Emotional competence

Emotional competence refers to the ability to identify, understand, and freely express emotions in a healthy and acceptable manner. Emotions are reactions within the human mind that contribute to conscious feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Managing and expressing emotions can be a challenging task that requires careful thought and emotional intelligence, or understanding of one’s emotions. Emotional competence can help people build healthy relationships, excel at school or work, and build confidence and motivation. It ultimately contributes to the development of social competence, or the ability to relate to others in a positive way, and to overall personal competence. People who do not develop emotional competence may struggle with their bottled-up emotions, which may lead to a wide variety of health and social problems.

Background

Emotions are a core aspect of human life. They occur within the mind based on hormones, neurotransmitters, and other functions and signals of the brain. Some of the fundamental emotions include happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and surprise. These reactions often reflect the inner workings of the mind and the deep-seated values a person holds. They also serve to guide a person through life and dictate behaviors and reactions.

Although many people use the terms emotion and feeling interchangeably, these are actually two different, yet closely related, concepts. Emotions occur unconsciously within the mind, while feelings are conscious manifestations of emotions that often change a person’s behavior. For example, emotional fear might become a feeling of fear that makes a person jump back from a perceived danger. Feelings are dynamic and may have great effects—positive or negative—on behaviors and interactions.

Although emotions are influential in almost all areas of life, they are not easy to control. Sometimes they can be very hard to understand, or even identify in the most basic sense. Only through careful thought, or examination of how emotions manifest in conscious feelings and behaviors, can a person grasp the meaning of emotions. The ability to identify and understand emotions is known as emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is an important personal skill that contributes to emotional competence, social competence, and other important competencies.

Overview

People who achieve emotional intelligence can identify the unconscious emotions they have even before these emotions manifest themselves as conscious feelings, thoughts, or actions. The next step is to attain emotional competence. A competence is a skill that helps people perform tasks or interact with others. Emotional competence refers to a person’s ability to freely express emotions, usually in a manner that is healthy and acceptable to that person and others. Emotional competence allows people to emotionally interact with others in positive ways.

Emotional competence is an important skill in all areas of life. At home, it can help family members make plans and resolve disagreements. At school, it can help mediate problems with peers, foster new friendships, and motivate a good work ethic. In the business place, emotional competence can help employees get along, communicate effectively, manage workloads, and reduce stress in healthy ways. Leaders in business and elsewhere value emotional competence because it helps them build strong teams, inspire confidence, reach goals, and promote good company morale.

People who master emotional competence have a significant advantage in gaining social competence. Social competence refers to how people get along with others. In emotional terms, the main skill in social competence is empathy. Empathy means identifying and relating with the emotions of other people; in effect, “feeling what they feel.” For example, an empathic person who sees another person weeping at a funeral will not only know that the person is sad but also understand and share some degree of the sadness.

Empathy can help people understand why other people feel and act as they do. It can help families and friends get along and help people connect with others. Empathy can also lead to great benefits for a society because it inspires people to care about and try to help one another. It motivates people to work together and share challenges and rewards. Leaders with empathy understand what others are going through and make plans sensitive to other people’s emotions, rather than just seeking a better “bottom line” result. Negotiation skills, collaborative skills, and creativity are all frequently linked to empathy.

Emotional competence, social competence, and other skills combine to form personal competence. People with well-developed personal competence may excel in many fields ranging from schools and professions to relationships and personal well-being. Many of the skills related to personal competence relate to a person’s emotions, inner workings, and self-awareness. These include self-assessment, self-confidence, self-control, trustworthiness, and adaptability. Other skills relate to a person’s social behaviors. A few of these are communication, leadership, teamwork, and conflict management.

Developing emotional competence may have a strong positive effect on a person’s health and happiness. People who “bottle up” their emotions, or express emotions in unhealthy or unacceptable ways, often experience a range of problems. These may include strained relationships, poor working environments, or low grades or work performance. They may also include more internal, yet closely interrelated, factors such as increased stress, hypertension, or even mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Repressed or poorly expressed emotions can lead to illness, alienation, anger, and even violence.

People may follow many helpful steps to help develop emotional competence. Some of the most fundamental of these are accepting emotions, analyzing and understanding the causes of these emotions, and noticing how these emotions affect personal behavior and interactions with others. Next, a person can name and explain their emotions, and try to let them resolve themselves in a healthy way. A person can benefit by remembering that emotions are not facts, and that sometimes negative or unhelpful emotions can actually stand in the way of progress and understanding. Lastly, reframing one’s thoughts or perspectives can help to foster healthier and more productive emotions in the future.

Bibliography

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Kram, Kathy, Sharon Ting, and Kerry Bunker. “On-the-Job Training for Emotional Competence.” Center for Creative Leadership, 2002.

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