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Essay about Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Case Study

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How Do You Feel?
"Emotional intelligence" is starting to find its way into companies, offering employees a way to come to terms with their feelings -- and to perform better. But as the field starts to grow, some worry that it could become just another fad.
From: Issue 35| June 2000 | Page 296 By: Tony Schwartz Illustrations by: Cynthia Von Buhler

Appreciation, apprehension, defensiveness, inadequacy, intimidation, resentment. Twenty midlevel executives at American Express Financial Advisors are gathered in a room at a conference center outside Minneapolis. Each has been asked to try to convey a specific emotion -- by reading a particular statement aloud. The challenge for listeners is to figure out which emotion each speaker …show more content…

"We're introducing people to a whole new language."
Most attendees of these emotional-competence workshops are compelled to learn a new language for one simple reason: They're visiting a foreign land. Over the past 50 years, large companies have embraced a business dictum that told workers to check their emotions at the door. A legacy from the days of "The Organization Man" and "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," this never-spoken but widely shared policy reflected the sensibility that frowned on employees who brought messy emotions and troubling personal issues to work.
Employees, for their part, complied with that prevailing mind-set. Until recently, the workplace was dominated by male employees -- and most of them were just as eager as their employers were to avoid the ambiguous complications and unexplored terrain of personal feelings.
One notable exception to that tacit pact occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the influence of the human-potential movement prompted a brief corporate romance with such experiential techniques as sensitivity training and encounter groups. But those approaches lacked the rigor to endure. Before long, business got back to business. A backlash set in, and the focus returned to no-nonsense training methods that were highly

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