What Is Emotional Intelligence?q

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence involves a set of skills that defines how effectively you perceive, understand, reason with and manage your own and others' feelings. At work, Emotional Intelligence underpins how well employees get along as emotions are an inherent part of workplace activities at all levels.

Why emotions matter at work

Emotions affect the way people think and make decisions. For example:

• not hiring a candidate because "something just didn't feel right"
• trying a different approach when dealing with a disgruntled customer, or
• planning how to help an under-performing team member succeed.

Emotions also influence how people behave and interact at work, contributing to:

• tone of voice
• body language, and
• facial expressions.

Organisations benefit from developing workplace Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence makes a difference in the workplace. For example:

• more effective leaders communicate how they feel to inspire and generate confidence from others
• high performing sales professionals think more about how their customers feel to strengthen their selling relationships, and
• cohesive teams are more aware of how emotions help and hinder the team's performance.

Research shows that more effective Emotional Intelligence underpins these important workplace performance indicators.

But, what is workplace emotional intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence involves seven skills that relate to how often a person demonstrates emotionally intelligent workplace behaviours. The seven skills of the Genos EI model are:

• emotional self-awareness
• emotional expression
• emotional awareness of others
• emotional reasoning
• emotional self-management
• emotional management of others, and
• emotional self-control.

All information © Copyright Genos Pty Ltd 2007. Reprinted with permission.