Three Domains Of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is one of the most interesting fields of human psychology’s studies. Professors Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer used the term for the first time in 1990 in their article "Emotional Intelligence", defining it as “the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth”. (Salovey, Mayer, 1997).

The topic was later developed and made widely known by the psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman in his best seller “Emotional Intelligence - Why it can matter more than IQ” (1995). He defines

It includes three domains of EQ:

a) Self-awareness: it involves the knowledge of our emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values and goals and their impact on the others;

b) Self-control: it involves the ability to control and redirect the emotions and the impulses;

c) Motivation: the ability to manage emotions and to use them to achieve our own goals;

2) Social competence: the way we manage the relationships with the others, through:

a) Empathy: it involves expanding our awareness to include other people’s feelings, needs and interests;

b) Social skills: they concern relationship management. Through awareness of ourselves and of the others, we can acquire a set of skills, such as communication and leadership ones, which allow to create lasting relationships.

The most interesting feature of this theory is that, unlike IQ, it is possible to develop EQ. It is a path that, starting from the development of personal competence and social awareness, allow us to manage relationships in the best way. Numerous academic studies provide empirical evidence that improvements in EQ are highly correlated with increased performance in both learning and in the

In retail banking, for example, most of the jobs involves interaction with colleagues or customers every day.

The academics Jones and Bodtker (2001), analyzing financial mediation, stated the importance of emotion and emotional intelligence in this field. According to them, to be effective, mediators must focus on three key components of emotion in the mediation: expressive, physiological and cognitive.

Therefore emotional intelligence, personality and instinct play a key role especially in financial advisor’s job. Both personal and social competences of emotional intelligence seem to be fundamental in this field. First, a good advisor should know himself and his emotions: it should have acquired self-awareness. Another crucial skill is managing himself, through self-control. Furthermore, the consultant should be able to manage relationships with the different kinds of customer, and, to do this, he has to be empathetic and