Emotional Intelligence, also called EI, is an ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. The concept of Emotional Intelligence was popularised in 1985 by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ

Goleman’s five emotional competencies

Goleman divides emotional intelligence into the following five emotional competencies:

1. The ability to identify and name one’s emotional states and to understand the link between emotions, thought and action.
2. The capacity to manage one’s emotional states — to control emotions or to shift undesirable emotional states to more adequate ones.
3. The ability to enter into emotional states (at will) associated with a drive to achieve and be successful.
4. The capacity to read, be sensitive to, and influence other people’s emotions.
5. The ability to enter and sustain satisfactory interpersonal
   relationships.

A significant criticism is that emotional intelligence has no “benchmark” to set itself against. While IQ tests are designed to correlate as closely as possible with school grades, emotional intelligence seems to have no similar objective quantity it can be based on. However, teaching Emotional Integilligence has been shown by people such as John Gottman, Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell (amognst others) to be beneficial in relationships, schools and other cultures that involve groups of people that need to work
together.

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