Emotional understanding at the Workplace

Emotional Intelligence at the Workplace

Emotional Intelligence at the Workplace

Introduction

Emotional Intelligence Quotient, or EQ, is a period being used more and more within human assets agencies and which is making its way into boss board rooms. Emotional understanding became a popular buzzword in the early 90's and has progressed into being one of the hottest topics in business America. Many of us understand that we have strong feelings, but harnessing that knowledge to use it as a benefit in the workplace is another story. As IQ assess your cognitive understanding EQ assesses your emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is the road smarts or widespread sense in you reflecting on your proficiency to deal effectively with other people, your feelings, and your everyday work and communal environment.

Literature review

Wechsler (1958) Emotional understanding has been a catch saying in the business world since 1995 when Daniel Goleman released his first book on the subject. The concept of emotional understanding is not new; even the early developers of IQ checks appreciated that there was a “non-intellective” constituent of understanding that was not being measured with their assessment. In 1943 David Wechsler composed, “we will not anticipate to measure total understanding until our checks furthermore include some measure of the non-intellective components (Wechsler, 1958).” The notion of “non-intellective” understanding was largely disregarded until the 1980s when Howard Gardner composed about “multiple intelligences” proposing that there are a number of distinct constituents to intelligence including inter and intra-personal intelligences (Wechsler, D. 1958).

Salovey and Mayer, 1990, Salovey and Mayer coined the period emotional intelligence and suggested the following definition: “a type of communal intelligence, which engages the proficiency to supervise one's own and others' strong feelings, to distinguish amidst these emotions and to use this data to guide one's thinking and actions.” Salovey and Mayer proposed that this freshly defined emotional intelligence assisted as the base for Gardner's inter- and intra-personal intelligences (Salovey and Mayer, 1990).

More lately, Goleman has made an effort to differentiate between underlying emotional understanding and the competencies sustained by that intelligence. As many as twenty-five such competencies have been identified. For demonstration, effective tenacity of confrontation is an emotional competency that relies heavily on one's proficiency to unquestionably identify one's own strong feelings as well as the strong feelings of others. According to Goleman, these emotional competencies such as confrontation management, empathy, optimism, and influence are what characterise our emotional intelligence in the outside world. And it is these competencies which make emotional understanding so relevant to the workplace (Spencer, McClelland & Kelner, S. 1997).

There are five dimensions to emotional intelligence, which encompass self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy and social skills. Self-awareness is understanding your own limitations and perceiving how your actions will sway others. Self-regulation involves control and the ability to maintain yourself when your emotions are running high. Self-motivation is the proficiency to direct yourself and gaze towards conclusions. Empathy allows you to put yourself in the other person's footwear without taking on their ...