EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE MODERN WORKPLACE

Emotional Intelligence is a vital skill for interpersonal communication and has become an area of interest across multiple disciplines, including the workplace. Emotional Intelligence is defined as the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you.

In today’s diverse modern workforce, it is more important than ever for employees and leaders to understand the value of emotional intelligence.

A workforce made up of emotionally intelligent individuals helps foster a positive work environment. Emotionally unintelligent people struggle to manage their emotions and often act impulsively, without clear thought to their behaviour.

Employees acting with emotional intelligence generally have advantages in their career development and provide benefits for the organisation. But more importantly, it creates a working environment filled with trust, loyalty and happiness for all involved.

At Schlam, we are using this philosophy to drive cultural change and to inspire our workforce to think more clearly and perform more effectively using emotional intelligence.

We all have different levels of emotional intelligence, as with anything, it takes time and practice to improve, but small steps can make a big difference.

Some practical tips for improving your own emotional intelligence are:

• Becoming more self-aware: Identify your feelings throughout your day and pause to notice your emotions and how they contribute to your decisions and actions.
• Practice Self-Regulation: Give yourself time to stop and think before immediately replying. Take a deep breath and allow for a 20-second pause so that your feelings get out of the way of your thoughts. Sometimes you may need to leave the room, and that is OK. It is better to take a step away, drink some water or speak to a colleague than to make a snap judgement and send a scathing email.
• Increase your empathy: Walk in their shoes and listen with the goal to understand. Most of the time, people just need to feel heard. Empathy is a trait that shows emotional strength, not weakness and will help two people with differing opinions have a level of mutual understanding and respect.
• Work on your motivation: Try to maintain a positive and optimistic attitude, focus on what you love about your job rather than what you hate about it. Emotionally intelligent people are self-motivated, and their attitude motivates others.

Emotional Intelligence is something we can look forward to at Schlam and aim to improve for the rest of our careers.

Emotional Intelligence is a soft skill, but a highly important skill a person can have. When you are strong with emotional intelligence, not only will you excel at work but also in your personal life.

Article written by Manh.V