Posted by: Celia in Untagged on Jul 14, 2009
So far we have looked at a broad definition of Emotional Intelligence. I want to really break it down so we can all get a good feel for how it fits in whilst continuing to tie it’s relevance back to the workplace and Social Media.
Unfortunately, poor emotional intelligence in the workplace is rampant and widespread – and the consequences of having to work alongside authoritarian CEOs and toxic co-workers have been well-documented by books like Work Would Be Great If It Weren’t For The People and popular television shows like “The Office”.
With a challenging global economy where downsizing is more the norm than the exception and with the ever increasing use of Social Media in business improving emotional intelligence in the workplace is not just a luxury or a nice thing to do – it’s an important business strategy and a smart, cost-efficient way to stay healthy as an organization.
So let’s look at what EI is exactly. ..
Emotional Intelligence involves a set of 7 skills that relate to how often a person demonstrates emotionally intelligent workplace behaviours.
These skills include:
1. Emotional self-awareness ?How well an individual demonstrates the skill of perceiving and understanding his or her own emotions. Do you really know how you feel? This helps us identify and understand the impact our feelings have on thoughts, decisions, and behaviours at work and at home.
2. Emotional Expression ?This aspect assesses how well an individual demonstrates the skill of expressing his or her emotions effectively. It is important to effectively express how you feel. When you choose not to express how you feel, those you work with still detect your feelings, no matter how good you may think you are at disguising them. However, those around you may not understand your feelings and therefore make erroneous assumptions about the nature and cause of your feelings. Expressing them effectively helps build TRUST and understanding. It also helps build perceptions of genuineness with those around you.
3. Emotional Awareness of Others ?This aspect assesses how well an individual demonstrates the skill for perceiving and understanding others' emotions. Perceiving and understanding the feelings of others is a fundamental element of interpersonal success and defines the quality of interpersonal relationships and enhancing leadership skills. This helps people engage, motivate, respond to, and connect with each other effectively. Imagine how your relationships would grow and evolve with your work colleagues, your partner or spouse, with your children if you had greater emotional awareness of how they were feeling? This helps us respond more appropriately and enables us to manage ourselves and others more effectively.
4. Emotional Reasoning?This aspect assesses how well an individual demonstrates the skill of utilising emotional information in reasoning, planning and decision-making. Feelings provide important information that can contribute to creative thinking, effective problem solving and decision making. For example, the feelings customers may have toward a product or service may help shape decisions regarding how to market the product or service. The feelings you may have about a job candidate or potential employer may inform hiring decisions.
5. Emotional Self-Management ?This assesses how well an individual demonstrates the skill of effectively managing his or her own emotions. The ability to foster positive moods and emotions for oneself is an important self-leadership attribute. It is also an important underlying attribute of effective stress management and adaptability. Emotional self-management concerns the skill of repairing negative feelings and maintaining beneficial positive feelings within oneself. At work, this skill contributes to our job satisfaction, your ability to cope with high work demands and occupational stress and your capacity to foster a positive working environment.
6. Emotional Management of Others ?This assesses how well an individual demonstrates the skill of influencing the moods and emotions of others. The ability to foster positive moods and emotions for others at work will result in an open work environment and others demonstrating a positive disposition within that work. Emotional Management of Others concerns the skill with which you are able to influence the moods, feelings and emotions of others. At work this skill can assist you in gaining greater productivity from others, handling workplace conflict, and creating satisfying and productive working relationships.
7. Emotional Self-Control ?This assesses how well an individual demonstrates the skill of effectively controlling strong emotions. The experience of strong emotions can override your capacity to think and act effectively when at work. Strong emotions can cause you to react to situations inappropriately and when the emotion subsides we often wish our response had been more controlled. It is similar and related to Emotional Self-Management. However, Emotional Self-Control is primarily concerned with our threshold for being able to cope with strong emotions.
On –line self assessments and multirater assessment can be completed in the workplace which effectively measure where you think you are and this can be compared to an assessment completed by peers and colleagues. This gives a very accurate account of where you are placed within each skill set and any areas of development. Basically what that all means is that others cannot assess your level of Emotional Intelligence unless you demonstrate it to them through your words and outward displays of behaviour often these days utilizing Online Social Media. So you may think you are doing that but is it being translated by others effectively?