What’s the Difference Between Social Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, & IQ?
If you’ve ever wondered how you stack up against your friends & colleagues when it comes to being able to respond to emotions, understand and contribute to social dynamics, or be able to solve problems? You might be wondering what the difference is between emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and IQ. In today’s world, everyone is looking for a way to peak above the crowd and stand out. To do this, we all need to be able to read people and understand ourselves to know how to respond appropriately in different situations. While all intelligence concepts are valuable, knowing the difference between them can help you figure out your unique strengths, find any weaknesses, and decide which type of intelligence is most effective for you. In this article, we will further explore why these three key concepts are critical in helping you evolve into a better version of yourself while achieving your success professionally & personally.
What is Social Intelligence
Often, our brain’s default mode of thinking is something like: “I am a lone wolf. I am different from others; I am better than them, so they will always try to outdo me”. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. Being good at social skills can often teach us, just as much as a person who is good at mathematics or something similar. A good social skillset is not just about being the smartest person in the room. According to the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, “Social Intelligence means the ability to recognize other people’s feelings and internal states and accurately read other people’s nonverbal behavior & social situations”. It’s the ability to know when to break the ice and when to stay out of the fray, to know how to get your message across, and when it’s appropriate to stay quiet. Social intelligence is a critical leadership skill because leaders must constantly read and interpret the feelings and intentions of others. The best way to strengthen social intelligence is to put yourself in situations where you are forced to read others. A few additional ways you can increase your social intelligence is to actively practice empathic listening. You can also try to practice reading facial expressions and body language.
What is Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is having the know-how to understand and direct your own emotions. While also understanding the emotions of others & choosing how to respond. It’s a critical skill in managing people and teams and an important part of success in your personal life. Most people tend to focus on the facts rather than the emotions of a situation, which isn’t necessarily bad. However, it can prevent you from seeing things clearly and cause you to respond in an unhelpful way that makes the situation worse. Having high emotional intelligence means that you’re constantly monitoring your own and others’ feelings, assessing the situation, and then deciding how to respond. You’re aware of your feelings and those of others and you aren’t quick to jump to conclusions about what those feelings mean. The goal should always be to have your emotions serve you vs control you. The best ways to strengthen emotional intelligence are practicing mindfulness, keeping a gratitude journal, surrounding yourself with positive people, doing something that makes you feel good, and doing things that make others feel good. You can also read books about emotional intelligence and talk to therapists to help you understand how to better manage your emotions and how to understand other people's emotions.
What is “Intelligence quotient” (IQ)?
IQ or (General cognitive ability) is the ability to reason. It is a standardized test that measures your intelligence by asking questions that require you to solve a problem. The average American score is around 100. If you have a score of 125 or higher, you are in the top 5 percent of the population. It is important to understand that a high IQ or GPA does not necessarily mean that you are successful. Success is decided by more than just your grades or standardized tests. Now let’s define the concept of intelligence. In our day-to-day lives, we all live by routines with various tasks or activities that we perform. Our experiences in life will either force us to adapt to an unfamiliar environment or force us to struggle to adapt to an entirely new environment. In terms of our intelligence, we often compare ourselves to what we see in our peers, which often makes us focus on “measuring up” to a person instead of looking within ourselves initially. Often, when you compare yourself to others to measure up, you end up underestimating what you are capable of. By doing this, you’re wasting your time and energy while focusing on something that isn’t as important as the areas you need to improve in. A few ways to strengthen the intelligence quotient are by reading, solving puzzles, doing crosswords, and learning a new language. These activities improve your IQ and keep your mind active and healthy. Regular exercise also helps to stay mentally fit and improve your memory. You can also improve your IQ by reducing stress, getting enough sleep, and engaging in activities that you love. Certain foods, such as salmon and avocado, are known to help boost your IQ.
How Improving Intelligence Sparks Healing & Growth
Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, abuse of any kind, natural disaster & more. Not addressing trauma, especially over longer timeframes can trigger reactions such as unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. According to the national council of mental wellbeing, 70% of adults in the U.S. have endured some form of a traumatic event at least once in their lifetimes. That's 223.4 million people! This means if you step into a room of ten people seven of those people endured some form of trauma in their childhood or adulthood. According to the CDC in 2019, 19.2% of U.S. adults received any mental health treatment that year. Now you may be asking yourself, what role can emotional intelligence play in recovery from trauma? In a way, emotional intelligence is the countermeasure for trauma. It teaches us to be more aware of our emotions and attuned to them; inevitably making us more resilient over time. A high EQ can also reduce tendencies toward aggression and shorten recovery time from traumatic events, which are sometimes inevitable. The right therapist will help you improve your emotional intelligence to help you reach your fullest potential- physically, mentally, and socially -and as such increase your well-being overall!
Bottom Line
With the explosion of online education, technology, and other advances, our society has become very compartmentalized. Everybody is looking for a way to be better. Everyone is trying to achieve a level of success. To be successful you need to know where you’re at, to know where you’re going, & become who you want to be. So, if you’re working on improving your IQ, find out the average IQ of your age group then find out your IQ. If it happens to be lower than average then it’s time to do some inner work. The good news is once you identify where you’re at it can help you better determine where you want to be so you can set goals. Once some goals are set it’s best to measure your success & there are countless ways to do that. What worked best for me early in adulthood was using anger management trackers (see free download below), techniques to break down the “why” behind situations (see free download below), you can also try journaling. You want to find effective ways to self-reflect so you can identify your patterns and either halt or heighten them depending on what you discover. Now that you have a few ways to measure your progress during this development process, it’s time to pivot back to what you want to accomplish and set your goals. One of the most important parts of setting a goal is visualization because if you want to achieve something, you must believe that it’s possible. Setting stretch goals can help you with growing into who you want to become. A "Stretch Goal" is one that a person cannot achieve at once. A stretch goal can be achieved with effort over time. One of our responsibilities to ourselves, as adults are to find our biggest areas of opportunity and work to improve. Life is about evolution, becoming better, and not bitter. Rarely do we have the capacity to change overnight. With that said, the first step in improving your intelligence is to work at it consciously and consistently. Remove any hindrances and be open to change because without change we cannot evolve. If you are interested in seeing which form of intelligence you need to work on feel free to click the links below for a free test with results!
To get your free 5-Whys Guide & Anger Management Tracker mentioned in this article complete the fields below!
Click here to access a Free Emotional Intelligence Test
Click here to access a Free Social Intelligence Test
Click here to access a Free IQ Test
