What is Emotional Intelligence and How Can It Help You Perform Better at Work?
In Sydney’s business environment and in New South Wales generally, today, we have a vibrant and growing business community. As with any market that’s growing at this pace, the demand for business talent and leadership is growing as well. To that end, there are many, many people who are trying hard to get ahead and find their niche here.
One talent that will assist you in getting ahead in this market is to tap into your emotional intelligence, also known as EI. There are many different competing definitions of just what emotional intelligence is, but most deal with a multimodal view of intelligence.
Simply put, if you have emotional intelligence in the high range, you become better at reading other people’s emotions. This means that you can read your coworkers’ emotions in a room, and you can help isolate problems that are occurring within a business better and sooner before they get out of hand.
If you have a high emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ, you can be identified in the workplace because you can use your own changing moods to focus on different parts of a project. Yes, you’re good at reading other people’s emotions, true, but are also good at identifying your own. This means that you can suit your mood to the task at hand. For example, if you have a high EQ, you are more likely to switch to a task within a project that suits your current emotional mood, rather than trying to “beat your head against a wall” if you’re stuck on one aspect and just not getting anywhere.
As you think about how to use your emotional intelligence in the workplace, think about it as a way of taking a glimpse at what other people are thinking. Because you can “read” people’s moods from their body language and facial expressions, this can give you a competitive edge over others, in any situation where you may be arranging a contract or doing other types of negotiations. In fact, if you watch someone read something, you can often read their reaction to a contract as they read it.
If you’re moving into a leadership position, the second part of emotional intelligence comes into play; what used to be called “charisma” or the ability to lead people. People with high EQs know what to tell others to get the most work out of them; they know when someone needs a bit of stress added to break through a problem, and they’re the ones who can read the body language of subordinates well enough to know when to step in and offer assistance, a pat on the back, or an “I appreciate what you’re doing,” for example.
It can be useful to engage emotional intelligence if you’re doing public speaking, but it’s best used in small groups and one-on-one situations. You may be able to enhance it by practicing, but its limits are nonetheless finite and to be respected.
All businesses, of course, value people who can “get along well with others.” However, emotional intelligence’s model indicates that this isn’t necessarily something you can learn. Whether or not that’s true, being aware of how you fit in on the emotional intelligence scale and being aware of what both your abilities and limitations are as you use this ability to advance your career or to better serve your clients with your own business can only help you.
Filed under: Training