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Reader question: Please explain “emotional intelligence”, as in this sentence: Technical skills are important, but emotional intelligence is indispensable in leadership. My comments: Emotional intelligence refers to the intelligence or being smart enough to understand and manage emotions, your own emotions and those of others, particularly those of others, I may add, if you want to be successful in a leadership position. Emotional intelligence, that is, as opposed to IQ, the human intelligence that allows us to figure out 2 plus 2 equals four or understand a long and convoluted sentence, such as this one, grammatically, as well as other even more sophisticated skills, of course, on the technical level, skills that enable us to assemble a car, an airplane or send a rocket into outer space. Emotional intelligence, on the other hand, addresses to the role emotions play in our life, our own life and our social life as a whole. Emotions are powerful, as we all know for sure. At least, we know that our own emotions are powerful. Some of us as kid, for example, may have whined and howled and refused to go to school because our mother or father had hurt our feelings in an incident a day before. Some of us, as a jealous lover, won’t even mind resorting to violence in order to get revenge. Anyways, emotional intelligence refers to the ability to understand and manage emotions. For someone in a leadership position, that means the ability to know, for example, what makes a particular employee tick, what buttons to push and when to push them. | 
