Guidelines for applying Emotional Intelligence at work

EI is said to have an impact on a variety of professional behaviors, including customer loyalty, teamwork, talent development, and employee dedication (Cooper, 1997). Human resources with little faith and dedication not only hinder the organization's development but also delay it (Jordan,2002).

A significant body of study findings on the function of emotions in human life led to the idea or theme of emotional intelligence (EI). These results demonstrated numerous ways in which abilities like empathy, learned optimism, and self-control influenced significant outcomes in the home, the job, and other spheres of life (Goleman, 1995).

An individual's work environment is filled with a wide variety of emotions. According to Pekrun and Frese (1992);   emotions at workplace can be divided along two dimensions. 

First is valence i.e positive emotions versus negative emotions.

Second is focus i.e task related emotions versus social related emotions.

These four categaries of emotions are represented in the table 1.

Table 1: Four dimensions of work related emotions (Pekrun & Frese, 1992).

Emotions tell us how we are managing with the demands and pressures of the workplace, and they give us information about how we are thinking and feeling a scenario in real time (Lazarus, 1991).

There are many researches that are conducted that establish a link between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment (Abhraham, 2000).

When emotions rule, intelligence might be useless (Goleman, D. 2001)

EI has shown good predictive validity when it comes to assessing an

individual's performance at work (Lopez et al., 2005).

Fig. Good practices that cultivate emotional intelligence in the workplace. Note The four phases correspond to those of the development process,  preparation, training, transfer and maintenance, and evaluation. Each is important (Kate, 2019).

 

References

Abraham, R. (2000). The role of job control as a moderator of emotional dissonance and emotional intelligence outcome relationships. The Journal of Psychology, 134, 169- 184.

Cooper, R. K. (1997). Applying emotional intelligence in the workplace. Training & Development, 51, 31-38.

Goleman, D. (1995a). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam

Goleman, D. (2001). THE EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT WORKPLACE How to Select for, Measure, and Improve Emotional Intelligence in Individuals, Groups, and Organizations.Jossey-Bass.

Jordan, P. (2002). Workgroup Emotional Intelligence: Scale Development and Relationship to Team Process Effectiveness and Goal Focus, Human Resource Management Review, 12, 2, 195-214

Kate, D., 2019. Fear-Less: The Art of Using Your Anxiety to Your Advantage. s.l.:Morgan James.

 Lazarus, R.S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Lopes, P. N., Salovey, P., Côté, S., & Beers, M. (2005). Emotion regulation ability and the quality of social interaction. Emotion, 5, 113-118.

Pekrun, R., & Frese, M. (1992). Emotions in work and achievement. In C. L. Cooper and

I. T. Robertson (Eds.), International review of industrial and organizational

psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 153 198). New York: Wiley