Emotional intelligence and its impact in the workplace

All organisations depend on their workforce to be highly engaged, to be able to adapt quickly to internal and external changes and to show fresh thinking and come up with new ideas. As you grow a culture of emotional intelligence in your organisation, engagement levels within teams increase. But what is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is someone’s ability to perceive, understand and manage their own feelings and emotions, there are five core components:

Self awareness

The ability to recognise and understand your moods and emotions, and how they affect others.

Self regulation

The ability to control impulses and moods, and to think before acting.

Internal motivation

Being driven to pursue goals for personal reasons, rather than for some kind of reward.

Empathy

The ability to recognise and understand others’ motivations, which is essential for building and leading teams successfully.

Social skills

The ability to manage relationships and build networks.

Emotional intelligence has a major impact on mental wellbeing…

Those with a high level of emotional intelligence typically have a happier outlook on life and more positive attitude than others. They are also better at identifying and empathising with other people’s points of view, an essential trait for preventing and resolving conflicts at work. With a better understanding of our emotions, we can communicate our feelings in a more positive manner. We can also understand and relate to our colleagues, which can lead to better working relationships.

Emotional intelligence can also be a factor in physical health…

Given the impact of stress on, among other factors, our ability to sleep, exercise, and make healthy eating choices, it stands to reason that being better able to cope with the strains of daily life can have a positive impact on our physical health, too.

Has emotional intelligence made a difference in the workplace?

Every day we make emotionally charged decisions. We feel plan A is better than plan B and we sometimes make choices based on our emotions or gut feelings. When we understand the origin and source of these emotions, especially when working in a team, we are more at attuned to each other. Emotional intelligence is more significant than ever when teams are cross-cultural, increasing the complexity of interactions of emotions and how they are expressed. Essentially, emotional intelligence in the workplaces comes down to understanding, expressing and managing, good relationships and solving problems under pressure.

Benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace…

For emotional intelligence to be effective, it has to start with yourself. You can’t distil or enhance other people’s wellbeing, improvement and sense of self without first understanding how you operate on an emotional level. What distinguishes leaders is usually their level of emotional intelligence and it is those skills which help to develop a more effective workplace.

How do you become more emotionally intelligent?

It’s clear that we’re all emotionally intelligent but we need to take more time to self-assess and work on our emotions. As with anything, it takes practice but even small steps can make a big difference. Much as you would regularly exercise your biceps or any other muscle for that matter, you need to practice working on your competencies so that they improve.

Admittedly, when we look at leaders in some of the most successful companies, it’s clear that all of these leaders have and demonstrate high levels of all the key components of emotional intelligence. It’s important to keep in mind that these are a range of abilities.

So how can Corporate Drama help your employees find their emotional intelligence?

We can help you by using our interactive, dynamic learning experiences with business role-play actors and your specific workplace challenges. We make training memorable, transferable and measurable.

They say that ‘practice makes perfect.’ But the theory in a classroom is not practice, actually doing something different is. So, the best way to improve your staff’s management, leadership, influencing, customer service or selling skills is to create as close to a real-life environment as possible.

Our Corporate Drama team of facilitators, coaches and business actors bring something very different to each client project. All of our team have ‘walked the walk’ working in the real world of business, with all of its politics, pressures and relationship challenges. This means your people receive a very different training experience, one that is as close to real-life as possible. This gives them the confidence to put the ‘practice into action’ back in their ever-challenging working environments.