Academic qualifications provide a mechanism through which a person’s abilities can be assessed to determine his capabilities in undertaking given tasks. Productivity of an individual can be well measured by emotional intelligence rather than academic qualifications .a combination of the two, provides the best results. Emotional intelligence is the ability of a person to identify, evaluate and control oneself emotions, of others or of groups.
The results of the EQ tests lied in a range of people that find difficulties in establishing good working relationships with their co-workers. There is a concern that people within this range (48%) experience difficulties in handling challenges. Self-awareness is an important pillar in improving IQ, in such a way that one is able to evaluate situations that create depression and a sense of insecurity in one. To improve the EI, one needs to identify the challenges and the fears and express the emotional needs within so that self-confidence can develop and others can understand him/her better. By so doing, an individual can have a positive approach towards challenges in life and with a combination of high IQ and academic expertise; one is assured of excelling in the daily endeavors.
The ability model is one of the methods used to measure the EI and mainly gives four groups of examples .according to Salovey, the emotional intelligence falls encompasses perceived emotions, using emotions, management of emotions and understanding emotions. The model operates by use of numerous emotion-oriented problem solving items. An individual’s abilities based on the four branches of emotional intelligence and the model generates each branch score plus the overall score. This model however is under serious criticism since it lacks face in research and anticipatory validity. The challenge is based on the fact that it proves to be impossible in creating questions that can be worked out by a minority considering the fact that responses can only be intelligent if they receive endorsement by sample majority.
Criticisms have been advanced against the theoretical foundation of measuring emotional intelligence of an individual. According to Locke (2005), emotional intelligence exposes a misrepresentation of the intelligence construct. The criticism is based on the fact that scientific investigation relies on valid construct use and that psychologists had built theoretical distinctions on elements such as achievements and abilities. Values, skills, attitudes and all other personality features and emotional status were also earlier distinguished. The overall argument brought forth by some scholars is that EI conflates already accepted definitions and concepts. Another point of conflict emerges due to the fact that the branches used to measure emotional intelligence are not related. The expectation is that for the five abilities to be valid, and then would be highly correlated. Worse still those factors cannot be measured and therefore it remains difficult to establish whether they are in any manner related.
Further criticism is advanced by the works of Brody (2004), who proposed that the model is based on emotions tests rather than the potential to undertake tasks that have a relationship with the knowledge that assessed.
Research based on the relationship between EI with performance in jobs show several findings that are contradictory. The emotional intelligence is not always a positive characteristic. A negative correlation has been found to exist between emotional intelligence against managerial demands in jobs. "EI is compared and contrasted with a measure of abstract intelligence but not with a personality measure, or with a personality measure but not with a measure of academic intelligence." Landy (2005).Amid the contradictions, emotional intelligence still is a strong contributor to job performance though not always.
References
Locke, E.A. (2005). "Why emotional intelligence is an invalid concept". Journal of Organizational Behavior 26 (4): 425–431.
Landy, F.J. (2005). Some historical and scientific issues related to research on emotional intelligence. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(6) 411-424.
