Emotional Intelligence (EI): An Employment Skill on the Rise

Employees with High Emotional Intelligence make Great Team Players

Concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI)

A couple of weeks ago, I received a question on Quora asking if it is OK to mention “poker playing” as a hobby in Resumes.

My thoughts instantly rushed to the witty conversation between James Bond and Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale when they first meet on a train. “. . . in poker, you never play your hand, you play the man across the table,” Bond brags, and adds how good he is at reading people with cocky self-assurance, as expected.

Reading yourself and others correctly is just about what emotional intelligence is. I promptly answered “yes” to the question, explaining the connection between good poker players and emotional intelligence (EI), and how EI is a prized commodity in today’s job and employment market.

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

World Economic Forum (WEF) placed EI, also called emotional quotient (EQ), at the sixth spot in its list of top 10 employment skills for 2020. The great news is, you can start now and boost your EI levels. Improving intelligence quotient (IQ) is not that simple on the contrary.

John Mayer and Peter Salovey first defined emotional intelligence as the capacity to understand our own and other’s emotions and utilize this understanding to influence our own thinking and behaviour, as well as that of others.

Emotionally Intelligent People are Considerate and Help Others

Now, the scope of emotional intelligence is broad, for guys with high EI levels lead happier personal lives and have more successful professional careers. This is because they possess superior physical and mental well being.

Quite clearly, emotional intelligence promotes job satisfaction. Benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace are many because such people:

• achieve greater academic success

• better achieve their professional goals

• manage change more efficiently

• perform better when working in teams

• deal cleverly with their own stress and that of others

• are excellent at conflict management and troubleshooting

• possess greater motivation levels

• make more appropriate decisions

Psychologist Daniel Goleman identifies five elements of EI:

• Self Awareness: capacity to understand your own emotions and their impact on others

• Self Regulation: ability to control your emotions and impulsive actions

• Self Motivation: being focused on your goals without being prodded by others through inducements

• Compassion: to understand other people’s emotions

• Social Skills: channelizing the understanding of other’s emotions to build a network of people

It goes without saying that emotional intelligence upgrades the quality of work life among employees, while also improving their work life balance.

Current & Future Relevance of Emotional Intelligence

Technology and a dynamic world are making the workplace a complex location. Changes are fast and, unavoidably, stressful. Emotionally intelligent folks are more resilient, better at coping up with such pressure, and more likely to learn and develop from adversity.

Now, being emotionally intelligent does not guarantee success. Even guys with high EI fail. But EI does boost your chances of making it big.

Moving to the future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to replace humans in jobs that require collection and evaluation of data, and making suggestions based on data analysis. What AI cannot do is understand humans, interact with them, and motivate them.

And, this is where emotionally intelligent guys come in. Even intelligent machines cannot make them expendable!

Even in the age of technology, emotional intelligence is the one skill that machines cannot acquire. Interested in content that brings out the other side as well? Contact us at indrajeety1981@gmail.com or +91-9822052945.

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