People Smart? (Part 1)

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” ~James 1:19

I have been reading in and around the fascinating subject of emotional intelligence (EQ), which seems to be one of the best predictive indices to measure how well someone will do in life, how healthy their relationships will be, and whether or not they will reach their full potential over the course of time. 

What is EQ, and can it be developed and improved? A common explanation goes something like this: If IQ measures how book-smart a person is or can be, EQ measures how people-smart a person tends to be. This is a helpful place to start, but to really understand the concept and why it matters, we need to go deeper.

Someone with a low EQ tends to be ruled by rather chaotic emotions. As a result, when confronted by frustrating circumstances or annoying people, they tend to react impulsively, venting negativity and bleeding toxic energy into their environment. They are a living embodiment of the proverb: hurting people hurt others and are easily hurt by them.

By contrast, someone with a high EQ tends to be much more poised, less reactive, and much less toxic in difficult situations. They do this by slowing down the inner workings of their soul. They think deeply, parse out exactly what happened, how they interpreted this event, and how they felt in light of that interpretation. People with high EQ realize emotions don’t just happen to them. They occur as a result of thoughts– good thoughts or evil thoughts, thoughts of faith or unbelief, hopeful thoughts or despairing thoughts, loving thoughts or hateful ones. The psalmist did this all the time, asking himself questions like: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” (Psalm 42:11). As a result they manage their responses by managing their emotions, and they do all this by managing their thoughts. They are more thoughtful people.

Let’s say, for example, that you feel anxious, frustrated, or angry. You can’t just tell yourself to calm down or chill out. Emotions don’t work that way. To manage our emotions, we must first identify the thoughts feeding into them. If you don’t do this, you won’t manage your emotions; they will manage you.

What’s that look like? So let’s say you come in from a stressful day at the office, and your wife greets you with, “Hey, honey, could you fix the light switch in the girls’ bedroom? I don’t mean to nag, but I have been asking you to do this now for two months.” You probably had different plans for the evening. How do you feel? Or maybe your husband puts his head around the kitchen door, sees you boiling rice and stir-frying chicken in the wok, and says rather sarcastically, “Oh, great, chicken fried rice again!” How do you feel, ladies?

Whether you are the husband or the wife in the above situation, I think it is safe to say you probably feel just a little ruffled. Here’s where EQ comes into play. A person with low EQ will deal with this mostly at the emotional level. That comment “made them feel bad.” They don’t like feeling bad. They want you to stop “doing that to them!” So, like a balloon meeting a pin, they pop loudly. They emote with snarky sarcasm, or they pretend they didn’t hear what you said and walk on by in triumphant passive aggression. Later they will come to regret this reaction, of course. How could they not? They have done their part to escalate tension and dismantle intimacy. Over the course of time, these little foxes can ruin the vines of a once healthy marriage. 

By contrast, a person with a higher EQ will pause. They have been here before. They understand themselves and their spouse. They know where that comment came from, and they have the ability to empathize with their spouse’s position. This is key: People with high EQ are able to put themselves in their partner’s shoes and ask, How would I feel if I were standing where they are?

The husband feels his manhood has been challenged. This is not pleasant. But he also knows that his wife has a point; he really should have fixed the light switch two months ago. He feels embarrassed that his wife has pointed this out so many times. He feels ashamed of his lazy lack of initiative in the home. This is especially hard because he also knows that this failure is but the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other, much more consequential areas where he has failed to take initiative. Shame haunts him constantly. With this knowledge, he refuses to take a cheap shot at his wife. Instead, he responds with humility, “You know, honey, you are right. I’ll take care of that right now.”

The wife on her part feels unkindly attacked by her husband. She feels unappreciated. Perhaps she has been devoting herself to other important priorities like homeschooling, painting the living room, or earning extra,  much needed income for the home. At the same time, she also knows her husband has a point. She did make a bigger-than-normal batch of chicken fried rice at the weekend, and they have now been munching their way through it for four days straight—not a very inviting prospect for a hungry husband after a long day's work. 

In part, she traces her annoyance to Jane, the “perfect” wife at church who always makes exciting dishes every night for her family. She feels ashamed that she lacks the skill, the bandwidth, or frankly the energy to prepare such feasts for her family. They also have to make do with much less money than Jane’s husband brings in. Still she feels like she’s failed and that’s not pleasant. But it’s not just here; she feels she’s failed in many other areas. She feels she’s really let herself go after the fourth child, has still to lose much of the “baby weight,” and worries that her “failure” will tempt her husband to stray, the way her own father did all those years ago. This presence of mind gives her pause to stop, smile, saying nothing, and commit herself to God who judges righteously (1 Peter 2:21-23). Maybe later, when the kids have gone to bed, she will sit down with her husband and talk to him about how hurtful such jabs are, especially if they are repeated. Or, if it was a one off, she might choose to say nothing.

I am not saying, by the way, that all these thoughts go through the heads of people with high EQs every time someone steps on their toes— not at all, but they tend to do life at this level of reflection. As a result, they understand themselves and others, and they think through the motivations of their actions or their potential responses. They also tend to begin with the end in mind. What am I trying to achieve here? What response will best serve that end?

How is your EQ? Do you respond or react to crises? When your teenager disrespects you in an argument, do you find your emotions well up within and burst out, or are you more thoughtful? Do you take time to unpack why their contemptuous words leave you feeling so furious? Or do you just vomit out a piece of your mind? Do you take the time to think through why your teenager is so disrespectful, what they are trying to achieve, what idols they are trying to protect? Do you ever stop to consider what you have done to provoke this anger in them (Colossians 3:21)? How should you respond in return? Will an angry response provoke them to righteousness (James 1:20)? Whatever the case, if you don’t stop to understand yourself, you will never understand them, and you will find yourself playing relational checkers when you should be playing relational chess.

Whatever the case, improving our EQ takes time. How can this be done? In next week’s post we’ll take a look at the skills we need to hone in order to strengthen our EQ for the purpose of honoring God and loving others.