How to help your staff improve their emotional intelligence
A healthy organisation relies on the healthy interaction of its employees. In the context of emotional intelligence, the members of such an organisation help each other to manage their emotions, communicate effectively, solve their own problems and those of others, are supportive listeners, and resolve conflicts readily. Imagine what it might be like to work in a company where everyone freely communicates with understanding and respect. Here’s how you can help to create such an organisation...
1. Ask if you want an emotionally intelligent organisation.
Do you want an organisation in which all employees take responsibility for increasing their own emotional intelligence by developing self-awareness and managing their emotions? Do you want a company whose staff know how to conduct themselves and how to relate to others? Do you want staff using their emotions to enhance, rather than sabotage, their own performance and relationships at work? You should.
2. Know the basics of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action’.*
According to Israeli psychologist Reuven Bar-On, there are five broad areas of emotional intelligence: intrapersonal, interpersonal, adaptability, stress management, and general mood.
Measuring emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence, according to Dr Reuven Bar-On, is ‘an array of non cognitive capabilities, competencies and skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in coping with daily environment demands and pressures and helps predict one’s success in life, including personal and professional pursuits’.
Recent research suggests that emotional intelligence, measured by Emotional Quotient (EQ), is possibly a better predictor of ‘success’ than more traditional measures of cognitive intelligence (IQ).
The Bar-On EQ-i instrument explores emotional intelligence in five areas, with 15 subsections or scales:
- Intrapersonal
- Emotional self-awareness
- Assertiveness
- Self-regard
- Self-actualization
- Independence
- Interpersonal
- Interpersonal relationships
- Empathy
- Social responsibility
- Adaptability
- Problem solving
- Reality testing
- Flexibility
- Stress Management
- Stress tolerance
- Impulse control
- General Mood
- Happiness
- Optimism
For details: www.mhs.com
Your employees will possess strengths and weaknesses in the range of EI areas; no-one is equally strong in all. To help your staff increase their emotional intelligence, you will need an understanding of these areas. See www.mhs.com for starters.
3. Determine which areas require the focus of your organisation.
Analyse the five areas that define emotional intelligence and decide which are the most relevant for the people in your organisation. For example, interpersonal skills are more important for salespeople than for assembly-line workers; and problem-solving skills are needed more by architects than by house-painters. Few workers will require strengths in all the five areas or the 15 subsections.
