What Is Emotional Intelligence?
Coined in 1990, Emotional Intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions as well as recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others. Emotionally intelligent people are aware of how to make work, and the world, a better place.
What are the Pillars of Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence breaks down into four main categories when trying to understand it. The metric to measure emotional intelligence is explained below
1. Self Awareness
- The power to know yourself and understand your feelings.
- Understanding your strengths and weaknesses and the way it will affect others.
- Believing in yourself.
2. Self-Management
- Controlling your emotional self at the right time also being self-motivated displays your potential to manage yourself at the right time.
- Showcasing trust in others and being honest to everyone around by adapting to the environment thus having an optimistic nature
3. Social Awareness
- Empathizing with others around and contributing your bit to the group by being a good listener eventually being helpful if and when required.
- Ability to prove your point in a strong way thus making it being delivered successfully and sensing the comprehension from the audience at the same time.
4. Relationship Management
- Having the ability to manage conflict and difference of opinions by establishing peace with the situation.
- Recognizing the need for change and providing solutions at the right time thus influencing people for working better as Team
Why Emotional Intelligence Matters in the Workplace?
In a popular book, Goleman argued that emotional intelligence could be just as important, if not even more so, at predicting success in life. Emotional Intelligence (EI), he claimed to also play a particularly important role in the workplace.
Below are more about why EI matters at work below:
1) Better professional relationships
- By developing positive and harmonious working relationships.
- Improving your EI will enable you to interact and communicate with others more effectively and better your professional relations.
2) Increased personal effectiveness
- Emotional Intelligence is highly being regarded as a major key in personal success.
- Being able to manage yourself and others successfully is often a crucial factor when it comes to success.
3) Improved thinking skills
- It can help you to gain new perspectives on old difficulties, hence improving your problem-solving skills and decision-making abilities.
- It also helps you with developing your strategic thinking capability and your ability to motivate and inspire.
4) Better self-management
- EI gives you the tools to become more self-aware equips you with the strategies to use your emotions effectively.
5) Improved leadership capability
- Leaders with high levels of emotional intelligence have an advantage over their less well-equipped individuals.
- EI can help you to develop empathy and understand more about other people and this is crucial to the ability to inspire, influence, motivate and persuade them in a management or leadership role
How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence is not only the ability to identify and manage your own emotions, but it’s also the ability to recognize the emotions of others. Studies by Johnson & Johnson showed that the highest performers in the workforce were also those that displayed higher emotional intelligence.
1. Respond instead of reacting.
People with EQ know how to stay calm during stressful situations. They don't make impulsive decisions that can lead to even bigger problems. They understand that in times of conflict the goal is a resolution.
2. Take critique well.
By understanding the source of critique people with high EQ tend to understand the nature and root of the critique, thus measuring it’s effect to others
3. Be approachable and sociable.
People with EQ come off as approachable. They smile and give off a positive presence.
People with EQ have great interpersonal skills and know-how to communicate clearly, whether the communication is verbal or nonverbal examples of emotional intelligence in the workplace.
Today, everyone is learning to be an effective manager or a model employee. How? You need to practice empathy for your colleagues – otherwise, you will never be a cohesive unit or profitable enterprise.
Let’s explore the many examples of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Here are some of them.
People listen to each other in meetings
Ever been in a meeting when it seems like everyone is talking over each other, trying to get the loudest or last word? These are also tell-tale signs of a lack of emotional intelligence.
When people are allowed to speak, and others listen, without interruptions, it’s a good sign of EQ at play.
It shows respect between parties and is more likely to lead to a constructive conclusion for the meetings.
People have the freedom to be creative
Creative impulses are a strong one; try to cage it and it will find a way to break free.
Depending on the nature of your organization, a high value may or may not be placed on creativity, but creative people will always deem it important, regardless.
Ideally, you have a good match of creative people and an innovative organization.
Requesting Feedback from Everyone
The drawback of our professional existence is the quarterly or annual review. The suspenseful music plays, your heart beats 1,000 times a minute (or was that from your eighth cup of coffee of the day?), and the sweat drips when you’re asked to go into the manager’s office and chat about your performance.
To understand the importance of feedback better, here is a blog for you: The Power Of Anonymous Employee Feedback
People meet out of work time
The social impulse in people is also a strong one. There are different ways of being social, and it doesn’t mean that everyone should be meeting for after-work drinks every Friday, though that’s totally fine!
Whether colleagues are having a chat over a sip of tea, go for lunch together, or catching the train into work, these all sum up to the signs of social behaviour. All of these things eventually contribute to the good rapport between colleagues away from their workplace.
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence begins with self-awareness. We often go through life reacting, never really thinking about how or why we respond the way we do.
But you can develop self-awareness by asking the right questions. For example, begin by asking yourself: In what situations do I find that emotions work against me?
Once you've identified a few areas, you can then ask someone you trust to give you feedback on the same question. It could be a family member, a close friend, or another confidant. Be clear that you're working to improve yourself and you want them to answer the question honestly; then, allow enough time so that they can give the question some thought. Emotions are beautiful--they make us human. But they can also lead to major regrets if we allow them to control us. When you instead strive to harness the power of your emotions, you avoid becoming a slave to your feelings.
That’s how emotions work for you not against you. Rather, it's the ability to search for deeper understanding when beneficial--or to simply enjoy the moment when not.
Emotional intelligence begins with self-awareness. We often go through life reacting, never really thinking about how or why we respond the way we do.
It's important to know that emotional intelligence isn't about dissecting every feeling you have.