It’s a phrase you’ve likely heard before, especially if you have been in the business world for a while. You might have heard it called emotional intelligence, EI, or EQ, and maybe you’ve even read a work memo or heard your HR department talk about it.
Whether you know a little or a lot about it, you may have found yourself asking, why is emotional intelligence important? Is it something I really need to worry about, or is it just another organizational buzzword?
While the term has gained popularity recently, decades of research show that emotional intelligence has always been key to success and happiness not only at work, but in all areas of life.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
Before we get into why emotional intelligence is important, let’s start by defining what it is. In essence, EQ is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and use this understanding to manage your own behavior as well as your relationships. It affects how you navigate social complexities and make personal decisions that achieve positive results.
Unfortunately, research shows that less than 40% of people are able to accurately identify their emotions in the moment, meaning the majority of people are not as in tune with their emotions as they should be. Colleges and universities are starting to catch on to the importance of emotional intelligence, incorporating social and emotional learning into curricula, as most adults weren’t taught, at school or at home, how to deal with their emotions.
The good news is that it’s never too late to learn emotional intelligence. EQ is a highly flexible skill, and with the right knowledge, training and practice, it can be improved. As your emotional intelligence improves, you’ll begin to see and experience the wide range of benefits that come with it.
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important in the Workplace?
Why is EQ important? Whether you recognize it or not, emotions play a role in virtually everything you do. Our brains are wired to process everything emotionally first, before anything else like logic or reasoning comes into play. Even at work, where people might think feelings shouldn’t be involved, it’s impossible to escape the reality that we are, first and foremost, emotional beings.
What this means is that the way to success in the workplace isn’t just through technical skill, talent, and intelligence. In fact, success often depends on knowing how to recognize and manage your emotions as well as the emotions around you.
Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace:
- Leadership success. The best leaders use strong relational skills to gain trust and influence with those they lead. Emotional intelligence allows you to build good relationships, demonstrate inspirational conviction, and create an environment of stability, which makes people more likely to follow your lead. Emotionally intelligent leaders are also empathetic and encouraging, making individuals feel understood and appreciated and bringing out the best in everyone.
- Clearer communication. Key emotional intelligence skills like active listening, understanding different perspectives, and articulating your own thoughts and emotions lead to clearer, more effective communication, an essential workplace competency.
- Conflict resolution. Managing emotions is often the key to handling conflict. If you are able to set aside your own emotions, listen empathetically to others, and make people feel heard and understood, you can resolve almost any conflict that threatens to get in the way of productivity and workplace morale.
- Decision-making. Emotional intelligence allows you to weigh the impact of your decisions on others, manage your own biases, and make smart decisions that align with the goals of your organization. Especially in times of stress, emotional intelligence allows you to recognize how that stress is impacting you so you can still make effective decisions.
- Resilience. The ability to recognize and manage your emotions is an essential aspect of overcoming adversity in the workplace and beyond. EQ allows you to respond appropriately to tough situations without letting them keep you down for too long.
- Stress management. The more skilled you are at managing your emotions and the emotions of others, the calmer you can remain under pressure. Interestingly, some stress is beneficial for productivity, but only if it is kept at a manageable level. Emotional intelligence gives you the ability to keep your emotions in check to keep beneficial stress from becoming detrimental.
- Increased productivity. Awareness of your personal limits, good relationship skills, strong decision-making, stress management, and resilience all ultimately lead to enhanced productivity in the workplace.
- Greater job satisfaction. All these benefits add up to overall increased job satisfaction for high EQ workers. A meta-analysis of almost 30,000 workers found a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction.
How to Harness Emotional Intelligence at Work
If these benefits leave you wondering how to improve your EQ skills, there are steps you can take right now to do just that.
Tips for increasing and utilizing emotional intelligence in the workplace:
- Be curious about others. Practice getting to know your coworkers and caring about what’s going on with them. Ask questions, listen actively, and take their feelings and experiences into account when making decisions.
- Learn your strengths and weaknesses. Get to know yourself too–what are you good at, and where could you improve? Knowing these things about yourself will allow you to lean into your strengths and prevent your weaknesses from holding you back.
- Let go of mistakes. Let your mistakes teach you, not define you. When you fail, actively process the emotions that come with the failure so you can then take what you need from it, leaving the rest behind.
- Embrace change. When change happens, you get to decide how to respond to it. Notice whether you accept change or resist it, and look for ways you can shift your outlook to become more adaptable. Change is inevitable, and it’s up to you whether you will benefit from it.
- Be assertive. You can be empathetic and kind while maintaining healthy boundaries and being honest with others. Don’t let conflict avoidance masquerade as politeness. Instead, address conflict head-on while practicing tempering your emotions.
As you begin practicing these skills, you will notice them becoming more natural over time. And as this happens, you’ll also notice the positive changes that come with increasing your emotional intelligence. Ultimately your growing EQ skills will benefit not just you, but also your coworkers, your teams, and your organization as a whole.
Take Your EQ to the Next Level
If you’re looking for more ways to enhance your emotional intelligence at work and beyond, TalentSmartEQ has you covered. We offer the leading assessment for emotional intelligence measurement and development, as well as a range of solutions and training tools for leaders, individuals, and teams who want to bring more EQ into the workplace.