Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace The concept of analyzing people has driven the development of various techniques to identify and define specific traits in an individual. There are IQ tests, learning styles, and personality profiles, the organizer, the thinkers, or the persuaders which one matches. The data collected is applied to disclose career paths, growth, and success. Today’s business environment is demanding; workers are asked to do more with less. Employees are accountable for their performance, which intensifies the anxiety to achieve. To cope with the stress the ability to monitor and recognize emotions is indispensable. Psychologist and writer Daniel Goleman commercialized a theory known as emotional intelligence with the best-selling book Emotional Intelligence. The publication examined Goleman’s argument that intellectual intelligence is not enough on its own to be successful in life that non-cognitive capabilities are required to flourish (Goleman, 1998). Emotional intelligence is the aptitude to distinguish, manage, and evaluate emotions in yourself and others, and utilize the knowledge to effectively communicate (Cherniss & Goleman, 2001). Emotional Intelligence (EI) The idea of Emotional Intelligence dates back to the early 20th century, the phrase first emerged in 1985 in a thesis written by Wayne Payne (Motivation Theories, 2015). Emotional intelligence impacts various façades of daily life, both personal and professional.
The book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, provides an alternative approach to how a person achieves success. This book does not focus on the conventional determinant of success, such as formal education and training, experience, and intelligence level (IQ). Although all these components contribute greatly to ones achievement of success, these factors are not the only factors to be considered in whether a person will be successful or not. This book focuses on the concept that it refers to as emotional intelligence (EQ), which is one’s ability to recognize and effectively understand his/her emotions in a productive and rational manner.
The one who actually made the term emotional intelligence out of academic circle and be well accepted by the public as a daily used term was Harvard University professor Daniel Goleman and his book Emotional Intelligence which was the bestseller around countries. His opinion set off a rush to emotional intelligence globally. Goleman discovered that one’s emotional intelligence has an imperative impact on his performance in the workplace emotional intelligence either as an employee or as a leader and as the position gets higher, emotional intelligence’s influence gets greater. In addition, emotional intelligence’s impact is even more obvious on certain types of work such as marketing, sales and customer service.
Two psychologists, John Mayer and Peter Salovey, first introduced the concept of “emotional intelligence”, or EI, in a journal article in 1990 (Goleman, 2005). It was then popularized in 1995, with the book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman. Goleman posited that EI is as important, if not more important, than IQ in terms of success in academics, business, and interpersonal relationships (2005).
With the publication of Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence in 1995, the business world got an answer to a question that had been plaguing it for decades: “Why did some people of a high IQ struggle at managing teams while other leaders of lower IQ excel at it”? Goleman asserted that the traditional measurement of IQ (intelligence quotient) was not enough to determine a good leader. Schools and universities concentrated on developing the cognitive and analytical part of the brain, while the teaching of how the emotional side of the brain worked was ignored. Goleman defined this “emotional intelligence” of a human being as a set of competencies that distinguish how one manages
Emotional Intelligence is one of the topics that gain popularity in business discussion nowadays. To understand what Emotional Intelligence is and how it may help to build a better personality and better worker, this paper is to discuss about to two main competencies of Emotional Intelligence. The first one is the Personal Competencies and the other is Social Competencies. By understanding these competencies, employees gain the knowledge of how to create a better workplace not just for those individuals, but for others around them, as well.
These five different components of emotional intelligence are listed as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. The self-awareness, self-regulation and social skills, concepts in Working with Emotional Intelligence overlap with the same major concepts of self-awareness, self-management, and relationship management in the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Motivation is explained as a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or statistics; a propensity pursue goals with energy and commitment and empathy is explained as the ability to understand and accept the emotional makeup of other people (Marquis & Hutson, 2015). The author of Working with Emotional Intelligence, Goleman, D., believed that all individuals have a rational thinking mind and an emotional feeling mind and that both influence action (Marquis & Hutson, 2015). Goleman also believed the goal of emotional intelligence was emotional literacy – being self-aware about one’s emotions and recognizing how they influence subsequent action (Marquis & Hutson,
Managing human emotions plays a critical role in everyday functioning. After years of lively debate on the significance and validity of its construct, emotional intelligence (EI) has generated a robust body of theories, research studies, and measures (Stough, Saklofske, & Parker). There has been work and many ideas by Jack Mayer, Peter Salovey, David Caruso, Daniel Goleman, and Steve Hein to name a few. All researchers have different interpretations of the term emotional intelligence and different visions of what emotional intelligence can mean for humanity (Hein, 2005). In 1985 Wayne Leon Payne, then a graduate student at an alternative liberal arts college in the USA, wrote a doctoral dissertation which included the term “emotional intelligence” in the title. This seems to be the first academic use of the term “emotional intelligence.” In the next five years no one else seems to have used the term “emotional intelligence” in any academic paper. Then in 1990 the work of two American university professors, John Mayer and Peter Salovey, was published in two academic journal articles. Mayer and Salovey were trying to develop a way of scientifically measuring the difference between people’s ability in the area of emotions. They found that some people were better than others at things like identifying their own feelings, identifying the feelings of others, and solving problems involving emotional issues. Since 1990 these professors
Formally, Emotional Intelligence, commonly abbreviated as EI is defined as the capacity to reason of and about emotion so as to enhance reasoning or rather thinking. It is also defined as the capability of an individual to recognize and understand the meaning of emotions, their relations and use this information to reason critically and solve problems based on these emotions (Dann 78). The first Emotional Intelligence theory was initially developed by early psychologists back in the 1970s and 80s. This study was advanced and has been advancing over the past years. It has become very important in organizational development and developing people in the process. This is because the Emotional Intelligence or rather Emotional Quotient
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a critical skill in each area of our life, beginning with the personal life and ending on the work environment. It can improve an individual's social effectiveness, and allow for the better understanding of how our emotions work. “Emotional intelligence involves the ability to recognize and control one's own emotions and the emotions of others and refers to a variety of competencies and skills such as empathy and self-control that affect personal and professional outcomes” (Butler, Kwantes, and Boglarsky, 2014).
Emotional intelligence is a phrase used in the business world to explain one’s competency in displaying and handling one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of others around him or her. In his book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains the importance of Emotional Intelligence and how it is more imperative for one to have high Emotional Intelligence rather than a high IQ. This is because, no matter how talented someone may be in their line of work, he or she must still be able to work well with others and express their ideas. Goleman categorizes Emotional Intelligence into five emotional elements and then further into emotional competencies. He has separated each
“Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage our emotions and those around us, therefore, this quality gives individuals a variety of skills, such as the ability to manage relationships, navigate social networks, influence and inspire others. Every individual possesses different level, but in order for individuals to become effective leaders, they will need a high level of emotional intelligence. In today’s workplace, it has become a highly important
The book “Working with Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman deals with the emotional assets and liabilities of individuals in organizations. Emotional intelligence is traits that go beyond academic achievement or IQ. As a matter of fact he points out that high academic intelligence can sometimes stand in the way of emotional intelligence. Broadly speaking, emotional intelligence determines how well we handle difficult situation, which cannot be solved by logic, but more by a “feel” for the situation. These attributes are very hard to measure, which is why many standardized tests, whether academic or for employment, fail to measure these attributes, even though these are the one which determine
How can you tell if someone has high emotional intelligence, for example, and how can you recognize it in yourself? In the following pages, we’ll explore these questions, taking each of the components of emotional intelligence—self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill—in turn. Evaluating Emotional Intelligence Most large companies today have employed trained psychologists to develop what are known as “competency models” to aid them in identifying, training, and promoting likely stars in the leadership firmament.
In the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, the central thesis that he tries to point out is that emotional intelligence may be more important than I.Q. in determining a person’s well being and success in life. At first I didn’t know what Goleman was talking about when he said emotional intelligence, but after reading the book I have to say that I agree completely with Goleman. One reason for my acceptance of Goleman's theory is that academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. To me, emotions can be just as intelligent as your I.Q. In this essay I hope to provide sufficient evidence to show why I agree with Goleman’s thesis on emotional intelligence.
This paper is aimed at evaluating my own emotional intelligence while subsequent parts of the paper will discuss how this emotional intelligence affects other aspects of human life like business, religion and politics. In this part of the paper, I will reflect on and demonstrate the skills and the knowledge needed to enable one to accurately see and understand the emotional strengths, weaknesses and nuances of other workers at the workplace.