Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
Emotional intelligence (EI/EQ) can be defined as someone’s ability to perceive, understand and manage their own feelings and emotions. Emotional intelligence houses five distinct components: self-awareness, self-regulation, internal (or intrinsic) motivation, empath, and social skills. Emotional intelligence is a vital consideration in the workplace for two reasons. First, those with high EI/EQ and those who are managed by supervisors with high EI/EQ are linked to higher job satisfaction. Second, EI/EQ has a strong correlation with job performance. Researchers have found that emotional intelligence training boosted employee productivity and resulted in better evaluations of the employees that received the training from management.
Emotional Intelligence benefits the workforce in many ways including motivation. EI translates to better control of motivation and perhaps more motivation for surrounding coworkers. When employees with higher EI are able to more effectively understand and communicate with others, this promotes a common team vision. Emotional intelligence can also influence a person’s ability to be able to deal with change. Higher EI allows people to better manage stress, uncertainty, and anxiety that comes with working in various workplaces. A telltale sign of emotional intelligence is communication. Strong communication results in better relationships, better help-seeking strategies, and increased effectiveness when persuading or influencing others to believe or buy into something within the workplace. Finally, high EI correlates to better leadership skills and the ability to influence others.
What happens when a workplace has a lack of emotional intelligence? Two main ways that low EI can impact the workplace are communication and decision-making. The impact to communication include a lack of understanding of one’s emotions and the emotions of others; less effective communication of ideas and emotions to others; inappropriate communication-related behavior, such as outbursts or oversharing; or failing to communicate important information. Within decision making, low EI holders may experience incidental emotions surrounding decision-making, such as anxiety. Anxiety is commonly involved when making big decisions that will have significant impacts. Low EI can lead to too much risk-taking, not enough risk-taking, or judgment clouded by bias.
Emotional intelligence is crucial to understanding and managing one’s personalities, differentiating wants and needs, as well as displaying emotions. Navigating through all of this takes tact and cleverness. On the plus side, emotional intelligence can be learned and developed. Key areas to analyze within emotional intelligence include one’s perception of others and assessing how one’s actions impact others. Self-evaluation can provide a baseline for emotional intelligence and areas to improve on. Included at the end of this article are a few emotional intelligence tests to get started.
Emotional Intelligence Tests/Quizzes:
https://globalleadershipfoundation.com/geit/eitest.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/personality/emotional-intelligence-test
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/ei_quiz/take_quiz