Building winning organisation through EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT WORKPLACES

You cannot be a teacher unless you touch the hearts of people On the job learning is ten times more potent than off the job learning A true teacher (which every line manager is expected to be needs to be a factor in the Emotionally Intelligent Workplace

 

 

When the book, Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Golean appeared in 1995, many business leaders agreed with the basic message that success is strongly influenced by personal qualities such as perseverance, self-control, and skill in getting along with others.

 ·     ·         They could point to "super sales persons" who had an uncanny ability to sense what was most important to the customers and to develop a trusting relationship with them.

·     ·         They could point to customer service employees who excelled when it came to helping angry customers to calm down and be more reasonable about their problems with the product or service.

·     ·         And they also could point to brilliant executives who did everything well except get along with people, or to managers who were technically brilliant but could not handle stress, and whose careers stalled because of these deficiencies. Business leaders well understood how valuable these "emotionally intelligent" employees are to an enterprise.

                                         

Current interest in "emotional intelligence" has raised the question of whether it is possible to improve the social and emotional competence of adult workers. Research in training and development, sports psychology, and behavior change suggests that it is possible, but the typical approach used in corporate training programs usually is flawed. Social and emotional learning is different from cognitive and technical learning, and it requires a different approach to training and development.

 

Cognitive learning involves fitting new data and insights into existing frameworks of association and understanding, extending and enriching the corresponding neural circuitry. But emotional learning involves that and more – it requires that we also engage the neural circuitry where our social and emotional habit repertoire is stored. Changing habits such as learning to approach people positively instead of avoiding them, to listen better, or to give feedback skillfully, is a more challenging task than simply adding new information to old.

 

According to studies, Emotional Intelligence is on the decline across all economic groups across all cultures. The most telling signs of this are in rising rates  of social disconnect among young people entering the workforce is a tech-overloaded era where people “speak” to one another in a workplace with emails and text messages

It is not surprising that  a survey of employers reveals that 4 in 10 people are not able to work cooperatively with fellow employees. Only one fifth of entry level applicants have enough self-discipline in their work habits. However when it comes to technical skill and the core competencies that make a company competitive can only be useful and effective  to the degree of emotional intelligence of its employees and leaders. 

This is the value of emotional intelligence in the workplace.... it is about how people and relationships function: relationships between colleagues, between directors and staff; relationships between the organization and its customers, stakeholders, suppliers There is the real , competitors, networking contacts, … everyone.

 The pain area which a business—or any organization—needs to address if it wants to lift itself from averagely successful to excellent: HOW WELL THE PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS WORK TOGETHER. And there is a ripple effect - leaders possessing emotional intelligence will create an effective work climate that will further develop emotional intelligence at the subordinate levels. Studies show that, outstanding organizations that employ individuals with a high degree of emotional intelligence hold the following in common:

 

1.     ·         Organizational commitment to a basic strategy

2.     ·         Collaboration, support and sharing resources

3.     ·         Initiative to stimulate improvements in performance

4.     ·         Innovation, risk taking and learning together

5.     ·         Open communication and trust-building with all stakeholders

6.     ·         A passion for competition and continual improvement

7.     ·         Building relationships inside and outside that offer competitive advantage 

          8.     ·         A balance between the human and financial side of the company's agenda A workforce which is motivated, productive, efficient, aligned with the business, and committed; confident, likable, happy, and rewarded

 

Achieving excellence as a leader is all about that rare combination of hard logic coupled with excellent soft skills, and the ability to balance these appropriately in any situation to achieve high performance. According to the Centre for Creative Leadership, when

'star' performing leaders were compared with average ones, nearly 90 per cent of the difference was attributable to emotional intelligence (EI) factors rather than cognitive abilities.

 Companies that consistently beat the market excel in both dimensions of capability and capacity. However, most organisations excel in capability (process, technical skill, systems), but are weak in terms of capacity (purpose, leadership, cultures, ideas, energy). EI sits firmly in the capacity camp and is often overlooked in favour of building capability through skills development.

 

In fact, research suggests that EI is twice as important as technical skills and IQ in maintaining excellent performance and can be the defining factor of great leaders. This is why EI is still relevant after 17 years - at a time when it's all about 'more for less' with training budgets cut and time at a premium - developing EI is crucial and pays dividends in terms of ROI. Organisations are increasingly seeking to improve leadership performance and shape leadership style by developing EI.

 

Being emotionally intelligent is about managing behaviour to become personally effective (self awareness) and interpersonally effective (awareness/empathy with others). When measuring EI, we look at the roots underpinning behaviour and address underlying attitudes and habits. This leads to insight into how emotions and behaviours impact performance, effectiveness, leadership and relationships with others at work and in life. Having an awareness of how we respond to a certain situation means we can change our thinking, emotional state, behaviour and attitudes.

 

Leadership Training with EI has benefitted participant immensely Participants demonstrated substantial shifts in leadership capacity, EI and in the scope and scale of their roles and responsibilities. They found that the EI assessment enabled them to develop a greater understanding of themselves and others, empowering them to approach commercial challenges differently."

 

Relationships are the fundamental unit of value creation in an organisation: it's not about people, it's the relationships between them that matters. Developing emotionally intelligent leaders allows them build a combination of skills, attitude and habits to better manage business relationships. This is achieved through an individual's ability to recognise and regulate emotions in themselves and others, and to use this understanding to manage thinking and behaviours. When emotional and relational capacity is developed, leaders build a common ground and trust within their teams because effective leaders have a high belief in others and get the best out of people through forming close bonds. Ultimately this means leaders are better able to succeed in an increasingly high-pressure environment.

 

Emotional Intelligence  AT THE ORGANISATION LEVEL  is about leadership, teamwork, management skills and partnership. Founded on excellent practice and understanding of communication, the emotionally intelligent business consistently excels in all these areas and has insight into how this happens. Emotional intelligence is applicable to every human interaction in business: from staff motivation to customer service, from brainstorming to company presentations. But the subject is far deeper and wider than these examples, and emotional intelligence must be able to understand and deal with:

• how we assess people
• how relationships develop
• how our beliefs generate our experience
• as well as resistance to change, power struggles, judgment, competition, vision, leadership, success, and much more.

Increasing one’s Emotional Intelligence in the workplace gives many benefits. A few of them are:

1.     ·         better stress management;

2.     ·         improve coworker’s relationships or your colleagues’

3.     ·         increase in performance and productivity;

4.     ·         improve collaboration with one’s colleague

5.     ·         deal more efficiently with your upper colleagues or coworkers;

6.     ·         better management of priorities;

7.     ·         And improve leadership skills and management skills.

 All said and done; Emotional Intelligence in the workplace is one of the best skills one can acquire, improve or enhance to increase managerial competence ; increase workplace excellence; improve the customer orientation levels; make people team culture based

 

With best wishes

Dr Wilfred Monteiro