Understanding worker emotions

success in life, both in professional and personal pursuits.
Its competencies include empathy, intuition, creativity, flexibility, resilience, stress management, leadership, integrity, happiness and optimism, as well as intra-personal and interpersonal communication skills.
According to Mayer and Salovey (1997), emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.
They break emotional intelligence into four related parts: Identifying Emotions: The ability to correctly identify how people are feeling.
Using Emotions: The ability to create emotions and to integrate your feelings into the way you think.
Understanding Emotions: The ability to understand the causes of emotions.
Managing Emotions: The ability to figure out effective strategies that manage emotions.
Even George Soros, the investments guru, learnt to recognise that a backache signalled the time to sell even before he was consciously aware that he made a bad investment.
Emotional intelligence can assist in conflict management. Two sisters fought over an orange, they didn’t realise that one sister wanted the peel for a cake and the other wanted juice; instead they split the orange into two (Mary Parker Follet).
Emotional intelligence is thus seen as the positive use of emotions, the rare skill that enables one to be angry with the right person to the right degree at the right time, for the right purpose.
It is not the sole predictor of workplace success, career satisfaction or leadership effectiveness. Emotional intelligence and people skills enhance your success, but it does not guarantee it in the absence of suitable skills.
Understanding emotions: Know what motivates people. Understand other people’s point of view. Understand and handle team interactions.
Managing emotions: Be aware of your emotions and use them to solve problems. When disappointed try to find out the cause and take remedial measures.
Motivation: Emotionally intelligent managers are able to understand their emotions and those of others, in order to help them motivate their staff and themselves.
Emotionally Intelligent Managers: Get people to keep going, even when they want to give up. Get people to try again after failing at something. Motivate others/self. Get things done.
Team Effectiveness
When working in a team environment, the skill of emotional intelligence becomes even more important to the job.
The key is to work efficiently with others. Emotional intelligence also helps in generating new and creative ideas and solutions to problems.
Social Effectiveness: When working in a team, social effectiveness allows you to accomplish the desired goal. Why emotional intelligence helps in working with others: Enjoyable to be with. Good at influencing people. Believable and trusting. Empathetic.
Emotional intelligence involves being sensitive to and perceptive of other people’s emotions, and having the ability to intuitively facilitate improved performance based on this knowledge.
The modern workplace is characterised by open communication, teamwork, and a mutual respect among employees and their supervisors.
Possessing emotional intelligence allows managers to better understand and motivate people they supervise.
Managers who come from the old school philosophy of management by intimidation often find it challenging to adapt their management style to the demands of today’s workers.
In the modern business environment, authoritarian managers are much less likely to be successful for the long term than those who utilise a democratic style of management. If you want to succeed in the business world now and in the future, it’s important that you understand the role of emotional intelligence in business today.
Management and Emotional Intelligence
Managers who possess emotional intelligence approach supervisory responsibilities from a different perspective than authoritarian managers.
They understand the importance of communicating effectively with staff members, and of treating each employee with respect.
Those who want to be effective 21st century managers are well served by developing a deeper understanding of the concept of emotional intelligence and applying it to their management strategies.
l Milton Nyamadzawo writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on [email protected]