Emotional Intelligence: What It Is and How to Develop It

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognise, understand, manage, and effectively use emotions — both your own and others'. Decades of research have established it as one of the strongest predictors of mental health, relationship quality, and professional success — often more predictive than IQ.

The four core dimensions of emotional intelligence, as described by researchers Salovey and Mayer, are: perceiving emotions (accurately reading emotional signals in yourself and others), using emotions (harnessing emotions to facilitate thinking and creativity), understanding emotions (comprehending how emotions evolve and interact), and managing emotions (regulating your own emotions and influencing others' emotional states appropriately).

High EQ is not about always feeling good or suppressing negative emotions. It is about having a sophisticated, flexible relationship with your emotional experience — being able to feel anger without being controlled by it, to experience sadness without drowning in it, and to recognise and respond appropriately to the emotions of others.

How to develop emotional intelligence: Start with awareness. Keep an emotion journal — note what you feel throughout the day, what triggered it, how intense it was. This builds the self-awareness that is the foundation of EQ. Expand your emotional vocabulary. Name your emotions with more specificity than "bad" or "good". Practice pausing before reacting in emotionally charged situations — the gap between stimulus and response is where emotional intelligence operates. Seek feedback on how your emotional expressions land with others.

Conversations with LeanOn peer listeners naturally develop emotional intelligence: the practice of articulating your internal experience, having it reflected back, and gaining a new perspective on your emotional patterns is exactly the kind of experience that builds EQ over time.