional literacy helps people look within themselves to understand and identify exactly what they feel, she added.

The next step for emotional development is to identify the root of one’s emotions.

When people can understand the cause of their emotions, Newcomb believes, they will ultimately have the power to manage their emotions and have control in their lives.

Elizabeth Gong-Guy, the director of CAPS, said CAPS offers a wide range of services to help students build their emotional intelligence skills, abilities and knowledge.

Aside from periodic Wellness Workshops that specifically focus on emotional intelligence, virtually all of CAPS’s services explore emotions in some way. CAPS also offers brief skills-development groups as well as longer-running groups that focus on specific concerns and populations. Its online resources allow students to understand themselves and their relationships better.

Newcomb and Barber said that emotions create individuals as much as other competencies do.

“Sometimes people miss the part (that) we’re a whole human being. We’ve got our intellect, and we’ve also got our emotions, and it’s important to nurture the emotions, too,” Newcomb said.

Barber said she finds life without emotional intelligence to be discerning.

“I just think that without emotional intelligence, life is really empty because emotions just add such a vibrancy and color to our experience of life and other people,” she said.