People with low EI find it difficult to control their emotions, establish positive relationships and have lots of conflicts. Since they are not able to understand the emotions and desires of the person they are talking to and react adequately to a certain situation they are often victims of misunderstandings.
Another sign of people with a low EI is that they are not aware of the impact their words might have on their communicative partner and often accidentally hurt other people’s feelings. They also rarely know the reason behind their emotions such as sadness and anger. They are not good at stress management and find it difficult to influence or persuade others. Affecting change is problematic when you can’t figure out the emotions and motivation of someone else.
Example of conduct
We can take public presentation as an example. We will state how people with low emotional intelligence act a couple of days before, during and after the presentation. Afterwards, we will compare their behavior with the behavior of people with high emotional intelligence.
People with low emotional intelligence:
When the day of the presentation is approaching, a person becomes more nervous, unable to eat or sleep and generally feels bad. Due to high anxiety, his/her preparation is bad. Whenever a person imagines the situation of presenting in front of a larger number of people, his mind creates a terrible picture. On the day of the presentation, the person feels bad until its beginning. The first few minutes, he feels terrible. His hands are sweating, his voice is shivering, and he feels very nervous. After some time, the nervousness ceases and the person becomes pleasantly surprised. Due to previous nervousness, that person’s memory is impaired causing him to look at his notes more often. The presentation itself is not humorous since the person is too tense to see the funny side. At the end, he forgets to thank his team.
People with high emotional intelligence:
A person feels a slight nervousness but tries to confront it by preparing the material for the presentation. When his/her mind becomes overwhelmed with bad thoughts, he/she starts to encourage himself with positive thoughts. Because of the relaxed state he is in, he is able to distinguish important from unnecessary details and therefore optimize his presentation. On the day of delivery, he is nervous but assures himself that the low level of nervousness is actually a good thing. The first few minutes come with a slight stage fright, but after a while the person relaxes. In a couple of minutes, he/she has the audience laughing to his humorous statements which makes him even more relaxed. Due to the relaxed state he is in, he shows no signs of memory problems, rarely looks at his notes and is natural and spontaneous.