Why Is Emotional Intelligence Becoming Increasingly Popular in the Workforce for Organizations?
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of your own and others’ emotions and to use emotional information strategically to make better decisions. People who build those skills are more effective as leaders because they make better decisions and know how to develop loyalty and engagement among their teams.
Contrary to what many people think, emotional intelligence is not about being emotional. Our emotions are a highly evolved survival instinct for coping with threats and seeking safety and belonging. The ability to sense danger–even before you even know what the danger is–is an evolutionary advantage. As social beings dependent on others for our survival, our emotional systems clue us into sensitive interpersonal information that goes beyond what we cognitively recognize: body language, silence, subtle eye movements, and even far away sounds or a subtle change in the tone of someone’s voice.
Our emotions are at work in offices and organizations as we go about our daily lives and business, perceiving threats and seeking rewards and safety, mostly under the radar of conscious thought. Managers, whether they know it or not, stimulate the threat or reward center of direct reports every time they talk to a subordinate or walk by.
In an office, a threat response can be triggered by small actions, like when someone interrupts us, cuts us off, dismisses our ideas, or tries to infringe on our influence or territory. Lack of respect and not being listened to are two top threats in the modern office. Even something as subtle as a facial expression or body language by a manager or co-worker can set off our internal alarm bells.
When we perceive a threat, no matter how small, we’ll feel our stress level rising and an instinct to fight, fight, or freeze. We are all familiar with the ways people fight in the office—backstabbing, power struggles, turf wars, undermining, etc. The flight response shows up in avoidance tactics like routine lateness, “forgetting” to invite someone to a meeting, and in extreme cases, absenteeism. As for the freeze response, we have all seen someone freeze when they are put on the spot, and most of us know someone in the office who won’t speak up at all. Any of these are classic responses to feeling hostility, and when it happens, we stop getting work done and get busy defending ourselves. Domineering behavior in the office is a major distraction from productivity.
On the other hand, when someone comes along with a kind word, speaks up to support us, or connects as a friend, our anxiety goes down and our sense of connectedness and safety rises. Where there is calm and safety, rational thinking can prevail, and people have more energy to focus on the task at hand.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to bring emotional information up from the unconscious level into the cognitive realm and using it strategically. It means calibrating your sensitivity to threats and rewards to the demands of modern work life. People who are emotionally intelligent are good at identifying what is causing emotions to arise and make a conscious effort to decide the best way to control and respond to those feelings. Those who are empathetic to what others feel and understand why other people feel the way they do, can help influence and manage even difficult situations to create better outcomes.
Some people think emotions have no place at work and that we should work as hard as possible to ignore or subdue emotional responses when we’re on the job. This is often an attempt to be as purely rational as possible. Not only is this impossible, it’s not desirable. Being purely rational makes you about as good at making decision or handling other people as Alexa or Siri. In nearly every situation, a purely rational response that doesn’t consider how people feel is a poor response. Research has found that people who do their best to ignore their emotional responses actually become less adept at managing office life and relationships and will often find themselves left behind as others more sensitive collaborate and build effective teams.
Defining Emotional Intelligence for Today’s Leaders
According to Daniel Goleman, whose findings have been corroborated by the Harvard Business Review, Korn Ferry, and others, emotional intelligence accounts for almost 90 percent of what sets high performers apart from others who have similar skills and knowledge.
The skills we define as Emotional Intelligence generally fall into four categories.
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship management
At the foundation of emotional intelligence is emotional self-awareness. Self-awareness is related to self-confidence and the ability to connect how you feel to events that are happening around you.
Once you understand what you are feeling and why, the next level of emotional skills involves your ability to manage your emotions. One central skill in this realm is being able to dial in assertiveness, expression, and other skills just right. That means being able to value yourself equally with others so that you are neither so strong that you’re perceived as overbearing, nor so weak that you’re perceived as ineffectual.
Once you are aware of your own emotions and can manage them, you can build your ability to be aware of others’ emotions and help them manage. Most notably, this includes your ability to empathize with others. When the people around you feel you understand how they feel, their connection to you grows, as does their effort and motivation. Everyone wants to do well when they feel like a valued member of a safe community.
When you can master these four skillsets, you have the ability to manage even tricky situations that inherently involve emotions, including decision making, conflict resolution, and managing stress. You learn how to how to remain flexible and empathetic while solving problems, and how to remain optimistic in the face of setbacks in order to inspire and perform even under difficult circumstances. As you build trust and loyalty with others, your leadership and influence will naturally grow.
Why is Emotional Intelligence popular in the workforce for organizations?
Organizations are increasingly drawn to emotional intelligence coaching and assessments because it is the one skillset that is predictive of success. Education, IQ, leadership, and personality tests can be useful, but they don’t predict success. People with more emotional intelligence simply become better leaders.
Furthermore, emotional intelligence can be learned and measured, which are two additional and powerful reasons organizations are increasingly turning to emotional intelligence as a focus in training and development programs as well as in hiring. Using scientifically validated assessments, individuals and organizations can track improvement and connect their emotional intelligence gains to performance and relationship improvement.
Studies show that people in leadership positions with high emotional intelligence are four times more likely to be rated as high performing than leaders with average or lower emotional intelligence. In short, emotional intelligence is increasingly the performance enhancer of choice for people and organizations.
Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence skills build on one another. It begins by being aware of your own emotions. How are you feeling and what gave rise to that feeling? Start to notice how your feelings fluctuate throughout the day. Notice how little it takes for someone to say something that makes you feel bad, and conversely, how little it takes for someone to make you feel better. Being able to connect your feelings to the events around you is essential in understanding and becoming more intelligent about how feelings work.
Once you start noticing how you feel, try controlling your own emotions. Instead of getting frustrated or angry about a problem, try talking to a colleague or your boss and solicit ideas for solving it. Listen carefully and don’t react. Just take their ideas under consideration and thank them. Decide later which ideas are right for you.
Last, turn your attention to helping others feel more positively engaged at work. You can make someone else feel better with a small act of kindness or generosity, like a smile or taking a minute to listen to them. Does their gratitude deepen your friendship? Do you find it easier to work with them? Use your new skills to build authentic relationships throughout the organization.
At first it may seem hard to control your feelings, but emotional intelligence is like any other skill: you get better with practice.