How to Harness Emotional Intelligence and be Successful
In New South Wales and in particular Sydney, the business environment is growing and vibrant. As with any community that grows at this pace, we need more talent and leadership, and there are many people who are trying hard to find their niche in this area.
One talent that will assist you in getting ahead in this market is to tap into your emotional intelligence, also known as EI. There are many different competing definitions of just what emotional intelligence is, but most deal with a multimodal view of intelligence.
Put simply, people with a high emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) are better at reading other people’s emotions. This makes it easier for them to read the emotions in a room of their coworkers, and helps them isolate problems with a business before the problem festers and comes to a head.
People with a high EQ can be identified in the workplace by their ability to use their own changing moods to focus on different parts of a project. In addition to being good at reading other people’s emotions, they’re good at identifying their own, which allows them to suit their mood to the task at hand. A sign of a high EQ worker is that they’ll proactive task switch rather than sit and pound their head against the wall trying to work on the same project again and again.
When thinking about how to use your emotional intelligence in the work place, look at it as a way of getting “sneak peeks” at what other people are thinking. Being able to “read” people’s moods from body language and facial expressions is a competitive advantage in any situation where you’re negotiating or arranging a contract. Indeed, if you have a rough idea how quickly someone reads, you can often find their unguarded reaction to some contract language as they’re reading it.
If you’re moving into a leadership position, the second part of emotional intelligence comes into play; what used to be called “charisma” or the ability to lead people. People with high EQs know what to tell others to get the most work out of them; they know when someone needs a bit of stress added to break through a problem, and they’re the ones who can read the body language of subordinates well enough to know when to step in and offer assistance, a pat on the back, or an “I appreciate what you’re doing,” for example.
Emotional intelligence is somewhat useful in public speaking, but works best in small group and one on one situations. It appears to be something that can be enhanced by practice, but it has finite limits in how far it can be pushed.
All businesses value people who get along with others, true. However, emotional intelligence as a model indicates that this is not necessarily something you can learn. Whether or not that’s true, being aware of how you fit on the emotional intelligence spectrum and knowing what your abilities and limitations are can give you a step up as you work to advance in your career or to better serve clients within your business.
