In 1995, Daniel Goleman, a trained psychologist and science journalist at the New York Times, released a book titled “Emotional Intelligence”. Twenty-five years later, his ideas remain as relevant as ever, although still not fully understood. 

If you’re wondering what emotional intelligence (EQ) is, why it’s constantly dubbed more important than IQ and technical skills, and how to develop it, this guide will provide you with an exhaustive answer. 

What Is Emotional Intelligence? 

Emotional intelligence stands for your ability to appropriately recognize and manage emotions, plus influence the emotions of others. Quoting Daniel Goleman: 

Emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: like being able to shake off a bad mood.

Emotionally intelligent people don’t let negative (or positive emotions) overtake the rational mind in personal and professional settings. For example, instead of engaging in a heated public argument with a colleague who thinks they’re better than you, you try to understand where their superiority complex is coming from and try to deal with the situation privately. 

There are four main pillars associated with emotional intelligence: 

1. Self-awareness: Knowing your emotions and your tendencies during different situations.

2. Self-management: Controlling your emotions and behaviors through self-awareness.

3. Social awareness: Recognizing emotions in others and understanding their causes.

4. Relationship management: Using your self- and social awareness to develop interpersonal relationships.

Although all of these abilities are innate to our brain, some people have naturally higher EQ than others due to their upbringing or past social experiences. But, similar to soft skills in general, emotional intelligence can be developed with the right strategies. 

Examples of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

According to Goleman, people with well-rounded emotional skills are more likely to be content and effective in their lives as they don’t allow their emotions to sabotage their focus at work. 

You’ve probably encountered quite a few people with high emotional intelligence (even if you didn’t think of this precise term). They’re likely among your favorite colleagues because they often exhibit the following behaviors: 

• During meetings, they listen actively and provide room to express diverse opinions without backlash or criticism.

• Faced with an unexpected setback, they remain composed and quickly come up with a contingency plan and break the news to the team. 

• Despite professional frustrations or mood swings, the person always remains calm and delightful to be around. 

Generally, people with high EQ understand and work with others cooperatively. They’re always making thoughtful, well-measured decisions, driven by facts, and exhume an approachable vibe.

Why is Emotional Intelligence Important In the Workplace?

The modern workplace is diverse, with many generations and personality types working side by side. So, some degree of confrontation is inevitable. Half of the workplace conflicts happen due to personality clashes and egos, and these lead to personal attacks (27%), absence or sickness (25%), and failed projects (9%).  

Have you ever worked with someone who lacked emotional intelligence? You probably recognized the behavior even if you didn’t know the term. They took reasonable criticism personally, held grudges, refused to communicate, and became angry at the smallest slight. 

When left unchecked, emotional calamities create a toxic workplace environment, which becomes apparent through public reviews, media mentions, and social media rants. 

That’s why employers are increasingly hiring for emotional intelligence. They look for people who can remain productive under pressure, relate to others with empathy, and accept and apply constructive feedback.

Moreover, social researchers have found that emotional intelligence directly contributes to job performance. In a Ted Talk about emotional intelligence in the workplace, Dr. Travis Bradberry states that:   

We found that emotional intelligence when it comes to work explains about 60 percent of how you do. If you look at the percentage of top performers and what percentage of them are high in EQ, it’s 90 percent.

Another study by a group of Spanish researchers came to a similar conclusion. Respondents with higher EQ earned higher wages and had a higher degree of job satisfaction. 

Ultimately, emotional intelligence has several benefits in the workplace. It contributes to improved collaboration, communication, and leadership, helping organizations cultivate a healthy workplace culture and high-performance teams.  

Benefits of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

How To Use Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace 

Alright, emotional intelligence in the workplace is important. But how do I even practice it? Here’s a quick trick: Remember that EQ is a collection of skills, not a personality trait. And just like organizational or management skills, you can get more intentional about acting with EQ and increasing your acumen. Here are several practical tips to help you use your EQ more often. 

Start With Practicing Self-Awareness

EQ begins with cultivating a reflective personality. This is simply learning to stop and examine your feelings and those of others to formulate a productive response.

Start your morning by assessing how you feel. Ask yourself how those emotions might impact how you relate to others or react to situations. Take some time at the end of the day to do a bit of an emotional post-mortem. How did your emotions impact your day (or others) positively or negatively? Take note and address problematic reactions like anger, annoyance, or dismissal. Remember: people with high EQ don’t assume or make snap judgments. They listen, reflect, and only then act. 

Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary

People with low emotional intelligence tend to have limited emotional vocabulary. This means they have a limited set of words and definitions they can use to identify their emotions.  They tend to think and react in extremes because they can’t see or define their emotions in nuanced terms.

Rather than classifying emotions as ‘mad’, ‘sad’, ‘happy’, or ‘angry’, find ways to describe them more accurately. Do you feel ‘mad’ that a coworker was dishonest about a situation, or do you feel betrayed? This leaves you in a better position to describe your emotions accurately and to respond appropriately to others’ sentiments. 

Helpful flywheel of emotional words to describe your feelings 

Source: Flowingdata 

Learn To Recognize Your Triggers

Everyone has triggers or stressors that reduce their ability to formulate an emotionally appropriate response. Learn yours, and be honest with yourself about them. Don’t get caught up in feeling embarrassed by a trigger. Here are some of the most common:

• Lack of sleep or food.
• Microaggressions.
• Being unfairly blamed.
• Feeling misunderstood.
• Insufficient training or resources.
• Having your belief systems or ethics questioned.

Any one of these can cause you to tailspin and make you less able to have a measured reaction. Your goal is to learn how to recognize these and tame your emotional responses either by eliminating the trigger or by creating a grounding routine to counter it. 

For example, if you feel that a colleague is sabotaging you by being sarcastic about your skills in front of others, don’t snap back immediately. Step away from that conversation, take a deep breath, and then approach the person privately. 

Seek Feedback From Others

Getting feedback from others is an important but potentially painful step for leading with emotional intelligence in the workplace. After all, if you’re the boss, your poor emotional responses may make employees think you’re being threatened by them or, worse — want them to leave (even if neither is your intention).   

Thus, you have to understand how you come across to others to improve your emotional intelligence. Ask around. If you receive negative feedback, resist the temptation to defend or explain. Realize that this information truly reflects how you are coming off to others. Make notes of the behaviors that reflect poorly on you, and create strategies to change them.

For example, if people feel intimidated by your criticism, work on the way you give feedback. Try new techniques like DESC, where you first describe the perceived situation, then express how it impacts you, and afterward, specify how you’d like things to change and then state the positive consequences this change will bring. 

How to Teach Emotional Intelligence In the Workplace

Alright, acting with emotional intelligence in the workplace is important. But what if some of the workforce lacks this skill? 

Indeed, emotional intelligence may come more naturally for some than others. That’s okay because it’s a teachable skill. A recent study found that EQ can be trained among adults with the right techniques and practices. 

If you feel that people in your organization need to improve their emotional quotient, here are some good practices to establish. 

Add Books on Emotional Intelligence to the Corporate Library 

First and foremost, you need people to understand better emotionally intelligent people’s main principles and behaviors. This requires some theory in social sciences and psychology. 

Some of the best books on emotional intelligence include:

• Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves presents EQ as a combination of four skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management, providing practical strategies to develop each. It’s a great starter for anyone looking to improve their people skills. 

• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg offers a great primer in conflict management and effective communication through an intriguing collection of personal stories, practical exercises, and team role-plays. 

• Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman focuses more on the neurological underpinnings of social interactions and explains how our brain generates and processes emotions. Goleman shows precisely how social intelligence shapes interpersonal intelligence and teaches how to get better at having meaningful social interactions. 

• The Emotionally Intelligent Manager by Peter Salovey gives hands-on advice on leadership through the length of smart, emotional management. Again, you get a good roster of exercises to sharpen your decision-making and team-management skills. 

• Go Suck a Lemon: Strategies for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence by Michael Cornwall is the best read for anyone struggling with emotional control. You’ll get practical advice on developing your levels of self-awareness and emotional responses to challenging situations. 

Create Personalized Learning Paths 

It’s no secret that people are resistant to change. Even more so when training is imposed on them. To engage more people in EQ training, link learning goals to personal values. Changes that fit with people’s goals and principles are most motivating. 

For example, you can make EQ training a mandatory step for anyone seeking promotion to a supervisory or leadership role. And you can entice current managers to engage with more resources by suggesting how this could help address their pressing problems (e.g., low team productivity or low retention rates). 

Your goal is to make change self-directed. Allow people to choose which courses they’d want to complete, tailoring the program to their needs and circumstances. By personalizing learning paths, you’d likely see higher training attendance rates and increased learner retention rates. 

Build in Support to Prevent Relapses 

Behavioral changes don’t happen immediately. A micromanager won’t immediately give up their obsession with others, and poor communications don’t become top-notch interlocutors in a week. Moreover, they’d be tempted to fall back to the old habits. Your goal is not to let that happen.

Create informal support groups where people can help each other adopt new behaviors and discuss their challenges without the fear of being judged. Adopt a ‘no-blame’ approach to training where mistakes aren’t admonished for, but viewed as valuable lessons for doing better the next time. 

Refresh Corporate Code of Conduct with New Guideline 

Lastly, to make behavioral changes stick, codify these into your corporate code of conduct or another organizational document, explaining the norms, rules, and responsibilities of every employee in your company. 

The new policies should cover cultural changes you’re trying to bring in like:

• Using inclusive language in all corporate and customer-facing documentation 

• Avoiding jokes, banter, or taunts that may degrade, insult or humiliate others 

• Giving kind, constructive, and objective feedback to others based on measurable objectives 

• Avoiding slang or idioms that may not translate across cultures 

By documenting desired behaviors, you may find it easier for people to understand the boundaries and adjust their behavior accordingly. Policies also help better disseminate the ideas across the organization and train new hires to adhere to the norms. 

To Conclude 

Rational intelligence focuses on objective analysis of facts and figures — emotional intelligence indicates your ability to also objectively deal with your own emotions and respond to the emotional needs of others. 

When you increase your emotional intelligence, you improve your ability to handle difficult situations, relate to others, and be resilient when something negative happens. Such qualities set you up for better professional success and faster advancement to leadership positions.

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