Shawnee Love   •  
July 20, 2017

If you work alone and have zero contact with other humans (or animals), you don’t need emotional intelligence.  The rest of us do.  Fortunately, all of us have some measure of it and it is something we can all get better at.

At work, the more people with good emotional intelligence (EQi) that you have, the safer the workplace feels to the people.

What is emotional intelligence and why would this be so?

“Emotional intelligence (EI) is best defined as the ability to identify and manage emotional information in oneself and others and focus energy on required behaviors. Also known as “social intelligence” and commonly referred to as “soft skills”, these skills and competencies complement a person’s cognitive  and technical skills.” (Durek & Gordon, 2006 in Return on Emotion: Predicting and Improving Human Performance)

As for why, the EQi (aka EI) research I have seen confirms that when team members have good EQi:

• Innovation and team learning is higher because people are willing to ask questions and raise issues with the goal of making improvements and
• Team members feel welcomed and included in the team such that it is safe to raise concerns and ideas.

Given continuous improvement is one way to increase overall organizational performance, there is a business case here for ensuring all your employees have strong emotional intelligence.  Moreover, it becomes critical that emotional intelligence is something you measure and help your management and leadership develop, because employees follow their leaders when it comes to how they behave at work.

This blog series is focused on creating a well workplace so people can be their best at work.  Raising EQi in management and team members does exactly that.

So how do you get more emotionally intelligent?

Aside from letting the school of hard knocks work its magic, you can intentionally improve your EQi by following these steps:

1. Evaluate your current EQi (Beyond anecdotal feedback from colleagues, we have a great tool for establishing a starting measure if you are interested).
2. Learn what improved EQi looks like.  Whether you research, observe or receive coaching, understanding what constitutes good EQi behaviours is key to doing them yourself.
3. Practice!  There is no magic pill.  Like learning a new golf grip or song on the guitar, getting better always means feeling awkward at first and doing it over and over till it becomes natural.
4. Follow up by getting feedback on progress, celebrating successes and re-calibrating as necessary.

While you are never “done” learning when it comes to EQi, you will eventually get to the place where the improvements feel more like tweaks than full overhauls.  You may also notice that your staff look to you for exemplary EQi examples and you find it really easy to attract and keep great talent on your team.

More good reasons to improve Emotional Intelligence at your organization.