Page 1 of 1

Why do you need emotional intelligence at work?

Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 9:50 am
by jobaidur2228
In the dynamically changing world of business, where practical skills are no longer sufficient to achieve success, it is worth taking care of soft skills, including emotional intelligence. We suggest how to do it and how to use it in professional life.

cover-13-667c06285e7ca998546640.webp
Thick
Barbara Gruba,
editor of Laba

Based on the latest research, trends, and opinions of business people, Forbes has identified emotional intelligence as the most important skill that managers should have in 2024. However, for the skills associated with it to have a real impact on the functioning of the company, all employees should take care of it , regardless of their position. Each of us faces professional challenges every day, which emotional intelligence would be useful to solve. How to develop it, and thanks to it, build a good atmosphere between co-workers and manage responsibilities wisely? In the following article, we will answer these questions and show in what aspects of our daily work developed emotional intelligence can be helpful.

What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand georgia mobile phone numbers database and control both our own emotions and the emotions of those around us. Psychologist Daniel Goleman identifies five key aspects of emotional intelligence:

self-awareness (understand what you feel and how it may affect others) self-regulation (think first, react later) intrinsic motivation (achieve a goal for your own satisfaction) empathy (understand why they made such a decision) social skills (build and nurture good relationships in your team)
Emotional intelligence has many fathers
The term "emotional intelligence" was first used in 1985 in the title of Wayne Leon Payne's ultimately unpublished doctoral thesis, A Study of Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence.

However, the importance of emotions had been noted earlier. In 1948, Abraham Maslow presented a pyramid of needs, including emotional needs as key to self-fulfillment. Less than 40 years later, in 1983, Howard Gardener in his book "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences" presented a theory of the existence of multiple intelligences, among which he mentioned intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence, which were later the foundation of emotional intelligence.

Image

The real breakthrough came in the 1990s, when psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey, while studying the emotions of different people, noticed that some people were better at recognizing and solving emotional problems than others. They published their observations in the work "Emotional Intelligence". A few years later, their article inspired psychologist Daniel Goleman, who was also studying emotions at the time. He used the term "emotional intelligence" in 1995 in the title of his publication "Emotional Intelligence, Why It Can Matter More than IQ". The book became a bestseller and popularized the topic of emotional intelligence, which is why Daniel Goleman is considered the creator and pioneer of this topic.

Since then, as the importance of soft skills has grown, so has the importance of emotional intelligence. In recent years, in particular, many studies have been conducted on this topic, including the World Economic Forum's "Future of Jobs Report 2023" , which highlights the value of socio-emotional traits , such as resistance to stress, flexibility and readiness for change, as well as quick problem-solving, motivation and self-awareness. According to the above report, employers are convinced that in the near future as many as 44% of employee traits will be revalued, and cognitive skills will become the most important.

Already now, recruiters, and later managers, department heads and team leaders, both in themselves and in their employees, pay attention to traits related to emotional intelligence and very often put them above practical skills. According to a study conducted by LHH , as many as 75% of employers take emotional intelligence into account when deciding on a promotion or a pay rise for a given employee.

Related courses:

Human Resources
«People management»

Agata Woszczyk
Senior HR Manager Amazon

Learn more
agata-66fd2cf20b0da452353484.webp
Business and management
«IT project manager»

Rafał Kucharzyk
Senior Project Manager at Capgemini

Learn more
rafall-66fd2f1916823802661032.webp
How do I know that I need to work on my emotional intelligence?
If you’re new to the term emotional intelligence, we’ve put together a checklist to help you better understand how low emotional intelligence affects your work life . Think back to recent situations where things didn’t feel right, revisit conflicts with coworkers, reflect on your reactions to challenges and obstacles, and then answer the questions below.

Do you communicate in a way that leads to misunderstandings?
Do you react impulsively and emotionally, inappropriately to the situation?
Do you have difficulty building relationships?
Do you find it difficult to understand other people's emotions?
Don't you know how to motivate yourself and others?
Do you often feel stressed and burnt out?
Do you find change difficult to handle?
If you answered yes to most of them, it may be a sign of low emotional intelligence. How can you start working on it?

How to develop emotional intelligence?
At the beginning of the adventure with emotional intelligence, you don't need much. Just stop for a moment every day and think about three aspects of our lives: ourselves, others, and time. What is it all about? We hasten to explain and advise what to pay special attention to.


1. Me – Know yourself like no one else.
Take a piece of paper and a pen. Write down the answers to the following questions as you go. You can think about them for a while, because they are the basis for later work on emotional intelligence.

What are my strengths? List at least 5.
What are my weaknesses?
What motivates me in my private life? What motivates me at work?
What stresses me out the most? What situations are most problematic for me at work?
As with any change in life, it is also worth starting with yourself when working on emotional intelligence. Knowing yourself well means being aware of both your strengths and what motivates you, as well as your weaknesses and situations that cause stress. In everyday professional life, you cannot avoid obstacles. Sometimes we have to face challenges and get out of our comfort zone, so it is worth being prepared for such situations.

Keep the answers to the above questions. Return to them often, remind yourself of the information about yourself contained therein, but also verify them. In the process of working on emotional intelligence, they may change.