There are some things you are born with and some things you learn along the years. Despite the contemporary teachings of our new age personality development gurus, it is a universal fact that no two individual in this world are the same, however well trained they are. Almighty has created each one of us with highly exclusive traits- sensitivity, intellect and of course EQ, which is also, termed as emotional intelligence. It is first of all important for us to clearly understand what emotional intelligence is. Imminent psychologist John D Mayer defines emotional intelligence as "The ability to perceive, to integrate, to understand and reflectively manage one's own and other people's feelings" (as quoted in People Management, 28 October 1999, page 49). Now it would be useful to highlight the word ‘ability’ in Mayer’s definition as it most naturally refers to the innate quality of an individual. I firmly believe that emotional intelligence is not a thing to be learnt but it is a quality you are born with. Of course, with some training and self evaluation sessions, you can fine-tune your emotional quotient but you cannot inculcate a basic capability or an emotional competence, you actually never ever had in the first place.
To support my argument I would like to give a few examples and ask a few basic questions. Is it possible for a pessimist to become an optimist by taking a workshop? Is anxiety easily curable? Certainly not. Even if we do accept some of our experts' personality-based models of emotional intelligence, the belief that we can easily change basic personality traits, is just not true. While making claims about the malleability of an ability-based model of emotional intelligence, we need to be a tad more careful because in reality no data has yet been found that bears on this subject. However, speculation is possible that if the emotional intelligence of an individual can’t be transformed, then perhaps, at least emotional skills can be taught to...