Understanding the Importance of Emotional Intelligence at Workplace
How would you like to increase your productivity, reach your goals, and become a more successful professional by using something you might already have? We are referring to your emotional intelligence.
Also known as EQ, emotional intelligence has transformed into a desirable personality trait that everyone strives to have. Besides, potential employers have also begun to see EQ (emotional intelligence) as a necessary trait for their potential employees.
During the hiring procedure, many companies have started setting emotional intelligence as their basic requirements. Potential employers see the enormous benefits of hiring a team that comprises a higher level of EQ – higher EQ means better employee performance.
The flip side of EQ is that it is a desirable trait; yet, not many people have this trait – if it doesn’t come inbuilt – most of the time, it has to be built and nurtured. If you are still somewhat confused about how emotional intelligence might benefit your professional life, read on to learn more!
Essential Steps for Developing EQ
If you aren’t in touch with your feelings right now, don’t worry – unlike IQ, EQ is not something everyone is born with. You can learn and practice EQ till you become a pro in it. Here are a few essential tips that will help you develop emotional intelligence:
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Become Self-Aware
We are very good critics of others but most of us fail to understand ourselves. Step back and consciously think about how you feel and emotionally react in certain challenging situations. Also, assess how your emotions might impact others. By becoming more self-aware, you will be mindful of your emotions, feelings, and thoughts – you will also develop empathy.
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Be Empathetic
Being empathetic isn’t as challenging as it sounds; all you need to do is be a good listener, think about others’ perspectives, and understand things from their viewpoint. To make the other person feel valued, you might want to indulge in questions and answers to make others feel understood.
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Practice Self-Regulation
When facing pressure at work and situations in your personal life, make a conscious effort to stay calm. There are three steps involved in self-regulation: consciously monitoring one’s behaviour, self-judging your behaviour, and reacting to your behaviour. You might also view self-regulation as a form of self-correction.
How Does EQ Benefit at Workplace?
Numerous researchers believe that emotional intelligence is built on five main components: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills, and internal motivation. You might find it easy to incorporate the small ways through which you can positively use such skills for your personal and professional life.
Emotional intelligence at work and outside the work might help you to persevere during demanding work periods, build and maintain more effective relationships, and respond calmly to rude clients and colleagues. Even if it is outside the workplace, let’s say in the parking lot, and you have gotten involved in an accident, based on your emotional intelligence, you will know to call a personal injury lawyer, stay calm, and let a professional take over instead of fretting over it and indulging in arguments.
Besides, emotional intelligence can also add real value to your business because by focusing on EQ, you will be able to understand what makes people tick and what will make them want to buy your services. You will understand people on a much deeper level – you might have heard the proverb before: emotions drive people, and people drive performance.
Not only can EQ help you get more done and achieve your targets, but it could also help you improve your client management skills. It is easy to see why emotional intelligence is a must-have trait for any successful employee (and employer).
Here are some potential benefits of EQ for employees:
Develop Leadership Skills
It happens all the time in nearly all organizations; employees might feel stagnant and stuck in a rut, which might make them feel frustrated to the extent that they feel not confident enough to take up a leadership position.
Understandably, work organizations offer their employees EQ training to push them forward and enable them to climb the corporate ladder. That said, emotional intelligence helps people develop certain skills that also help them in their personal life as well as work lives.
The skills include the ability to remain calm in a potential crisis, deal with potential angry clients and coworkers, be a perfect example of calm and self-control, and most importantly, deal with problems methodically.
Understand Constructive Criticism
Negative feedback is a hard pill to swallow, but we cannot avoid negative feedback altogether. Emotional intelligence teaches us to be calm instead of defensive and react aggressively to criticism. Emotional intelligence can teach potential employees to react calmly and positively to constructive criticism instead of laying the foundation of a hostile environment.
No one wants to deal with someone who cannot take criticism, make adjustments and improvements, and be a productive part of the workforce. By learning emotional intelligence, people can learn to assess, detect, and control the potential negative emotions they might feel during constructive criticism.
Instead of taking it as an offense, EQ enables employees to self-regulate their emotions and take any feedback in terms of constructive feedback, rather than getting offended by it.
Better Communication Skills
Emotional management is essential for improved communication skills, and it is crucial not only for one’s personal life but also professional life. Usually, when people fail to manage their emotions, they end up reacting with their feelings, which isn’t always suitable in a professional environment.
For instance, if there is an urgent problem that needs to be solved at one’s workspace and if they end up feeling resentful to their coworkers and even send out an email to vent about their feelings – this is a highly negative approach in a professional surrounding, and can even lead to a negative fallout with colleagues.
That said, emotional intelligence allows employees to take ownership of their feelings and recognize their emotions. EQ also enables employees to communicate their needs instead of expressing how they feel about a work-related issue.