Emotional intelligence can be broken down into four parts. Percieving, reasoning, understanding and managing emotions. In general, emotional intelligence is about your ability to understand emotions in yourself and others, and the reasons for them. The ability to percieve emotions you and others are feeling is the first step of emotional intelligence. Taking note of how you are feeling in a moment or noticing someone behaving in a certain way are key ways to percieve emotions. Reasoning with our emotions comes next. Being mindful of when you are in a good mood and using that to your advantage is an example of reasoning with your emotions. Understanding the reason for your own and others emotions is also a core part of emotional intelligence. The ability to understand why you might be annoyed or why someone else is angry is key to being able to resolve situations or temper your expectations for yourself. Finally, managing emotions is what I would consider mastery of emotional intelligence. Being able to regulate your own emotions or do something in that moment to enhance a good mood or decrease a bad mood is true mastery of emotion.
Emotional intelligence focuses solely on your emotions and ability to relate to other people compared to IQ which focuses on problem solving and logic. Both are seen as important in the workplace, however, there seems to be more studies coming out that emotional intelligence is a bigger determinate of success compared to IQ alone. IQ won't determine if you will be fun to work with, but emotional intelligence just might.
Emotional intelligence is important because, for the most part, we work as part of teams or in an environment with other people. Being able to reason your emotions and other peoples emotions generally make you more enjoyable to be around and a better part of a team. Emotional intelligence is also a key part of being a leader from my experience. It's something that most leaders have or actively work on and can make for a much more enjoyable work environment. The difference between leaders who can keep control of and notice emotions and those who can't is significant to the workplace in my experience.