Improving Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

4 مارس 2023

Emotional intelligence has gained a lot of attention over the past few years. It has become associated with superheroes, and some describe it as an actual superpower. So, the question here is: why is emotional intelligence so important? Simply put, it's a way to navigate the complexities of everyday interactions with humans.

It's a skill like any other, and you have to put in the time to develop it. Once you do, you can use EI in every area of your life.

Today, we'll examine how emotional intelligence is vital in the workplace and suggest some strategies that employers and employees can use to improve it.

1. Train Employees to Understand Emotional Intelligence:

The first step towards successfully developing individuals who are emotionally intelligent is training them.

Of course, it makes sense to explain what emotional intelligence is in detail before beginning any real training.

It's not a straightforward process, but employers can begin by deciding on a training schedule that employees can follow over the span of 3 to 6 months.

Core essentials of learning and improving emotional intelligence include:

Providing a simple assessment test to see where employees stand on the EI scale. A score of 3 out of 10, for instance, indicates a lack of EI in general. Someone high in EI might be lacking in other areas. In other words, it doesn't make sense to invest resources in improving this skill for them anymore.
Identifying where strengths and weaknesses lie. For example, an employee might be empathetic, but he still lacks self-regulation when it comes to expressing himself properly.
Giving context to each training exercise. The more practical a session is, the more benefit there will be for everyone.
Ensuring there is enough time dedicated to making progress. It's not practical to spend all your time working on emotional intelligence.
Planning in advance what each session will cover, how to track everyone's progress, and how the plan can fit with the company's guidelines.
Clarifying everything and answering questions. Everyone should be in agreement when deciding to begin their training together, since teamwork is an essential component of successful emotional intelligence training.

Once a baseline of emotional intelligence improvement is achieved, it's time to go deeper and refine each skill separately.

2. Understand and Improve Each Aspect of Emotional Intelligence:

This includes all of the following:

Communication.
Self-awareness.
Empathy.
Self-expression/Self-regulation.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation.
Organisational Skills.
Team Work.
Leadership.

Each of the above has a core emotional intelligence component to it. In general, there are a lot of examples where emotional intelligence can be applied using some or all of the above together.

Let's list out the most important:

A strong emphasis on feedback instead of blame and criticism. A functional workplace has employees who welcome constructive criticism and give back to others. (i.e., empathy and self-awareness).

Training and understanding how emotions take shape and how to regulate them. This idea describes an ideal workplace where everyone is clear on their daily objectives and duties (i.e., communication and teamwork).

Taking initiative and finding the will to carry on when facing obstacles. This means training employees to handle work pressure,start tasks and finish them, and stay organised in the process (i.e., motivation, organisational skills, and leadership).

Another very useful way to improve emotional intelligence and understand it properly is to read books about the subject. While books are passive, the information inside can be developed later and applied in real life.

As we can see, all of the different aspects of emotional intelligence come together to form a cohesive whole where everyone in the workplace does their best work every day.

3. Improve Both the Emotional Quotient and Emotional Intelligence:

While the two terms are often used interchangeably, they are different. EQ is similar to IQ. It's a measure of the whole spectrum of skills that make up EI.

EQ provides the needed metrics to see how fast individuals are improving their emotional intelligence. It's more like a scale.

EI measures the actual core skills that we discussed above, and how they can be consolidated and applied in real-life situations.

A key thing to realise here is both EQ and EI are not static. With the right tools and enough time, they can be both developed and improved upon to the highest degree possible.

Monthly tests can be implemented in the workplace to see what progress employees have made, and this will give you a good idea of what their emotional quotient is.

4. Apply Emotional Intelligence Outside the Workplace:

It's a very basic idea, but it is overlooked a lot of the time. Emotional intelligence doesn't stop at the workplace. It's a skill to be used on every occasion.

Ask employees to solve daily problems by examining a social situation in detail. This can serve as homework of sorts.

Good examples of this are solving family conflicts with the skills discussed, making friends with fellow co-workers outside of office hours, and being flexible with ideas and open to suggestions.

Another way to improve is to make sure active listening becomes a permanent habit because it's one of those universal skills.

All said and done, if employees are mindful of how emotional intelligence can be used in everyday contexts, they'll be able to transfer those skills to the workplace MUCH more easily.

5. Offer Motivation and Rewards for Those Willing to Improve:

Incentivize employees by presenting facts, evidence, and real-world examples of what emotional intelligence can do for a person's life.

It's a fact that workplaces with employees high in emotional intelligence are able to perform better, succeed in their roles, and carry their companies through the most difficult of times.

Tie daily EI goals to rewards that keep employees focused on improving. It also helps if you encourage everyone by giving them a shared space where they can talk about their emotions respectfully.

If there are also any other ways you can think of to reward the ones who are improving, do it. It keeps morale high and gives everyone a sense of accomplishment when they improve slowly.

6. Set Guidelines in the Workplace:

The last thing to be implemented are guidelines. These describe the rules of conduct during working hours, and they serve a great purpose in keeping everything organised and everyone focused on their tasks.

Guidelines should be clear and to the point, reflecting the emotional intelligence of the person who developed them. This helps in setting a good example and will push everyone to see how serious and important emotional intelligence is in the workplace.

Moreover, guidelines make it less likely that poor habits will become commonplace. After all, if everything is a mess, it will lead to chaos and internal conflict, which are bad for any environment where emotional intelligence is paramount.

In Conclusion:

There's no doubt that more and more employers should be keen on improving emotional intelligence in workplaces around the globe.

One thing is certain: Emotional intelligence is only partially determined by genetics. The other part is daily diligence in practising the skill and making it second nature.

The benefits are many, and the downsides are non-existent. If a proper strategy is laid out, it can be very easy to track everyone's progress as they develop the core EI skills that are needed in every job these days.