Emotional intelligence is the ability to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, to recognize other people's emotions and your own, and to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately.

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, has come into vogue as a good trait to hire for. EQ is considered essential to help teams function well.

An employee who possesses emotional intelligence will excel at social interaction because they can predict and understand human behavior and adapt to please others.

4 Facets of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) That Are Required At Work

According to Inc.com, there are 4 facets of Emotional Intelligence that are required at work as follows:

• Self-awareness is the ability to identify and understand your own emotions and how they affect you. Through self-awareness, you recognize how your feelings can help or hinder you from reaching your goals. You become aware of your emotional tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Self-management takes things one step further: it's the ability to manage emotions in a way that allows you to accomplish a task, reach a goal, or provide a benefit. It includes the quality of self-control, which is the ability to control your emotional reactions.
• Social awareness is the ability to accurately perceive the feelings of others and understand how those feelings influence behavior. In order to achieve social awareness, you must be empathetic, ready to see and feel things from the perspective of others.
• Relationship management allows you to get the most out of your relationships with others. Instead of trying to force others into action, it allows you to use insight and persuasion to motivate them to act. It also includes the ability to strengthen the level of trust between you and others.

Top 10 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) questions to Ask in a Job Interview

1.If you started a company today, what would its top values be?

2.Who inspires you? Why?

3.How could you create more balance in your life?

4.What makes you angry?

5.Are you capable of building strong, lasting working relationships with co-workers? And if not, why not?

6.Tell me about a time when you did or said something that had a positive impact on an employee, coworker, or customer.

7.Have you ever noticed that someone at work was having a bad day? How did you know? What did you do?

8.Why is it important to develop a rapport with your colleagues?

9.How do you build a rapport with your colleagues?

10.Will you keep in touch with your current co-workers?

Why should you ask Emotional Intelligence-based Questions in a Job Interview?

Companies want to prevent employee conflicts and hiring emotionally intelligent people is one of the best ways to do so. Emotionally intelligent people are able to maintain an even-keeled demeanor at work. They don’t throw off the workplace flow. In today’s world, employees have to work together as a team and companies would like to prevent employee conflicts as it creates an unproductive work environment. One way to do that is by hiring emotionally intelligent people.

World Economic Forum predicted in 2016, that emotional intelligence would be one of the top skills recruiters should be looking for in the candidate. Fast forward to 2020, EQ is regarded as one of the top skills the companies need according to LinkedIn 2020 Workplace learning report .