Emotional Intelligence Test

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is how well you notice, understand and handle emotions, both your own and other people's. It is the skill behind staying calm when the meeting goes sideways, noticing a friend is upset before they say so, and giving honest feedback without starting a feud.

Unlike raw intelligence, EQ is made of habits. That is good news, because habits can be practised. Most people are strong in one or two areas and rusty in another, and knowing which is which is the quickest way to improve.

This test measures how you see your own emotional skills. You rate thirty-two everyday statements, such as "I can calm myself down quickly" or "I pick up on what isn't being said", and the pattern of your answers shows where you are strong.

Emotional intelligence splits into four areas. Each one is a possible strongest result on this test.

• Self-awareness: knowing what you feel as it happens, and why. You can name the emotion, you know which situations set you off, and you understand how your mood leaks into your work.
• Self-management: handling those feelings once you have them. You think before you react when angry, recover from setbacks, and can wait for something you want.
• Social awareness: reading other people. You notice the mood of a room, pick up on what is left unsaid, and understand why people react the way they do.
• Relationship management: putting it all to work with others. You handle difficult conversations calmly, help sort out disagreements and give feedback that lands.

The areas build on each other. It is hard to manage a feeling you have not noticed, and hard to handle a relationship well if you cannot read the other person.

Emotional intelligence matters because almost everything you care about involves feelings: yours, and other people's. It is the difference between a disagreement that clears the air and one that festers for a month.

At work, it shows up in who people want on their team. The colleague who stays level when a deadline moves, notices when someone is struggling and can deliver bad news without making it worse becomes the person everyone wants in the room, whatever their job title.

At home, it shows up in the small moments. Noticing that your partner's "I'm fine" means the opposite. Catching your own irritation before it turns into a sharp comment about the washing up. Apologising quickly and meaning it.

And for you, it shows up as a calmer inner life. When you can name a feeling, you can usually manage it, and when you can manage it, it stops running your day.

We use our own proprietary structure: eight statements for each of the four areas, thirty-two in all. Half of them are worded positively and half negatively, so the score reflects real habits rather than a tendency to agree with everything.

Each area becomes a score from 0 to 100. Your overall EQ score is the average of the four. Your result names your strongest area, which is the one that goes on your share card, and suggests one specific habit for your weakest area, which stays private on your results page.

Your scores show where emotional skills come easily to you and where they take effort. A high score in an area means you rate yourself as handling that kind of moment well most of the time. A lower score points to the moments that tend to catch you out.

Look at the gap between your areas as much as the overall number. Someone strong on social awareness but lower on self-management often reads a room perfectly and then says the thing they regret. Someone strong on self-awareness but lower on relationship management knows exactly how they feel and struggles to bring it up with anyone else. The shape tells you what to practise.

Your strongest area is worth noticing too. It is the skill you can lean on while you work on the others. Someone with strong social awareness can use it to spot the moments when their own self-management is about to slip, because they will see it on the other person's face first. Someone with strong self-management can use that calm to stay in a difficult conversation long enough to learn something from it.

This test is as accurate as you are honest with yourself. It measures how you see your own emotional habits, which is exactly where change starts, because you can only work on what you are willing to notice.

For a sharper picture, answer for how you behave on an ordinary stressful day, not your best day. Then ask someone who knows you well whether your strongest area matches what they see. Their answer is often the most useful part of the whole exercise.

Pick one area and one habit, and practise it for a fortnight. Small and specific beats big and vague.

• Self-awareness: three times a day, name what you are feeling in one word. "Irritated" is more useful than "fine".
• Self-management: when you feel the heat rising, wait ten breaths before you reply, or sleep on the email.
• Social awareness: in your next conversation, notice tone and face before words, and ask one question about how they are really doing.
• Relationship management: before a hard conversation, write down what you want the other person to understand and what you want to understand about them.

Then take the test again and see which bar has moved.