5 Reasons Why Emotional Intelligence is Important in Workplaces
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage one’s emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, efficiently communicate, be empathetic, face challenges, and reduce conflict.
It is also referred to as an “emotional quotient” and a critical ability when it comes to interpersonal communication, which is important both in psychology and at workplaces. While dealing with colleagues or bosses every day at the workplace, we are bound to have conflict or be emotionally affected.
Say a colleague gets a promotion before you do, your reaction should be happy for them but instead might get envious of their success before yours. This is just one situation. There are many other reasons why emotional intelligence is important in the workplace. Here are some of those reasons:
1. Improves Interpersonal Relationships
Emotional intelligence helps humans create meaningful relationships with one another, especially at the workplace. While working in a team, it is important that every person in the team respects one another and gets along with each other.
To work and be efficiently productive, people need to develop good team-oriented interpersonal relationships. A survey shows that if you’re good friends with the people you work with, your interest in the work increases twofold! Some office friendships can last beyond your workplace journey, and help you in your career later on.
2. Keeps You Motivated and Inspired
Emotionally intelligent people are not only happy but show a beautiful strength of character. Their inability to be affected by others’ successes or let hatred or jealousy affect them, makes their mind more open to being positive and inspired.
You can observe emotionally intelligent people be more motivated to be more productive at work because they are emotionally strong to conquer all the other difficulties in life smoothly. Others’ successes make them feel like it’s an opportunity for their success!
3. Professional Workplace Behavior
Many times it happens that you and another colleague of yours don’t see eye-to-eye on an allotted task or work. This can breed further conflict if both the people involved are not emotionally compatible enough to let it slide.
Sometimes it also reaches the stage of making derogatory remarks or insulting one another, anger comes in between.
Emotional intelligence allows people to understand one another before letting anger or jealousy slide their way. It allows one to empathize with the other, irrespective of their ideas or perspectives. Emotional intelligence helps advance professional workplace behavior.
4. Good Decision Making
The average person makes too many decisions in a day to keep track of. Therefore, as humans, we are bound to make bad decisions every day. Our lives are so preoccupied with overthinking about how we feel, being hurt by our own decisions, or making a big deal out of small situations.
Emotionally intelligent people can cope with their emotions, making them adhere to creating good decisions.
Work-related decisions have to always be efficient and be right, there is little scope for bad decisions when it comes to working. Therefore, when emotionally intelligent people manage and set their emotions aside, they can make objectively the best decisions.
5. Respected Path of Leadership
It’s no coincidence that the world’s greatest leaders have the right emotional intelligence. Without being able to manage, understand, and handle emotions, no leader could reach where they are.
Leaders make efficient decisions even in the more pressured situations because they are certain about their thought process, letting only the right emotions affect their judgment. Once you are on the path to being emotionally intelligent, you are on the path of being a strong leader.
Therefore, being emotionally intelligent is becoming more and more important in today’s environment of workplaces. Emulate these practices today!