Custom «The Emotional Intelligence at the Workplace» Essay Paper

The emotional intelligence (EI) is the individual’s ability to recognize the effect of their emotions, the way they behave and the emotional awareness in their environment. Even if an employee is identified by extensive experience and great qualification, yet he may not work amicably with colleagues or lead others towards the objective of the business. It means that such an employee may be lacking the emotional intelligence. Underdeveloped emotional intelligence may not necessarily imply an individual cannot succeed in the workplace. In the current workplace, where individuals are more aware of self and are not tolerant to ignorance and arrogance, insignificance of the emotional intelligence will negatively affect the workplace, contributing to the decrease of employees. Most competent employees have been rejected promotion at workplace without knowing the reason.

Despite the fact that they may be efficient workers and even manage to succeed and surpass others, they may have not considered the human cost of their inability to control their personal impulses and emotions. Realizing one’s emotional intelligence may not be easy as individuals may not constantly work for its achievement. Human brains tend to react in fight-and-flight mode with ease. This mode of emotional control tends to make individuals react before they are given time to think. The way to control the instinctive reaction and emotional stimuli is to hone the awareness of self-regulated emotional states. For instance, a given event may trigger a destructive emotional reaction of different individuals. The awareness of own emotional intelligence may help people to realize the emotional state of others in their environment. This knowledge contributes to the increase of empathy. Employees tend to enhance their emotional intelligence at workplace owing to the knowledge of the stimuli that triggers the possible destructive reaction. This development of self-awareness helps in management of their responses while making them proactive rather than being reactive to emotional stimuli.

•  

  0

  Preparing Orders

•  

  0

  Active Writers

•  

  0%

  Positive Feedback

•  

  0

  Support Agents

 

Title of your paper

Type of service

Type of assignment

Number of pages

-

+

Academic level

Timeframes

Spacing

Currency

USD

• Total price

Continue to order

 

Contemporary organizational leadership may not be confined to the individuals with management positions. Everyone has the capability to provide the needed leadership at their place of employment. The fundamental feature of organizational leadership at workplace consists in the ability to influence others, establish relationships, communicate effectively, and foster collaboration. The individual is required to have balanced emotions so that their positive attributes are enhanced while the negative aspects are acknowledged and anticipated. It calls for the individual to have open mind to the contribution from others within their working environment, and not to feel threatened by this contributory influence. It is important to feel sufficiently confident in the self-abilities to understand when it is better to lead from the front and when it is advisable to step back while allowing others to take charge. These aspects need to be addressed for establishment of long-term and sustainable relationships that would provide the required resources in order to achieve the organizational goals.

Team Level

Dealing with the differences may often elicit curiosity and interest while offering the chance for creativity. The complexity comes when members of a team drawn from different cultural backgrounds and with diverse values have to work in a group with conflicting interests. In the process of implementing policies and enacting changes, they may find out that their differences are destructive rather than constructive. In such situations, the emotional intelligence is of immense importance to the team that is focused on achieving the desired organizational objective. The EI provides the approach to establish and reinforce team’s norms that empower these workers to realize their full potential for the sake of achievement of their goals. Through focusing on establishment and enhancing such norms in the team, the emotional intelligence helps to manage potentially destructive experiences in a constructive way while using stimuli for the development of the newly organized staff. 

Organizational Level

At the organizational phase, establishing an emotionally intelligent workplace involves developing a balance between common organizational values and individual uniqueness. Times of high stress magnitudes in the organization also promote opportunities for the development of emotional intelligence. For example, during global economic recession that involved layoffs, transparency would have gone a long way towards demonstration of honesty in an organization and its management. There are also some organizations that reward hardships and risks without paying attention to the outcome of the operation. Such organization does not necessarily end up with the negative outcome but it obviously takes the risk.

Such issues in an organization require good dialogue, feedback and the aspiration to recognize time invested in skills development so as people can work without hurting others.  The development of emotional intelligence in an organization is focused on assisting the employees in achievement of productive, joyful, and meaningful life, hence allowing them to contribute effectively to the development of the organization.

Their main organizational drive is the creation of workplace that is governed by the intentional actions enriched by the contribution, purpose, and meaning. The emotional intelligence contributes to making the vision a reality. Every organization needs to develop the strategy to gain people’s trust in order to achieve the organizational culture that is purposeful, meaningful, remarkable in its accomplishment, and strong in mutual respect. This culture of behaviour will foster organizational environment with individual and team building to maintain efficient relationship in an effort to develop a network of connections and achievements.

Ultimately, these strategies engage managers and their subordinates who feel the sense of being part of something greater in their workplace while enjoying their work.

The Case of Emotional Intelligence

The critical scrutiny of the John’s case illustrates that emotional intelligence of an individual and their perception of the effects one’s behaviour has on other people’s life constitutes self-awareness. Self-awareness is the fundamental principle of emotional intelligence. Though John may have evaluated his performance based on the outcome of his efforts at work, this would not have successfully established his identity in relation to the other people at his workplace. Therefore, the first step towards realization of the emotional intelligence should be carried out through attaining a healthy sense of self-awareness. The letter John received illustrated this hypothesis. It gives the ability to recognize the emotions of the individual and to understand the impact John would have on people at his workplace, home, and within the community, which provides him with wider area of influence. The self-awareness that was realized by John implied that he was realistic in the appraisal of his emotions. He was able to perceive and understand how others treated his performance at workplace. This also demonstrated that John was aware of how to respond to others’ opinions about his emotions in a proactive way.

According to the case of John Gardner, the first critical step in the establishment of the capability to deal with differences is the self-awareness that leads to understanding the reactions towards others. Self-awareness process is a continuous responsibility, which involves attaining and maintaining comfort with self-identity. It in turn includes understanding of individual’s preferences, values, passions and perspective of personal ability. This contemplation requires becoming aware of the assumptions, biases and signals that influence individuals’ attitudes toward their working environment.

Furthermore, the case illustrates that self-awareness helps one to predict their behaviours by knowing what factor may evoke a certain emotional or behavioural response. Accepting the differences among the individuals may be triggered by a threat in the environment, such as a warning from the senior management in the organization. Consequently, this begins with apperception and endows individuals to assume responsibility for their choices rather than deny them. As a result, there is an establishment of a stronger self-understanding. Enhanced self-understanding leads to the development of ability to experience empathy and express compassion towards other people in the workplace environment.

John Gardner has shown significant ability in management of his emotions. Such people are able to express variety of feelings appropriately and at the same time plan how to manage emotions in a situation under consideration. They easily develop ways of coping with their emotions that are deemed destructive and, thus, establish their equilibrium at workplace. People are sometimes surprised to understand that they can only effectively manage but not control their emotions, such as sadness, anger, anxiety, and stress. Though John’s job description required him to perform, he still received a letter demanding him to change his leadership style. Being aware of emotions is the optimal starting point in learning to manage them. If employees may be able to identify their emotions and feelings, they are able to acknowledge certain unneeded reaction and its impact on their physiological state, and plan the way to manage emotions that develop negative consequences.

The ability to see and understand emotional states of others is difficult to achieve. It is often complicated for people to comprehend what others feel through communication and action. At the upper range, there are individuals who are aware of what other people are going through and are able to empathize with their hardships. John shows the listening skill, which helps him to apprehend the meaning of the seniors’ communication. This is an important aspect of awareness of the working environment. However, the ability to reveal people’s feelings with help of effective communication is a complicated path for the sake of attainment of self-realization.

The capacity to effectively relate with other people creates individual’s awareness of the emotions. Strong-minded people (as illustrated in the case study of John) in this dimension apply the awareness of their emotions to develop durable relationships, support networks and teams. Such persons are capable of compassion as they interact with their workplace environment. John was less likely to make destructive judgement about the observations of his managers about his identity since he developed mechanism of accurate assessment of the emotions of colleagues. Such tactics allows individuals to develop satisfying and progressive relationships. This trait is significant in order to establish a successful working team and organization.

The other quality displayed in the case study is the capacity to maintain emotional balance regardless of the unavoidable changes that may occur either internally or externally in the employee’s life. There are several other considerations, such as flexibility, optimism, and the capacity to learn from mistakes and to regain from the setbacks, which are illustrated as significant components of emotional intelligence. John demonstrates a sense of resilience, which is his flexibility as long as all other aspects of the emotional intelligence form the foundation for the person’s ability to sustain the balance and equilibrium in the midst of inevitable changes. Resilience also allows individual to replicate enhancement of emotional intelligence in various encounters of life and in dealing with others outside the workplace. Flexibility, as exemplified in the given case study, is an important aspect in the character of the emotionally intelligent people. This dimension drives the individual’s daily motivation as they experience internal changes, such as intellectual curiosity, love, boredom, and joy. Moreover, there are external transformations that fuel the range from seasonal transformation and geographical re-locations to emotionally transformed workplace environment. Such unavoidable changes are more successfully dealt with if individuals are resilient, optimistic and prepared to cope with and to learn from the setbacks and disappointments.

From the evaluation of the given case study, it is evident that the emotional intelligence is significantly applicable in determination of the performance at workplace.

Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Labour

In the current discussion, two elements of emotional intelligence have been assessed: the ability and trait. The trait of emotional intelligence has been defined as the composition of the self-perceived personality and ability traits related to the recognition and regulation of emotional aspects, such as sensitivity, empathy, and motivation. The ability to understand and express emotional intelligence consists in the capacity to apply, perceive and manage emotions.

The emotional labour, on the other hand, is the regulation and expression of the emotions in accordance with the display of rules of the workplace. The workplace rules include instructions that specify the density, range, duration, and the object of the emotions that ought to be displayed at the workplace. There are two processes of the emotional labour: the deep acting and surface acting.

The surface acting is realized when an individual transforms his outward commitment at the workplace while he does not rely on the expressed emotions. On the other hand, deep acting is reflected when individual deliberately feels the emotional transformation and reflects the same at workplace.

There are several evaluations that have been determined for measuring both the team and individual’s emotion intelligence (EQ). One of the most validated evaluations is the EQ-I, which was masterminded by Reuven Bar-On. This is a self-report assessment of fifteen distinguished factors that are divided between five areas demarcated to define EQ. The other assessment implies to test the EQ abilities through the presentation of emotion-related problems.