Emotional intelligence at work and emotions at the company

If we look around us, we see how the people who achieve the greatest success in organizations are not always the ones with the most capabilities, and not even the ones with the most merits and real effectiveness.

These are all important parameters, but not enough: true success requires something more: the ability to treat the right people conveniently: emotional intelligence.

We all know that emotional intelligence is the ability to become aware of your own feelings, as well as those of others, and manage them in a beneficial way.

Those who have emotional intelligence recognize their feelings and this allows them to express them appropriately, it is difficult to lose their nerves when one understands their own feelings. On the other hand, understanding the feelings of those around us allows us to take them into account as people, and recognize them. This ability is key to ensuring that our employees, colleagues and superiors feel satisfied or predisposed to make an effort.

As we will see, this ability to properly tune in and handle feelings results from a way of thinking, and is therefore something that can be learned and cultivated.

If we want to improve our emotional intelligence we must start by seeing how we are and what we do.

When dealing with our subordinates, colleagues and superiors. To do this, it is necessary to make a personal effort to confront oneself. It is about observing yourself in the "implacable mirror" that others are.

In the affective field, however interesting the theories may be, only those who get involved in the practice achieve effective changes in their career.

Daniel Goleman conducted a two-year investigation, part of which commissioned consulting firms and specialists to carry out new scientific analyzes of data from hundreds of companies. One of the findings was that "… IQ ranks second, below emotional intelligence, for outstanding job performance…". Based on these results, from more than 500 companies, Goleman wrote the book "Emotional intelligence in the company."

In an interview he stated that: emotional aptitude is something like a meta-ability, which determines how we can use any other talent, including the intellect, which is true, there is no human behavior without an emotion being present, and the positive management of they greatly facilitate success in the tasks we undertake.

Emotions and moods are strongly contagious within a company and a considerable part of its success or failure depends on that mood that spreads through the company. Some studies have even quantified the higher income that a business in the service sector can obtain thanks to a good emotional climate among its employees. Goleman affirms: the income of a company grows 2% for every 1% improvement in that emotional environment and that the climate of a company depends up to 70% on the actions of its leader.

With this approach, more focused on the business and managerial world, Goleman emphasizes that “Emotional aptitude is important above all in leadership, a role whose essence is to make others perform their respective jobs more effectively. Leaders' ineptitude reduces everyone's performance: it wastes time, creates harshness, erodes motivation and dedication to work, accumulates hostility and apathy. This North American assures that a manager who manages to apply these skills with efficiency, manages to influence between fifty and seventy percent in the organizational climate of the company.

Another book written by this excellent researcher was "The Resonant Leader Believes More", in which he states that great leaders are people who know how to manage their emotions, that their main mission is to encourage, persuade, motivate, listen and encourage resonance.

Certainly the new model advocated by the leadership of this century must take into account the emotional aspects. Leadership should not rely so much on authority as on the art of relationships.

Lack of emotional intelligence can have a negative impact on people and even ruin their careers. It is necessary to clarify that this type of intelligence is not established at birth, it is created and fed with the development of our lives.

The manager must be able to handle complex situations of relationships and human behavior, for which it is necessary, among other skills, to know how to establish a relationship of understanding and trust between the people who lead, to know how to listen, to be able to persuade in a convincing way, and to generate enthusiasm and commitment in people.

But, to achieve this, it is necessary that you first be able to identify your state of mind, know your strengths and weaknesses, to exploit the former and neutralize the latter, control your emotions and be able to motivate yourself with what you do. If you are not able to feel enthusiasm for what you do, it will be difficult to generate enthusiasm in those around you. They say that Leon Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer, once said "Happiness is not in doing what you want, but in wanting what you do."

After studying hundreds of companies, Goleman concluded that emotional intelligence skills increase the higher you move up in the organization. The higher the position, the less important are technical skills and the more important are emotional intelligence skills.

This scientist recognizes that some jobs, such as management, require at least a minimum of knowledge to guarantee a certain performance, without reaching excellence, but that the highest percentage of factors to achieve success in the task corresponds to factors emotional and in a particular way what he calls emotional competencies. It is argued that the brightest professionals in addition to their own academic intelligence, are skilled at recognizing their own feelings and those of others.

They are able to control their moods, impulses and internal resources.

Emotional abilities rarely appear in isolation and for an individual to achieve a remarkable performance at work or in society he needs to master and apply a wide number of emotional competencies, defined as the degree of skills that we are able to achieve in the domain of our faculties, both sensitive and intellectual. Emotional Competence itself is the sample of the extent to which a person has known and been able to transfer that potential to the actions of their daily life.

«Emotional intelligence comprises a series of skills that Dr. Daniel Goleman characterizes as generic, hierarchical and interdependent. In other words, each requires the others to develop, they serve as a basis for each other and are necessary to varying degrees depending on the types of work and the tasks that are performed. "

Essentially, emotional intelligence provides people with the ability and ability to regulate their counterproductive emotional forces and impulses, many of them unconscious, which boycott their relationships (personal, family, social) and quality of life.

It recognizes that a person possesses an emotional intelligence determined by qualities such as: self-control, empathy, enthusiasm, persistence, motivation, dexterity, self-awareness and confidence.

People who show good emotional competence enjoy an advantageous situation in the various domains and dimensions of life, for this reason they feel more satisfied with themselves and are more effective in the tasks they undertake.

Consequently, emotions determine the level of performance of which we are capable, in a state of balance or emotional imbalance, as well as determine what type of relationship we will maintain with our subordinates (leadership), with our superiors (adaptability) or with our peers (work team up). Emotions determine how we respond, communicate, behave, and function at work and / or company.

In his book, "Working with Emotional Intelligence," Goleman identifies mood-dependent competencies that determine successful job performance. These are 25 skills that are derived from five areas - self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills - of the theory formulated by Salovey and Mayer (1990).

People who have a greater understanding and clearer certainty of their emotions know how to better direct their own lives, be aware of oneself.

Emotional self-control gives us the ability to delay momentary gratification and stifle aggressive impulsivity.

In work life, motivation is the essence of success. To such an extent that one of the greatest business leaders of this century, Lee Iaccocca, once said: “Nothing is more important in business management than knowing how to motivate people, a motivation is worth ten threats, two pressures and six memoranda ».

Empathy can be developed by paying special attention to understanding and interpreting the non-verbal communication channels that accompany all communication. Looking at the tone of voice, gestures, body and facial expressions of others helps to intuit how they really feel.

Some people are skilled at controlling their own feelings, but on the other hand, they are inept at guessing the emotional disorders of others. The gaps in our emotional ability can be overcome through effort and positive concern for our employees.

A widespread misconception is to always view conflicts negatively. On the contrary, they can be a positive experience, generating new ideas or solutions and catalyzing change. Because conflict is not itself a problem, the question is how it is handled. Good conflict management saves time; increased opportunity to do real work. Many managers waste more time avoiding or smoothing differences than talking openly about them.

In general, emotional intelligence is one that allows you to interact with others, work in a group, tolerate difficult and conflict situations, strengthen emotional ties, establish social empathy, control impulses and maintain adequate levels of humor.

The lack of the above skills is now called emotional illiteracy.

According to Goleman, emotional intelligence at work is manifested in dispositions that must be developed, both by managers and specialized personnel, among them are: organizational commitment, initiatives that stimulate improvement and quality in the execution of tasks. different tasks, incentives for the development of communication and trust between employees, the different bosses and directors of the company, building relationships inside and outside the company that offer a competitive advantage, the incentive for constant collaboration, support and exchange of sources and resources, innovation, risk and confrontation of any situation as a team and a passion for learning and continuous improvement.

Emotionally intelligent people are realistic about their goals and achieve internal balance, relying primarily on strengths to minimize weaknesses and threats. They are constructive people, that is, they are able to take advantage of what is offered to them, overcoming all the obstacles that are presented to them. It should be noted that it is not about repressing the feeling or emotion that we do not like, this can lead to personality imbalances, but rather about adjusting the emotional expression to the context.

The objective is to give intelligence to the emotional life.

It is important to strive for the achievement of an emotionally intelligent organization, so that each of its employees results in benefits that improve their quality of life.

Any program that aims to influence attitudes and get energy for change and improvement must have emotional intelligence workshops.

By using our emotions to reinforce performance and work relationships, we are not only challenged to foster, but also to inspire, the development of emotional intelligence among company employees.

A manager who manages to apply these skills efficiently, manages to influence between fifty and seventy percent in the organizational climate of the company.