Employees Corner (another hot stuff)
This morning, I was just thinking about Employees and Emotional Intelligence. Everyday, we meet and interact with lots of people. At work place, this is inevitable. These people are different and all have varied emotions. Generally, we always want other people to understand us, the way we feel and treat us that way. From my various research and experience, lack of emotional intelligence at work place affects our relationships at work, which ultimately results in in-effectiveness and in-productivity at work. When you feel right, you are propelled to work better than when you feel bad. Managing ourselves, managing other people and their emotions has therefore become very important to improve our work lives and relationships.
Read below excerpts from Five O'Clock Club's Article on "Developing Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace"
Emotional Intelligence in brief
Can You Do Your Job if People Don’t Like You?
-by Wendy Alfus Rothman of The Employment Roundtable
Let’s suppose that the morning of a big presentation you have an argument with your spouse. Not a big argument—maybe just one of those unnerving spats about who forgot to pick up the dry cleaning—so your morning doesn’t get off on the right foot. Then the train is running late, upping your stress level a bit more. When you arrive at work, there’s a problem with the elevators, causing more delay. Arriving at the conference room for your presentation, you find that the sound system doesn’t work and the caterer hasn’t shown up with refreshments. Your junior associate—who was supposed to call the caterer—bears the brunt of your anger that has been building since you left the house.
When we’re talking about Emotional Intelligence we’re talking about how to handle this kind of situation smartly so that no one is damaged, and working relationships don’t suffer.
But exactly what is emotional intelligence?
It can be defined as an actual intelligence: the mental ability to reason about emotions and the capacity to think better by using emotions. It can also be defined as a set of abilities that help us respond to the world around us appropriately.
Note the following points:
- Working with People Means Working with Emotions.
- Developing emotional intelligence in the workplace means acknowledging that emotions are always present, and doing something intelligent with them.
- Developing emotional intelligence could go a long way in helping companies be more productive and more profitable. The brilliant department head who is an unchallenged expert on a product or service will get superior results if he/she also knows how to stay motivated under stress, motivate others, navigate complex interpersonal relationships, inspire others and build teams. And, obviously, if you want to sell to clients, you can’t achieve great results if you’re not attuned to clients emotionally.
TAKE THE TEST
An IQ Test—For Your Emotional Intelligence
The following five multiple-choice questions provide insight into the complexities of applying emotional intelligence in real-life situations. At the end you will find the values assigned to each answer.
1. You are in a meeting when a colleague takes credit for work that you have done. What do you do?
a. Immediately and publicly confront the colleague over the ownership of your work.
b. After the meeting, take the colleague aside and tell her that you would appreciate in the future that she credits you when speaking about your work.
c. Nothing, it’s not a good idea to embarrass colleagues in public.
d. After the colleague speaks, publicly thank her for refer- encing your work and give the group more specific details about what you were trying to accomplish.
2. You are a manager in an organization that is trying to encourage respect for racial and ethnic diversity. You overhear someone telling a racist joke. What do you do?
a. Ignore it. The best way to deal with these things is not to react.
b. Call the person into your office and explain that their behavior is inappropriate and is grounds for disciplinary action if repeated.
c. Speak up on the spot, saying that such jokes are inappropriate and will not be tolerated in your organization.
d. Suggest to the person telling the joke that he go through a
diversity training program.
3. A discussion between you and your partner has escalated into a shouting match. You are both upset and in the heat of the argument, start making personal attacks which neither of you really mean. What are the best things to do?
a. Agree to take a 20-minute break before continuing the discussion.
b. Go silent, regardless of what your partner has to say.
c. Say you are sorry, and ask your partner to apologize too.
d. Stop for a moment, collect your thoughts, then restate your side of the case as precisely as possible.
4. You have been given the task of managing a team that has been unable to come up with a creative solution to a work problem. What is the first thing that you do?
a. Draw up an agenda, call a meeting and allot a specific period of time to discuss each item.
b. Organize on off-site meeting aimed specifically at encouraging the team to get to know each other better.
c. Begin by asking each person individually for ideas about how to solve the problem.
d. Start out with a brainstorming session encouraging each person to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how wild.
5. You have recently been assigned a young manager in your team and have noticed that he appears to be unable to make the simplest of decisions without seeking advice from you. What do you do?
a. Accept that he “does not have what it takes to succeed here” and find others in your team to take on tasks.
b. Get an HR manager to talk to him about where he sees his future in the organization.
c. Purposely give him lots of complex decisions to make so that he will become more confident in the role.
d. Engineer an ongoing series of challenging but manageable experi- ences for him, and make yourself available to act as his mentor.
SCORING:
Question 1: a: zero points; b. 5 points; c. zero points; d. 10 points
Question 2: a. zero points; b. 5 points; c. 10 points; d. 5 points
Question 3: a. 10 points; b. zero points; c. zero points; d. zero points
Question 4: a. zero points; b. 10 points; c. zero points; d. 5 points
Question 5: a zero points; b. 5 points; c. zero points; d. 10 points
Find your answer. Practical being Emotionally Intelligent at your workplace.
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Staff Writer
This article was written and edited by a staff writer.
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