Emotional Intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence?

• It’s the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the  emotions of people around you.
• It’s your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behaviour and relationships
• The capacity to be aware of, control & express one’s emotions & to successfully handle interpersonal relationships

Components of Emotional Intelligence:

Emotional Intelligence has five (5) components.  These are:

1. Self-Awareness:  This is the ability to recognize and understand your moods and emotions and how they affect others.
2. Empathy:  It is the ability to recognize and understand others’ motivations and place yourself in their situations/shoes. This is essential for building and leading teams.   
3. Motivation:  It is the drive to pursue goals for personal reasons other than for some kind of reward (internal motivation).
4. Self-Regulation:  It involves being able to control one’s desires/impulses and to think before acting.
5. Social Skills:  This is the ability to manage relationships, build networks and connect with people.

Importance of Emotional Intelligence at the workplace:

Emotional Intelligence can make employees more productive than those with comparatively lower emotional intelligence.

At any workplace, every employee has a number of job tasks that they are required to perform.  Employees are required to maintain adequate terms and relationships with the people around, i.e., superiors, colleagues, stakeholders etc.

Job duties/tasks also require employees to interact with each other to a great extent and for this they have to analyze situations as well as the viewpoints of others and have to exercise emotional intelligence. 

Academics and technical proficiency alone is not enough to perform one’s job tasks, it is also imperative to pair these with self-management, self-control and effective interpersonal relationships that would contribute to the achievement of the desired goals and objectives. 

Emotional Intelligence where managerial skills are concerned, also enables managers, supervisors and leaders to implement effective leadership skills within their teams and encourage members to give their best performance.

Benefits of Emotional Intelligence:

Some of the benefits of emotional intelligence include:

• Effective leadership skills
• Improved communication
• Less workplace conflicts
• Better problem-solving skills

Conclusion:

Note:

1. Emotional Intelligence is not about being nice all the time

It’s about being honest

2. Emotional Intelligence is not about being “touchy-feely”

          It’s about being aware of your feelings

3. Emotional Intelligence is not about being emotional

          It’s about being smart with your emotions

REMEMBER:

• Distinguish between thoughts and feelings
• Use your feelings to help guide decision making
• Take more responsibility for your feelings
• Show respect for and validate other people’s feelings
• Show you care and build trust by displaying sensitivity and concern
• Listen twice as much as you speak
• Feel energized and not angry
• Use your energy and enthusiasm to motivate others

With improved emotional intelligence, you will achieve greater career success and satisfaction; stronger personal relationships with your workmates, increased optimism and confidence in your work; and overall better health.

Signed out from the HR’s Desk