Emotional competences: what are they, what are they for and how many types are there?

The way we experience our emotions determines a good part of our quality of life, our habits, and our way of seeing reality.

It is normal that this is the case, because although we call ourselves human beings, we are still animals with a lineage of hundreds of thousands of years to our backs, and during that time, our behavioral predispositions emerged on the basis of emotions, long before we were able to use the reason.

However, although our emotional side is rooted in ancestral biological predispositions, that does not mean that we do not have any capacity to modulate our emotions. In fact, today we know that there are certain emotional competencies that can be developed through experience and learning. Let's see what they consist of.

• Related article: "What is emotional intelligence?"

What are emotional competencies?

Since approximately the 1970s and 1980s, the idea that job performance and ease of social functioning of people depends above all on what is normally known as "intelligence".

That is why psychologists like Peter Salovey, John D. Mayer and Daniel Goleman have developed and popularized the concept of "Emotional Intelligence", a psychological construct in which they are united

all the aptitudes and abilities that people have in relation to the identification, management and expression of emotions.

Thus, the idea that beyond conventional intelligence (based above all on the facility to reason and to carry out verbal or logical-mathematical skills) there is an Emotional Intelligence that tells us that the human mind is much more than a processor of textual and verbalizable information, but can also manage emotional phenomena that cannot be fully expressed in words no numbers.

That is, even in people without psychopathologies or metal health problems in general, there will be differences in their ability to reach their goals depending on how well they deal with their affective side, with their emotions and feelings.

In this context, emotional competencies are different types of skills that, together, make up a person's Emotional Intelligence. That is to say, they are partly independent skills and partly interconnected, in any case complementary, that Depending on their degree of development, they help us more or less to face the challenges of the day to day and to feel good with our lives.

On the other hand, although emotional competences are reflected in all kinds of situations (because our emotions are "activated" always, not only in certain contexts), in practice it is common to emphasize its effects in the workplace and professional, within what is known as “soft skills”: skills that are not acquired through formal education or memorization of information theoretical.

• You may be interested in: "Emotional psychology: main theories of emotion"

Types of emotional competencies

Here we will see a brief classification of the types of emotional competencies according to the psychologist Daniel Goleman.

1. Self-awareness

Self-awareness can be summarized as the capacity for self-knowledge in relation to emotions. That is, what we know about the emotions and feelings that we usually experience, the kind of situations that trigger them in us, the first signs that one of them is going to emerge in our consciousness ...

• Related article: "Self-knowledge: definition and 8 tips to improve it"

2. Self-regulation

Self-regulation is closely linked to previous emotional competence, and consists of our ability to modulate our emotions, either by performing them in a way that does not harm us or that is in tune with the situation, or doing what is necessary to maximize the chances of experiencing a certain emotion that interests us and minimize the chances of experiencing another that interests us at a given moment.

Of course, it does not consist of having the ability to totally control our emotions by suppressing them completely or "invoking" them from scratch; that's impossible

3. Empathy

Empathy is the ability to "connect" emotionally with someone and to be able to adjust our behaviors to their emotional state, so that they increase the possibilities of establishing alliances between both parties or of giving support at key moments, without depending on explicit verbal indications.

• You may be interested in: "Empathy, much more than putting yourself in someone else's shoes"

4. Self motivation

Self-motivation is the ability to turn our emotions into motivational fuel, so that they guide you more towards carrying out tasks that bring us closer to the objectives that we have set for you. Do not forget that emotions exist as a mechanism of adaptation to the environment.

• Related article: "Types of motivation: the 8 motivational sources"

5. Social skills

This last emotional competence is based both on the knowledge and mastery of the socialization norms that prevail in the social circles in which we move, as well as in the ability to generate expectations and meanings through our handling of emotions and their application to our way of communicating (verbally and not verbal).

In other words, it has to do with creating a certain emotional tone to the social interactions in which we participate, implying who we are and / or what we want. Therefore, this is a key ingredient in leadership and conflict mediation processes, and also when meeting people.

Do you want to have professional psychological support?

In psychotherapy processes it is possible to train the emotional capacities that we have seen up to now, regardless of whether the person who goes to the psychologist has developed a psychopathology or no. Therefore, if you are looking for professional support in this regard, please contact us.

On Advance Psychologists We have been offering our psychological therapy services for more than two decades, and currently we also intervene in the areas of speech therapy, sexology, neuropsychology and psychiatry. The sessions can be carried out in person at our center located in Madrid or online by video call.