Emotional Intelligence AT THE ORGANISATION LEVEL is about leadership, teamwork, management skills and partnership.
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 organisation and its customers,
stakeholders, suppliersThere is the real , competitors, networking contacts, …
everyone.
The pain area
which a business—or any organisation—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 agendaA 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
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