Why Teacher Needs Emotional Intelligence?

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Daniel Goleman, defines Emotional Intelligence, in his book, "Working With Emotional Intelligence" (1998), as "The capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”.

4 Components of Emotional Intelligence:

Self-awareness: Recognize your own emotional response to interactions. Understand how your strengths and weaknesses affect your thoughts and behavior. Your responses can easily affect the way others respond.

Self-management: Manage your emotions in healthy ways to control impulsive feelings and behaviors and quickly adapt to changing circumstances. Identify the ways in which you manage your stress (e.g. exercise, eating healthy) and utilize these tools.

Social awareness: Understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, identify emotional cues from others and diagnose group or organizational dynamics.

Relationship management:  Develop and maintain good relationships through clear, communication.  Inspire and influence others to have positive interactions clearly, work well in a team and build bonds with others, and manage  of conflict in a healthy manner.

Being a teacher means you will face certain challenges that may come, such as problematic groups of students, crowded classroom, or a student who has a lack of motivation to study.  The teacher also has to maintain good  relationship with other teacher at school or with the parents. And somehow it is not easy at all. Emotional Intelligence helps teachers to manage their emotions when they have to face those stressful situations.