1. E4/P1: Video Lecture by Kavan Limbasiya (Rank-198/UPSC-2014)
  2. 8 Basic emotions
  3. What is Emotional Intelligence?
  4. Two models of EI
  5. Unregulated Emotions = Judgment Clouded
  6. Digital Age of alienation
  7. Why study Emotional Intelligence?
  8. Benefits of higher EI
  9. How develop emotional intelligence?
  10. Descriptive Questions
  11. Case study: Sympathy for subordinates?

E4/P1: Video Lecture by Kavan Limbasiya (Rank-198/UPSC-2014)

Emotional-Intelligence
Youtube Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz_N0JGXYTM

8 Basic emotions

Fear anger
Disgust trust
Surprise anticipation
Happiness sadness
  • These emotions can combine to create new emotions
  • e.g. Happiness + Anticipation = Excitement.
  • e.g Anger minus enthusiasm =depression.
  • Same event can give multiple emotions at the same time e.g. For a father: Happiness (of daughter marrying) + Sadness (of daughter leaving because of marriage)
  • Emotions are tied with physiological response e.g. churning in stomach, perspiration on face, blushing of cheeks etc.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Four aspects

  1. Identify your emotions
  2. manage them.
  3. Identify others’ emotions
  4. Manage them

Notice that EI aims to ‘manage’ emotions, not to ‘control/suppress’ them.

Two models of EI

Model #1

Self-Awareness
  • Self-awareness:Ā  you identify your emotions, assess your strength and weakness.
  • There are some triggers that’ll make you happy, and some that’ll make you sad.
  • You should avoid those triggers, then you’ll gain self-confidence.
  • E.g. you’ve broken up with girlfriend/boyfriend but they happens to in the same official college alumni whatsapp group,Ā  and their chatting with others makes your more depressed. So the ‘trigger’ is whatsapp. You avoid it and thereby avoid depression.
Self-management
  • Through self-awareness, you know your emotions, you can regulate them.
  • Once you’ve self-awareness about your strength and weakness, you can take initiatives. e.g. If you’re an aggressive person, better channelize it towards sports.
Social awareness
  • Empathy. We already learned in foundational values of civil services.
  • Gandhi inspired people, rallied them up for freedom struggle, because he knew what people think, how they react, how to handle diversity, what is the endurance level of people in any civic-movement?
  • Therefore, person with high emotional intelligence becomes a force multiplier, he can extract max. work out of the team members – he knows how to motivate people, how to handle conflict management,Ā  how to bring opposing parties to the middle ground.
Relationship management Since you’re able to control emotions, you’ll gain trust-worthiness of your colleagues, superiors and juniors. That’ll help you extract maximum work /support from them.

Model #2: Ruler Abbreviation

We can dissect emotional intelligence with the abbreviation “RULER”

R Recognize emotions. You’ve to first know how you feel.
U Understand the causes. Once you’ve recognized the emotion, find the causes- what makes you depressed, anxious, happy- why?
L
  • Labeling. If I ask you- “how are you feeling right now?” If you have low emotional intelligence, you’d give typical answers such as “happy” : – )
  • But if you have high emotional intelligence, you can exactly label the specific emotion.
  • E.g. in old mobiles, only one smiley for happiness “:-)” but in whatapp, you’d find multiple smileys that denote different types and levels of happiness.
E Express.
R Regulate. Once you’ve recognized that you are depressed, you have identified underlying causes, then you’ll work towardsĀ  the remedies that will help you regulate your depression.

Unregulated Emotions = Judgment Clouded

  • Consider following experiment: schoolteachers were asked to evaluate the question papers of the students under different emotional states- e.g. happiness, distressed and so on.
  • There was substantial change in the marks they offered to students.
  • When researchers asked the teachers “do you think you were biased?” Teachers refused.
  • Thus emotions are so notorious- they hamper your decision making and even won’t let you realize that you’re making a wrong decision!
  • People with higher EI, rise higher in their careers- whether as leaders, managers, celebrities.
  • New Public management also requires the civil servant to develop EI, to handle stakeholders in proper manner- e.g. judiciary, litigants, media personnel, common man,Ā  political masters and so on. Each of them has different attitude. You have tackle them accordingly. You have go understand, what works for each category.
  • Unregulated emotions damage your mental and physical health.
  • Depressed person may become suicidal
  • Aggressive person may become insomniac.
  • Therefore one must learn to control his emotions.

Digital Age of alienation

  • In the digital age, there’s flood of information, indoor-lifestyle, people are losing direct touch with each other, relations have become calculative and materialistic.
  • In such age, if a person can’t control emotion, it’ll damage his health.
  • Alienation: A farmer knows the purpose of rice he cultivates- that people will eat it and feel happy. Farmer is directly contributing to someone’s life.
  • But in industrial life, there is a large assembly line. You’re placing one component in some circuit board.Ā  You don’t know the big picture.
  • Similarly, in IT company, you’re writing a script-code that will become part of some big system, yet you don’t know what exact purpose you’ve served.
  • Such person has no idea what is the purpose of his life and what is his contribution to the society? He gets alienated from work, alienated from society. He’ll begin to see other people in “profit-loss” calculation.
  • In the end he’ll get alienated from himself and this will cause all the emotional/mental disorders.
  • DPSP requires State should also proper working conditions for workers, with full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural activities. Emphasis on leisure, otherwise emotional alienation will occur.

Why study Emotional Intelligence?

  • In traditional thinking, emotions have been seen negatively- that they interfere in rational decision-making. But it’s not always true e.g. nurse’s love for babies, soldier’s love for country are essential in proper functioning of their duties.
  • Therefore, good administrator is the one who can control his emotions, he need not ‘suppress’ them.
  • Jainism: Mahavrat- devotee have to suppress their instinct.
  • Buddhism: adopted middle-path. Instead of suppressing your emotions, regulate them.
  • Now, the thinking has changed- emotions are here to stay. You can’t conquer or suppress emotions.
  • Anger is considered a negative emotion. But you’re supposed to be angry at child-labour and other nuisances prevalent in the society.
  • ā€œAll my best ideas were born of anger,ā€ says childrenā€™s rights-Ā activist and Nobel Peace prize winner Kailash Satyarthi
  • So if anger is channelized towards social evils, then it’s a constructive use of your emotions.
  • “Desire“: considered as a bad emotion, but capitalism thrives on that. If everyone becomes a monk, the industrial enterprise will collapse.
  • Thus, we can see all emotions in positive light.
  • If you’re depressed or anxious- you can’t perform in mains exam. Because unregulated emotions will hinder your answer writing.
Emotion Is the cause of
Unlimited desire corruption
Aggressiveness Human rights abuse
Lust Eve-teasing, rapes,Ā  voyeurism
Passion Hinders objective thinking

Therefore, intelligence is not the only crucial virtue, emotional intelligence also required.

Benefits of higher EI

  1. EI is the ability to recognize your and other peopleā€™s emotions; and manage them in better manner.
  2. Helps you control your own negative emotions. Then you can focus more on work than on mood, your productivity/efficiency/quality of work improves. As Lord Buddha said ā€œHolding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else: you are the one who gets burned.ā€
  3. Helps you make better decisions, perform under stress and against heavy-odds.
  4. Helps you deal with uncertainty and change in personal and professional life. Otherwise ā€œHe who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future.ā€
  5. Helps you manage relations. You can later leverage those relations to get things done, to reach the places where you want to reach, to get the success you want to get.
  6. You can motivate teammates and extract more work out of them.
  7. You can manage unreasonable people in most situations.
  8. You can bounce back from setbacks and defeats.
  9. You’re least affected by office-politics.
  10. Because of above things, your stress is controlled and youā€™ve less chances of lifestyle diseases such diabetes and heart attack. You have less chances of become depressed or anxious.
  11. EI helps developing Empathy towards others.

How develop emotional intelligence?

  1. Universal answer is “Yoga”.
  2. Emotional literacy– if you can identify only five type of emotions,Ā  you’ve low level of emotional literacy. What’s the difference between envy vs. jealousy? Very subtle difference.Ā  So the first step is to have a rich emotional vocabulary. Then Identify your emotion and “label” it properly.
  3. Non-verbal communication. What body language do you convey? How to read the body language of the other party?
  4. Develop empathy (cut-paste all the measures given in foundational values.)
  5. Cultivate optimism. Gandhi made the people believe that freedom is possible.
  6. Introspection– take responsibility for your emotions. Instead of saying “she is making me depressed.” you should say “I’m feeling depressed.” once you take responsibility, you’ll be able to find the root causes behind that emotion.

Descriptive Questions

  1. A mind that leaves emotions out, is impoverished. Elaborate
  2. Emotional intelligence has interesting ideas but lacks practical utility. Do you agree? Justify your stand.
  3. “Emotional intelligence is not an opposite of the intelligence but a unique intersection of head and heart.” Elaborate
  4. ā€œWhatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.ā€ – Benjamin Franklin. Discuss with example from life of a famous person.
  5. All learning has an emotional base.ā€ ā€“ Plato. Elaborate
  6. ā€œTenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution. (Kahlil Gibran)ā€. Do you agree? Justify your stand.

Case study: Sympathy for subordinates?

Manoj Kumar is a newly recruited officer the accounts branch of a sakaari department.

  1. Manoj has no power to materially reward or punish his subordinates. It is in the hands of the main-boss of the office.
  2. Manoj has no power to recruit additional staff. His previous ‘written’ request for more manpower, have been turned down.
  3. Office timing is 10AM to 5PM.

Here is the list of Manoj’s subordinates:

1.Bharat Bhushan He always cries that he has to take two buses from home to reach office. And if he waits till 5PM then he’ll miss the return bus of 4:45 and reach home at 11 in the night. Since Bharat Bhushan is the most sincere and hardworking among the staff members, so, out of sympathy, Manoj Kumar allows him to leave off at 4:30PM every day.
2.Alok Nath
  • He always cries that his salary is too low for daughter’s marriage, kanyaa-daan and mortgage on the house. Nowadays he has picked up “data-entry” projects from other private companies. He is doing them in office time to make side-income.
  • Although he always maintains that he is doing private work only after office files are finished in the morning.
  • Manoj knows about it but decides to look the other way because he has no proof or the time to “spy” on what Alok is doing during office hours.
3.Jeevan
  • He randomly runs away from office to do personal tasks. Although office has CCTV and biometric attendance system, but somehow Jeevan manages to dodge them both and comes up with novel excuses that are hard to counter.

So far Manoj has ignored his habits because

  • Whenever Manoj tells him to focus on work, Jeevan always counters by citing how Alok and Bharat are not doing ‘much’ work either.
  • Jeevan is a very shrewd person and he has saved Manoj many times from dirty office politics played by HR lady boss and other staff members.
4.Babita
  • She is ex-girlfriend of Manoj. Throughout the day she’s busy in WhatsApp and social media chatting and flirting with higher bosses, or gossiping with other colleagues.
  • Whenever Manoj orders her to finish a file quickly, she somehow turns up the argument against him that Manoj is harassing her for the ‘past’ or laziness of Jevan, Alok and Bharat, and creates a ‘scene’ in the office or complaints to HR lady.
  • Only because of Jeevan’s shrewd office politics, Manoj manages to save himself.
5.Vivek Mushraan
  • He is a contractual employee hired by HR department and ‘allotted’ to accounts. The HR lady boss Bindu often uses him to finish work of HR department.
  • Although Manoj has strictly ordered Vivek to give priority to Account files first, but Vivek’s loyalty lies to HR Lady because she’s the who can renew his job contract with higher salary.

As March month comes near, the work of accounts department has increased in a geometric progression. Manoj is already reprimanded by the main boss for slow speed of file-movement in his branch and warned him that if targets are not met, he’ll face the stringent penal action possible. Manoj tries to explain his problem but main boss is not interested in listening.
Answer following

  1. How can emotional intelligence help Manoj wade through the dilemmas he’s facing?
  2. Manoj is too naĆÆve and kind-hearted to work in a Government office. Do you agree? Yes / No and why?
  3. Should Manoj stay in the office fromĀ  8AM to 11PM every day to finish all the files by himself? Yes/No and Why?
  4. Should Manoj resign from office because of ‘Babita-issue’? Yes/No and why?
  5. How should Manoj “tackle” each of the subordinate? Dissect the possible consequences he will face for each of those actions.

Visit Mrunal.org/Ethics for more study material on Ethics.