# Characteristics of High Emotional Intelligence: Four Abilities You Can Build Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-high-emotional-intelligence/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-high-emotional-intelligence.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer The characteristics of high emotional intelligence: noticing, using, understanding and managing emotions, how each shows up at work, and how to build them. ## Key facts - Title: Characteristics of High Emotional Intelligence: Four Abilities You Can Build - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Building Resilience, Communication - Primary keyword: characteristics of high emotional intelligence - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-high-emotional-intelligence/ ## What this page covers - The characteristics of high emotional intelligence: noticing, using, understanding and managing emotions, how each shows up at work, and how to build them. - Practical guidance for characteristics of high emotional intelligence - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation The characteristics of high emotional intelligence come down to four abilities: noticing emotions accurately in yourself and others, using feelings to inform your thinking, understanding what an emotion is and where it is heading, and managing emotions, both your own and other people's. At work, they show up as behavior: pausing before you reply, or noticing when a colleague has gone quiet. What they do not necessarily show up as is constant calm. The colleague who never seems rattled may be handling their feelings well, or may simply be holding them down, and from the outside the two look much the same. So if you have ever [snapped at someone](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/managing-anger-at-work/), replayed a meeting in your head all evening, or swallowed an objection to keep the peace, that alone does not settle whether you are emotionally intelligent. It does point to which of the four abilities deserves a closer look. ## Characteristics of high emotional intelligence: four abilities Psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey describe emotional intelligence as four related abilities rather than a single quality: perceiving emotions, using emotions to support thinking, understanding emotions, and managing them. In their model, these are abilities that involve reasoning with and about emotions, not a temperament you are born with. That changes the question worth asking. Instead of wondering whether you "have it," you can look at each ability on its own and ask how it shows up in your working day. ### Perceiving emotions Perceiving emotions is the ability to recognize what is being felt, accurately, in yourself and in the people around you. Much of it runs through nonverbal signals: a face that tightens when a deadline is mentioned, a colleague who leans back and stops contributing halfway through a meeting. It comes first because everything else depends on it. An emotion you have not noticed, whether your own or someone else's, cannot be understood or managed. In practice, someone who is strong here registers the shift in the room before anyone says a word. They also catch their own early signals, such as the irritation that starts building while someone else is still talking, early enough to do something with it. ### Using emotions to support thinking The second ability is the odd one out. Perceiving, understanding and managing emotions all involve reasoning about feelings; this one involves using feelings to improve reasoning. Emotions carry information. A vague unease about a project plan can be the first sign of a risk you have not yet put into words, and enthusiasm for one option over another tells you something about what you care about in the decision. This is why high emotional intelligence is not the absence of emotion. The people who show it are not emotionless. They treat what they feel as information, check it against the facts, and let it sharpen their thinking rather than take it over. ### Understanding emotions Understanding emotions means knowing the emotional vocabulary, being able to name precisely what you feel, and knowing how emotions combine, develop and turn into one another. The precision matters. Frustrated, disappointed and anxious can feel alike in the moment, but each calls for something different: frustration may need a conversation, disappointment an adjusted expectation, anxiety more information. Someone who can tell them apart can also anticipate where a feeling is heading, such as the irritation that hardens into resentment when nobody addresses it. This ability is what turns a vague bad mood after a meeting into something you can act on. It includes knowing your own patterns: what you react to, and why. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described her own with unusual precision: > I don't do well with managers who 'tell it like it is' — who say, 'We have a very direct tone here.' What they're really saying is, 'We don't actually talk very nicely to each other.' I really don't thrive in that. I take things very much to heart, even when they have nothing to do with me. > > I really want to perform and be good at what I do, and it doesn't motivate me at all to be told, 'What the hell, this just isn't good enough! What are you doing? Can't you pull yourself together?' You can't excuse that by saying it's meant kindly, because I don't take it kindly. > > So it matters that my manager says things in a nice way, without sugarcoating them — and doesn't need to build themselves up by putting me down. Notice what she is not asking for. She does not want less honesty; she wants feedback that is clear without being demeaning. Because she knows she takes things to heart, she can name the kind of feedback she works well with and look for it, instead of being blindsided by her own reactions. ### Managing emotions Managing emotions is the ability to regulate moods and emotions, in yourself and in other people. It is the characteristic most people picture when they think of emotional intelligence, but it rests on the other three: you can only steer a feeling you have noticed, named and understood. At work, it shows up as recognizable behavior. You pause before replying to the email that annoyed you. You [hear criticism](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-not-take-criticism-personally/) of your work without taking it as a verdict on you as a person. You adapt when a plan changes at the last minute instead of dwelling on the old one. And with other people, you help bring the temperature down in a tense conversation, or draw out a quieter colleague who has something to say but has not found the opening. ## Why calm is not the same as emotionally intelligent Two misreadings of these characteristics are common, and both can lead you to the wrong conclusion about yourself. The first is treating composure as proof. Calm can come from managing an emotion well, but it can also come from suppressing a feeling or disconnecting from it. If you bottle up irritation so that nobody sees it, you may look emotionally intelligent while skipping the noticing, naming and handling that the four abilities describe. The second is confusing emotional intelligence with being nice. Emotionally intelligent people still get angry, disagree and sometimes disappoint others. What sets them apart is how they handle those moments, not whether they avoid them. Swallowing a disagreement to keep the peace is not a sign of high emotional intelligence; voicing it in a way the other person can take in is much closer. Both misreadings describe habits rather than fixed features of who you are, which means both can be practiced differently. ## Do you have high emotional intelligence? Reading your own profile The Mayer and Salovey model is measured with an ability test, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). It produces an overall score plus two area scores, for what are called Experiential and Strategic emotional intelligence. The design reflects the point that matters most for you: because the abilities are scored separately, a person can be strong in one area and still struggle in another. An uneven profile is the normal case, not a warning sign. That gives you a more useful way to read your own reactions than a yes-or-no verdict. Match the moments that bother you to the ability they point to: - Missing that a colleague was upset until someone told you points to perceiving emotions. - [Replaying a meeting for hours](/knowledge/resilience/how-to-stop-overthinking/) without being able to say what exactly bothered you points to understanding emotions. - Snapping at someone, or going quiet and sulking afterward, points to managing your own emotions. - Avoiding a disagreement you needed to have points to managing emotions in the conversation itself, where your nerves and the other person's reaction are both in play. Because an uneven profile is normal, it helps to know your strong side as well as your weak one. The free Job Skills Test gives you [a map of your work habits](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), strengths included, so you can build on what already works instead of only chasing gaps. ## Can emotional intelligence be learned? Yes. A review by Robert Emmerling and Cary Cherniss, covering more than three decades of research on what emotional intelligence is, how to measure it and whether it improves work performance, reports that it can be developed through targeted training, with benefits that last months or even years. The same review adds a note of realism: emotional intelligence is not universally helpful in every context. It is one set of abilities among the many a job draws on, not a cure-all. It is still worth building early. A Melbourne Business School professor links high emotional intelligence in leaders to greater resilience, a greater ability to influence others, more engaged teams and higher productivity. You do not need a leadership title for the underlying abilities to matter; they shape how easy you are to work with long before then. ## What makes these abilities show up on a hard day Look back at the behaviors above: the pause before replying, the precise name for a feeling, the disagreement voiced instead of swallowed. None of them is a mood or a gift. Each is something a person does, which raises the question of what they are practicing underneath. **Building Self-Awareness** is where the four abilities start, because you can only work on reactions you can see. It means recognizing what sets off your overreactions, often an exaggerated belief about achievement, acceptance or control running beneath the surface, such as the conviction that any criticism means you have failed. It also means asking for feedback to find the blind spots in how colleagues experience you, then hearing it out before explaining yourself. None of this needs a personality label; it starts with noticing your reactions this week. **Building Resilience** explains what the genuinely calm colleagues are doing. Something happens, an automatic thought follows, and the reaction comes from the thought rather than the event. Resilience means catching that thought and questioning it: are you mind reading, assuming you know what your manager meant, or drawing an all-or-nothing conclusion from one bad meeting? It also means putting your energy into what you can control. This is not about holding feelings down. It is about changing the thought that drives the reaction. **Communication** is where other people actually see your emotional intelligence. Giving someone your full attention, having a genuine wish to understand them, and adapting to how they prefer to talk are how "reads people well" becomes visible. So is handling the tricky moments: an angry colleague, a disagreement, an apology you owe. Empathy here does not mean agreeing with everyone. It includes saying the difficult thing clearly and directly, in a way the other person can hear. Most people find that one of these three comes easily and another takes real effort. To [find your starting skill](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) rather than guess at it, take the free Job Skills Test; it reaches well beyond these three, across **the full set of twelve** work skills, and treats every one of them as something you can learn. Some of this may already be part of how you work. If you have ever walked out of a meeting knowing exactly which comment stung, and why, you have done the noticing that the other abilities build on. The ones that feel further away are not missing pieces of your character. They are abilities you have not yet had much reason to practice, and building them does not ask you to become someone else. You get to choose which one matters most for you right now. The more of your work runs through other people, such as a client, a team or a manager who depends on you, the more these abilities carry. Practicing them in everyday moments now means they are already there when a harder conversation arrives. ## Find your starting point The only thing left is to see where you stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills, including the three above: in 7 minutes it shows where you stand across all twelve, and which ones would make the biggest difference for you to develop next. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free and takes 7 minutes, with your results shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? The characteristics of high emotional intelligence: noticing, using, understanding and managing emotions, how each shows up at work, and how to build them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Building Resilience, Communication. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/resilience.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/characteristics-of-high-emotional-intelligence/ Preferred summary: "The characteristics of high emotional intelligence: noticing, using, understanding and managing emotions, how each shows up at work, and how to build them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.