Emotional Intelligence Skills: List, Examples

& How to Develop Them

Table Of Contents
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Emotional intelligence skills are crucial to success in any field.

Emotional intelligence defines the way people perceive, communicate and

manage their emotions. It is a crucial life skill that can help you succeed
professionally and personally.

The good news is that you can constantly improve your emotional
intelligence skills and there are several ways you can do so.

This article will explore some key emotional intelligence skills, how
to develop them, and examples of ways these skills are used in
everyday life.

Let’s dive deep into this topic.

What are Emotional

Intelligence Skills?
Emotional intelligence skills are abilities that help you manage your emotions
effectively. They include the ability to:

 Identify your own emotions

 Understand and manage the emotions of others
  Regulate your strong emotion
 Communicate effectively with others
 Manage stress and anxiety

Why are Emotional

Intelligence Skills Important?
Understanding, using, and managing your emotions are crucial life skills that
can help you succeed both personally and professionally.

This is why learning to manage your emotions before they manage you is so
important.

List of 7 Benefits Provided by Emotional

Intelligence Skills
The top benefits provided by emotional intelligence skills are that they:

1. Help you excel personally, professionally, and socially.

2. Help you make more effective decisions.
3. Increase your productivity at work and home.
4. Improve the quality of your relationships with others.
5. Can lead to increased happiness and wellbeing.
6. Your emotions can help or hinder success in any aspect of life
7. Increase your emotional awareness
5 Key Emotional Intelligence
Skills

Self-Awareness Skills
Being self-aware means that you have a clear understanding of your own
emotions and the emotions of others.

It also means being able to identify how your emotions affect your decision-
making skills.

An emotionally intelligent person is in touch with their feelings and can

regulate them effectively instead of becoming overwhelmed by them or
shutting them out completely.

How to Improve Self-Awareness Skills:

 Understand how your emotions affect you

 Think about how you react when you feel a certain way
 Learn new skills
 Ask for constructive feedback

Self-Regulation Skills
Having the ability to regulate your emotions is another important emotional
intelligence skill.

Being able to regulate your emotions means that you can control how you
express them and when to do so.
Self-regulation skills are important when it comes to controlling your
emotions when they are overwhelmed or out of proportion to the situation.

Being able to regulate your emotions may mean learning how to take a time
out or redirect your thoughts to manage them more effectively.

How to Improve Self-Regulation Skills:

 Identify times when you have reacted emotionally to something

 Determine how you might have regulated your emotions instead
 Practice your communication skills
 Work on accepting your emotions

Social Skills
Social skills involve your ability to engage and interact effectively with
others. This mean that you can use your emotional intelligence skills to read
the emotions of others and adapt your behavior accordingly.

Social interaction is a core skill for having positive interactions with others,
building personal relationships, and achieving success in any area of life.

Social skills require the ability to empathize and understand how other
people are feeling to respond effectively.

How to Improve Social Skills:

 Learn how to get along better with others

 Communicate effectively
 Practice active listening
 Ask open-ended questions
Empathy Skills
Empathy is the ability to understand how another person feels by putting
yourself in their shoes. Empathy means you can take the time to listen and
understand what another person is saying without judgment or criticism.

Empathy skills are important when it comes to your relationships with others
because they mean that you can relate better to the people around you by
understanding them better.

How to Improve Empathy Skills:

 Learn more about your own emotions

 Talk to new people
 Try to imagine yourself in someone else’s place
 Listen to other people

Motivation Skills
Motivation is the drive or reason behind your actions. Emotionally intelligent
people are more likely to be motivated than others, especially when it comes
to goal setting and achieving success in life.

Being able to motivate yourself can help you overcome challenges more
easily and accomplish tasks that require effort, determination, and time.

It also means having the ability to see things through until they are
completed instead of giving up quickly or not making an effort at all.

How to Improve Motivation Skills:

 Learn how to set goals

 Develop better work habits
  Celebrate your results
 Work with a friend or co-worker to find accountability

List of 15 Emotional
Intelligence Skills Every
Leaders Need
The following are 15 of the most important emotional intelligence skills that
are essential for being an effective leader.

Note that every one of them requires you to develop your self-awareness,
self-regulation, and social skills to be more effective in applying them.

List of 15 Emotional Intelligence Skills

1. The ability to identify other people’s emotions through sensory
means
2. The ability to understand others’ feelings by putting yourself in
their shoes
3. The ability to sense when someone is faking their emotional
response
4. The ability to set goals and follow through until you achieve them
5. The ability to regulate your own emotions so they are appropriate
for a situation
6. The ability to take immediate action that is relevant, proportional,
and timely
7. The ability to remember important moments or details about
people you interact with
8. The ability to understand the reasons why someone is behaving a
certain way
 9. The ability to be genuinely interested in other people’s problems
or concerns
10. The ability to develop trust with others by levels of self-
disclosure
11. The ability to make people feel comfortable in your
presence
12. The ability to make other people feel valued, appreciated or
loved for who they are
13. The ability to help someone get through a difficult time or
crisis
14. The ability to treat everyone equally regardless of their
status
15. The ability to read between the lines of someone’s
communication with you

How to Develop Emotional

Intelligence Skills
Developing your emotional intelligence skills takes time but is a very
worthwhile process. Here are the top ways to make this process happen:

 Practice these skills every day by setting aside blocks of time to

focus on what you’re doing and how you’re feeling while doing it.
This way you’ll get a stronger understanding about emotional
situations.
 Practice these skills with other people by reading books about
emotional intelligence or watching videos that demonstrate each
skill and sharing your thoughts and feelings about them with
other people.
 Read stories from books, magazines, or online media about
emotionally intelligent characters whose personalities are similar
to your own. They may be fictionalized narratives or real-life news
 articles featuring individuals who exude positive traits like
empathy, sensitivity, and compassion for others in their lives.
 Talk to friends and family members about the emotions they feel
at work, school or home without criticizing anyone’s ability to
cope with them. Ask them what’s going on in their lives that
might cause them to behave a certain way and how they feel
about it.
 Practice active listening. When someone important to you talks
by avoiding distractions like watching TV or reading the
newspaper while they discuss something with you. Ask questions
about relevant details about things they may have mentioned
before.

How to Improve Emotional

Intelligence Skills
There are multiple ways to improve emotional intelegence skills, here we’ll
highlight a couple of the most important ones:

 Ask a coworker, friend, family member, or significant other if he

has a problem without telling him what to do about it. If he asks
for your opinion, give it as an option rather than a command. For
example, say “I’d recommend going to see a doctor” instead of
“You should go see a doctor.”
 Identify situations where you tend to get emotional before they
happen. Practice using your emotional intelligence skills to
handle those emotional triggers exhibiting negative behavior
patterns you use when emotions get the best of you.
 Study different theories about how emotions are regulated,
processed, and analyzed by brain activity. Determine how many
of these theories make sense to you based on what you’ve
observed of yourself or other people whose personalities are
similar to yours.
 Examine interesting case studies of individuals who have had
normal childhood development but cannot be socially active. This
could be due to some form of developmental problem that affects
their ability to regulate their own emotions or communicate them
effectively with others.
 Pace yourself while reading books written for adolescents on
learning strategies for assessing emotional intelligence and
developing it with other people.
 Identify specific points of interest within them and determine
whether you agree or disagree with their theories.
 Spend time observing the behavior and communication skills of
peers and adults in social environments where emotions
influence how people behave with each other, such as dating,
work parties, or group projects at school. Emphasize the positive
aspects of their personalities – like kindness, compassion, and
sensitivity – without criticizing their shortcomings or mistakes.
 Discuss your observations from previous point. above with adults
who may be able to give you more insight into understanding
why they use certain behaviors to cope with various types of
emotions. Record what they say about these topics for future
reference if they mention any concepts that pique your interest
while reading about them in books or watching videos on the
same topics.
 Stay focused when completing assigned projects at school, work,
or home by determining whether you’re interested in what you’re
doing and if so, why you want to complete it successfully.
 Take notes after asking people involved with your projects what
emotions motivate their desire for success within them. Record
specific details that inspire their confidence throughout each
project and which emotions influence their overall performance
as well as the quality of their work.
 Identify specific parts of your brain that you use for different
types of emotions to motivate your behavior and thought
processes. Practice using those parts to motivate yourself when
you’re interested in a project but feel like giving up during it
 because it makes you feel bored, stressed, or distracted by
something unrelated to the project at hand.
 Ask someone who has a similar interest in emotional
intelligence what do they believe are emotional intelligence
benefits within society’s current social and educational systems.
If they agrees with you on this topic, brainstorm some ways they
think can improve one’s abilities to master skills they’ll need later
in life involving emotional intelligence – like social interaction,
cooperation, communication, empathy, and problem-solving.
 Examine the areas of your life in which you’d like to improve
using emotional intelligence skills, but are unsure how to go
about doing it. Try observing friends or family members who excel
in these areas with people they’re close to, then talk with them
about what he/she does differently when interacting with others
that make him/her so effective in many different social settings.

7 Examples of How to Use

Emotional Intelligence Skills
at the Workplace
Using emotional intelligence skills at the workplace involves putting
knowledge into action. Here are 7 examples of how emotional
intelligence skills can be used at work:

1. Ask a manager, human resource specialist, or a colleague who

has been working for the organization for a long time about
emotional-social intelligence. Find out how it’s being used within
that particular company and what factors influence its
importance to success.
2. Think about situations where you’ve had emotional reactions
toward someone else in your workplace. Then consider whether
those reactions were appropriate given the circumstances and
 whether they influenced other people positively or negatively
according to their perceptions of them. If others shared what was
on their minds with you after your reaction took place, try asking
them these questions: “How did I make you feel?” and “Was my
reaction helpful to us getting our work done?” If not, ask yourself
if there is anything you can do moving forward that could create
more emotional understanding between you and them.
3. Identify specific people within your organization or industry who
are considered leaders, meaning they influence other employees’
behavior while helping them accomplish their work. To develop
better emotional intelligence leadership think about what
qualities these individuals have in common with one another that
makes some people want to emulate them. Ask yourself what
behaviors of theirs positively influence the morale of others while
remaining professional at all times.
4. Find out who within your organization is responsible for
recognizing whether an employee has the potential to excel at
his/her current job or if it’s time to find new employment
opportunities elsewhere. Then, find out how he/she gathers
information about each worker’s emotional intelligence skills,
including social awareness, self-awareness, self-management,
and relationship management. Talk with this person about what
you can do to improve the likelihood of being seen as a high-
potential candidate for future promotions.
5. Take a few minutes to observe your team members who have
been working together for at least six months or more. Think
about their level of mutual respect compared to how they
communicate with one another about topics that create
differences in people. If it seems like they don’t trust each other
at all, ask yourself what specific behaviors influence these
feelings among them and discuss those factors in a group setting
if possible.
6. Identify an individual within your organization with whom you’ve
had difficult situations in having quality conversations due to
miscommunications that might happen from time to time. Try
watching this person engage in a conversation with another team
 member and notice whether he/she is quick to assume his/her
perspective is the only correct one. Then, think about how you’d
like to interact with him/her moving forward and see if it’s
possible to do so without directly challenging his/her ideas.
7. Think about your organization’s mission or purpose and consider
what types of values or beliefs its leaders support while
encouraging others to join their cause. Think about how
emotional intelligence skills play into that type of organizational
culture and try sharing these thoughts in a meeting with your co-
workers.

13 Quotes on Emotional
Intelligence Skills
The following are 13 quotes on emotional intelligence skills (EI):

1. “Let us fear the torment of emotions that might sway in its wake
chaos through the sound construction of reason and discernment.
Let us cherish instead emotional intelligence along the intricate
and tortuous paths of life’s labyrinth.” – Erik Pevernagie
2. “Mindful meditation has been discovered to foster the ability to
inhibit those very quick emotional impulses.” – Daniel Goleman
3. “Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and
understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to
use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”
– Travis Bradberry
4. “The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them
from the heart.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru
5. “Unleash in the right time and place before you explode at the
wrong time and place.” – Oli Anderson
6. “Expect the breakthrough and expect to learn.” – Kathleen
Spike
 7. “Be patient. Your skin took a while to deteriorate. Give it some
time to reflect on a calmer inner state. As one of my friends
states on his Facebook profile: “The true Losers in Life, are not
those who Try and Fail, but those who Fail to Try.” – Jess C. Scott
8. “There is no separation of mind and emotions; emotions,
thinking, and learning is all linked.” – Eric Jensen
9. “We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our
responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.” – Marshall B.
Rosenberg
10. “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing
with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” – Dale
Carnegie
11. “The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly
than the thinking brain.” – Daniel Goleman
12. “As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the
world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter into
leadership.” – Amit Ray
13. “People whose eyes shine are happy to be alive. They see
the beauty of life and its glory, even when things aren’t easy.”
– Jelena Pantić

5 Ways to Show Emotional

Intelligence on Your Resume
Let’s now speak about the process of getting chosen for a new professional
position. The following are 5 ways to show emotional intelligence on
your resume:

1. Exude enthusiasm and positivity when you’re addressing a letter

to a potential employer. This enthusiasm and positivity will not
only shine through in your cover letter but also in the interview if
requested. For example, an individual who is calm and clear-
 headed in challenging situations will likely perform this way
during job interviews as well.
2. Include your current or past employer’s mission statement on
your resume to demonstrate how emotionally intelligent you
might be because of the values that it supports. Keeping
emotions at bay while working toward achieving organizational
goals can sometimes be challenging for some employees, but
others might excel at staying focused on their future
responsibilities within certain work environments based on their
specific, personal values.
3. Mention how you reacted to a situation in which an individual’s
behavioral response not align with the organization. For example,
did you suggest a potential solution to a work-related
interpersonal problem? How was your idea received by other
workers and/or management? Was your proposed solution
accepted or rejected? If accepted, did it improve morale or
productivity among employees at that workplace? If rejected, why
do you think it wasn’t taken into consideration?
4. Demonstrate on your resume that you can tap into different
emotional intelligence skills based upon the needs of others
within a certain professional relationships. This could be
conveyed by demonstrating how well you understand another
person’s perspective when they’re upset about something that
has occurred in their life, which you were not made aware of at
the time that it occurred. If this other person is a coworker, how
well do you understand what they’re upset about? Why are they
sharing this information with you in the first place at work?
Furthermore, if your boss is upset with something that has
happened within the workplace, how does she or he conveys his
or her anger toward certain employees, and can you manage to
remain calm while staying focused on helping him or her alleviate
their anger?
5. Avoid using emotionally charged words when applying for jobs
which tend to attract individuals who prefer having work
environments where there’s little conflict between workers’
values and organizational goals. For example, these companies
 might be interested in hiring individuals who are willing to
tolerate turnover rates that are higher, relative to other
businesses.

How to Answer Interview Questions About

Emotional Intelligence Skills?
Answering interview questions about emotional intelligence levels is not
always easy, but preparing for these questions in advance with our 5 ways to
show emotional intelligence will help to ensure that you’re prepared during
the interview.

Emotional Intelligence Skills

FAQs

What are the five skills of emotional

intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is an incredibly important skill. However, multiple
other skills are necessary for you to maintain if you want to be emotionally
intelligent.

The five most crucial skills that emotionally intelligent individuals possess
are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. All
of these soft skills maximize your ability to be an emotionally intelligent
person.
Is being emotionally intelligent a skill?
Yes, emotional intelligence is a skill. Not only that, but it is an immensely
important skill. This skill is the ability to not only recognize and control your
emotions but also understand and look after the emotions of those around
you.

Many leaders now understand that this skill is needed to be a great leader,
effective communicator, and positively viewed figure in general.

What are the 7 emotional intelligence

competencies?
There are 7 competencies that make up emotional intelligence. The
competencies that help you build emotional intelligence include: calmness
under pressure and focus on your goals, a clear vision for the future, being
able to adapt to an ever changing environment (also staying resilient when
things do not according to your plan), communicating effectively, empathy
and active listening, compassion, and hope as well as positivity for the
future.

EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION

Emotional expression can make or break your

communication effectiveness. As an EI profiler, I’ve
seen how mastering this balance is pivotal. When
emotional expression is too low, you risk appearing
cold and unapproachable, leaving others unsure of
your intentions and feelings. On the other hand,
too high an expression can be overwhelming,
causing miscommunication and tension.
 Understanding your mastery level of emotional
expression is crucial. It’s about knowing when and
how much to express to foster clear, impactful, and
empathetic interactions. Mastery in this area
means expressing emotions just right, ensuring
you’re understood and building trust without
overpowering the conversation.

Mastering your emotional expression is not just a

professional skill but a personal achievement. It
empowers you to communicate effectively, build
stronger connections, and navigate conversations
with confidence and empathy. Know your EI
mastery level, perfect your emotional expression,
and watch your communication—and relationships
—flourish.

ASSERTIVENESS

Assertiveness is a double-edged sword in effective communication. As an EI

profiler, I see how the right balance can make or break interactions. When
assertiveness is too low, you risk being overlooked, your ideas unheard. This
can lead to frustration and a lack of respect from peers. On the flip side,
excessive assertiveness can come off as aggression, alienating colleagues
and shutting down collaboration.
Understanding your emotional intelligence (EI) and pinpointing your
assertiveness level is crucial. High EI enables you to assert yourself
confidently without crossing the line into hostility. It fosters respect,
promotes healthy dialogue, and ensures your voice is heard without silencing
others.

Mastering your assertiveness through EI empowers you to communicate

effectively, advocate for your needs, and build stronger, more respectful
relationships. Know your EI, fine-tune your assertiveness, and watch your
communication—and influence—soar.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS