What do you understand by emotional intelligence? Discuss its dimensions.

Meaning

• Mayer and Salovey defined emotional intelligence as perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotion in self and others.
• Goleman popularised it as a leader’s working set, not as a substitute for statute or IQ.
• It is not sentimentality: a flooded district needs a calm order more than a tear; it is not numbness: a grievance desk that cannot hear fear will only stamp dates.
• Aristotle’s mean already asked for feeling in the right amount, toward the right person, for the right reason; EI is that mean as a trainable skill.
• The Second ARC’s citizen-centric chapters assume an officer who can hear fatigue and still give a speaking order.

Dimensions (Goleman’s working set)

• Self-awareness: knowing that a political meeting, a slight, or hunger is now sitting in one’s voice, so it is not dumped on the next petitioner.
• Self-regulation: pausing before an impulsive Section 144, a viral reply, or a shouted transfer; Kant’s respect for persons begins with not using the office as a mood vent.
• Motivation: staying with a long scholarship or land-record backlog when there is no camera; Weber’s vocation, not only Goleman’s word.
• Empathy: reading the widow’s silence and the contractor’s volume without letting volume write the noting; Adam Smith’s sympathy as a public tool.
• Social skill: building a coalition for pulse polio, a vaccination round, or a communal peace meeting — the State cannot police every household.

Mayer–Salovey four branches, in brief

• Perceive emotion in face, tone, and crowd heat; use it to prioritise (a panic queue before a VIP photo); understand how anger hides humiliation; manage it so the decision remains inspectable.
• Case-ready: a district magistrate who walks both the temple queue and the minority mohalla after a rumour is using EI; one who only issues a press line is not.