Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Factor in Workplace Success
In his book, “Working with Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman’s research reveals deplorable weaknesses in how businesses train people in skills from listening and leadership to team building and handling change. He also added that most training programs have embraced an academic model but this has been a drastic mistake, wasting millions of hours and billions of dollars. What’s needed is an entirely new way of thinking about what it takes to help people boost their emotional intelligence
Goleman affirms that emotional intelligence is essential in achieving success. With improved emotional intelligence, you will achieve greater career success and satisfaction; stronger personal relationships with your co-workers; increased optimism and confidence in your work; and overall well-being. High-performance of an organization depends essentially on the emotional skills of each employee within it
Additionally, more and more organizations are seeing that encouraging emotional intelligence skills is a vital component of any organization’s management philosophy. A manager at Telia, the Swedish telecommunications company quoted “You don’t compete with products alone anymore, but how well you use your people,” And Linda Keegan, vice president for executive development at Citibank, suggested “Emotional intelligence is the underlying premise for all management training”
Furthermore, a growing number of organizations look to use EQ testing in their hiring processes (75% of employers say they value EQ over IQ when it comes to promoting internally), the question of whether you need to develop your emotional intelligence might be better phrased: can you afford not to?