How Do You Feel?
"Emotional intelligence" is starting to find its way into companies, offering employees a way to come to terms with their feelings -- and to perform better. But as the field starts to grow, some worry that it could become just another fad.
From: Issue 35| June 2000 | Page 296 By: Tony Schwartz Illustrations by: Cynthia Von Buhler
Appreciation, apprehension, defensiveness, inadequacy, intimidation, resentment. Twenty midlevel executives at American Express Financial Advisors are gathered in a room at a conference center outside Minneapolis. Each has been asked to try to convey a specific emotion -- by reading a particular statement aloud. The challenge for listeners is to figure out which emotion each speaker is trying to evoke. It seems like a relatively straightforward exercise but only a fraction of the group comes anywhere close to correctly identifying speakers' emotions.
"I sometimes wish I had a corporate decoder for each relationship," one woman laments. "It's very hard to know what people are feeling in my office and how I should respond." Her comment prompts a discussion about the difficulty in the workplace of finding a balance between reasonable openness and respectful discretion.
"When one of my direct reports starts talking to me about her medical problems, I don't want to be unsympathetic, but it makes me very uncomfortable," says a male department head. "I find myself joking by saying to her, 'Too much information.' But I'm not really sure how to get the message across."
Conversations like that one, focusing on the importance of emotions in the workplace, are occurring with greater frequency in all kinds of American companies. Inside American Express, training sessions on emotional competence take place at the Minneapolis facility several dozen times a year. An unlikely pioneer in the field of emotional competence, AmEx launched its first experimental program in 1992. An eight-hour version of the course is now required of all of its new financial advisers, who help clients with money management. During a four-day workshop, 20 participants are introduced to a range of topics that comprise an emotional-competence curriculum, including such fundamental skills as self-awareness, self-control, reframing, and self-talk.
Much of that material represents new territory for these bu...
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... about the different forms that a drive to succeed can take? Does, say, an executive exhibit the core qualities of emotional intelligence, such as self-awareness, self-control, and empathy? Goleman acknowledges that many top executives currently lack those competencies, which will, he argues, be increasingly more critical to success in the decade ahead, as the competition for talent escalates and hierarchical structures continue to break down. "A coercive style of leadership is a negative driver on every measure of climate in a company," he says. "Bosses who lead by coercion are the kinds of bosses whom people hate."
As a practical matter, the Goleman-Boyatzis-Hay approach has focused less on training emotional intelligence than on addressing specific deficiencies in those competencies. Boyatzis's work has been influential: At Case Western, he developed an elegant, comprehensive, highly successful approach to training competencies in graduate students, as well as in executives. His model blends work on deepening self-awareness ("the real self"), defining one's values ("the ideal self"), and implementing one's goals (changing specific behavio
The key success to any business transaction is customer satisfaction. A customer always demands the best service and in return offers the company their loyalty. The key to this; great customer service. Smile at the customer, speak to them with a polite tone, and adjust your body language to make it friendly and approachable; all these are related to the concept of emotional labour. Emotional labour proposes that in order to ensure customer satisfaction is achieved, it is vital for “managers or employers to regulate or manage employee’s behaviour or emotional expressions to ensure service quality” (Chu 2002). The concept of emotional labour was first developed by Arlie Hochschild, who was an organizational sociologist. Hochschild stated that if an employee was employed in a service field, then it would be required from the employee to “to display specific sets of emotions (both verbal and non-verbal) with the aim of inducing particular feelings and responses among those for whom the service is being provided”(Hochschild 1983).
“Go Ahead- Cry at Work” illustrates many organizational behavior topics, that we have discussed in class including emotions in the workplace, emotional ability, gender diversity, and stereotyping. Through personal narrative Anne Kreamer is able to show how a lack of emotional intelligence can hurt not only individuals of a company, but their commitment to the organization. Through numero...
The theory of emotional intelligence is relatively new, however the psychological theory has become prevalent and many entities have adapted the principles of this theory in order to enhance relations within the professional environment as well as increase performance which ultimately lead to a positive place of work. (Allan Chapman 2014)
Goleman and Cherniss (2001) postulates that emotional competencies are learned abilities. Social awareness or skill at managing relationships does not guarantee the mastery of the additional learning required to handle a customer adeptly or to resolve a conflict. It only prognosticates that we have the potential to become skilled in these competencies.
Goleman (1998) remodelled Mayer and Salovey (1997) model into an analogous form. Since emotional intelligence is the ability to identify one’s own feelings as well as the feelings of others, capacity to motivate oneself and others and the management of emotions in relationships, it is one of the best tools to analyse the degree of skills required for each job.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand how to manage and express your emotions, develop and maintain good social relationships, and think clearly and solve problems under pressure. Emotional intelligence is a foundational skill, and when you work on it it tends to affect many other behaviors that you might have otherwise worked at on your own. Emotions are the primary driver of our behavior – emotional events is what motivates us to act. There are three emotional competencies that are important in emotional intelligence: self-reflection, self-regulation, and empathy. These form the foundation for all competencies and skills. Some of the top behaviors and qualities of employees with a high emotional intelligence include admitting
When considering emotional intelligence in the context of leadership, emotional intelligence represents the “people skills” held by effective leaders (Riggio et al.). In understanding why emotional intelligence is critical to effective leadership, one study suggested that this is because “leaders need to understand their own emotions and the emotions of followers in order to encourage and motivate others and to encourage follower creativity. In addition, the quality of leader and follower relationships is dependent on leader emotional intelligence” (qtd. in Riggio et al.) Leaders with high emotional intelligence understand that leadership is about building people up and supporting them. By creating an inspiring environment, effective leaders encourage employees to achieve their goals. High emotional intelligence also helps leaders to regulate their emotions, which is essential when handling stressful situations. Assertive leaders use emotional intelligence to put thought behind their actions, and they understand the consequences of their behavior on others. They use their high emotional intelligence to satisfy their own needs and the needs of their employees while maintaining respect, and do not put other people down in the name of organizational
Khalili, A. (2012). The role of emotional intelligence in the workplace: a literature review. International Journal of Management, 29(3), 355-370.
Emotions are frequent companions in our lives. They come and go, and constantly change like the weather. They generate powerful chemicals that create positive and negative feelings, which have a powerful effect on leadership. Some emotions can either facilitate leadership, while others can detract from successful leadership. This course, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, has truly opened my eyes to the affects that emotions have on being an effective leader. Peter Salovey and John Mayer defined emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (p. 5). This definition in itself states that emotions, whether it be ones own emotions or those of others, is the underlying factor that directs the actions of a leader. Therefore, throughout the progression (advancement) of this course, I have learned the importance of the development of emotional intelligence for being an effective leader, and because of this I plan on developing the capacities that contribute to being an emotionally intelligent leader for my own success, now and in the future.
Great leadership doesn’t necessarily come from what you do, but instead from how you do it. According to Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee 's (2013) book, Primal Leadership, this "how" of a great leader comes through the heart or emotions. If leaders fail at driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do, even if they get everything else just right, will be as successful as it could or should be (p. 3). This goes against many of the preconceptions of good leadership. I have always been shown that "good" leaders keep their emotions at bay and lead through intellect devoid of emotion because emotions can distort reality. However, the emotional task of the leader, according to Goleman et al.,
...sults were compared with those from another 140 supervisors, peers, and Regression analyses showed that there is a positive correlation between the emotional intelligence of managers and organizational climate. The results of the analyses also show that among emotional intelligence's factors, social awareness and self-awareness have more influence on organizational climate, while among organizational climate factors, credibility is most influenced by managers' emotional intelligence.”
Emotional Intelligence is this ability for yourself to recognize and understand emotions for yourself and those around you. This ability helps you manage your behavior and relationships to get a better perspective for others. We citizens all have emotions, we use it all the time. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social skills, and makes personal decisions that achieve great positive results. Of course we need to dig into the bottom of how it works, this ability is made up of four core skills that are made up with two primary sources: personal competence and social competence. How these two work is simple, personal competence is basically made up for your self-awareness and self-management skills (self-awareness is your ability to
An increasing percent of the population begins to know the idea of emotional intelligence. This concept was firstly developed by two American university professors, John Mayer and Peter Salovey (1990) and they concluded that, people with high emotional quotient are supposed to learn more quickly due to their abilities. Another psycologist named Daniel Goleman (1995) extended the theory and also made it well-known. In his articles and books, he argued that people with high emotional quotient do better than those with low emotional quotient. In this essay, it will be argued that high emotional intelligence can influence work performance positively to a relatively high extent. Both benefits and limitations of a high level of EI in the workplace will be discussed and a conclusion will be drawn at the end of this essay.
Myers, L. L. & Tucker, M. L. (2005). Increasing Awareness of Emotional Intelligence In A Business Curriculum. Business Communication Quarterly, 68, pp. 44-50.
Sy, T., & Cote, S. (2004). Emotional intelligence: A key ability to succeed in the matrix organization. Journal of Management Development. 23(5). 437-455