Emotional intelligence at work

Intelligence has been defined in various ways, such as a capacity for logic, understanding, learning, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, abstract thinking, self -awareness and problem solving. These definitions are not far from addressing the issue, since they are characteristics that human beings are endowed and it is what often distinguishes them from the rest of animal world.

Although it is known that animals of different species also have some of these capacities, it is also recognized that they do not have all of them or manifest them at a very primitive phylogenetic evolution level. It is known that intelligence has facilitated the integration of individual subjects into groups, that is, through the use of any of these capacities, it could be offered to the service, acceptance or admiration of others (a job). In psychology-online we explain how a type of intelligence can positively contribute to the working life of each one: a Emotional intelligence at work.

1. What is emotional intelligence and its importance
2. How Emotional Intelligence affects work
3. How to apply emotional intelligence at work
4. How to develop intelligence in the workplace

What is emotional intelligence and its importance

The Emotional Intelligence It has been described and proposed by different authors for many decades and also for more than a century by Charles Darwin. This type of intelligence refers to the ability to understand their own emotional or affective process and that of other people. It is necessary to describe that emotional intelligence is not contrasted to those described above with unconscious intentions by homogenizing the particular characteristics of each subject: the Rational-Logic-Deductive Intelligence.

The second intelligence described many times was used as a reference to the success of people (for example, if someone presented an effective understanding of mathematical problems or in memorizing data for long periods of time). Thus the emotional part was degraded to something animals, childish and superfluous.

As Charles Darwin (1872) mentioned that intelligence is based on how efficient the species become when doing the things they need to survive, and put aside our rational or cognitive source for creating an apology to the world of our emotions It would not make us the most efficient species to survive, in reverse: we would not be the most suitable species surviving if we avoid the importance of our emotions in the decisions we make daily to generalize the relative reason as the only source of success.

Emotional intelligence requires the rational understanding capacity about data that we ignore about the emotional world, for example they could be the following:

• What is an emotion for.
• Where does an emotion come from.
• How an emotion is manifested.
• What emotions exist.
• How an emotion is manifested in the body.
• At the neurological level, what areas are involved in emotions.

Rationalizing does not imply justifying and responding to "because" all the time, in that case we would be believing our own lies. Rationalizing implies understanding. The emotional reaction is not thought, but it is understood; The understanding of that emotional world is what constitutes emotional intelligence.

Learn that An emotion is an impulse for action As Goleman (1995) describes and that it is, through these impulses as we have managed to survive as a species (for example, if we feel fear, our physiology is launched to fight/flee or paralyze ourselves to any threat), but if not We understand that fear has a function in our life we ​​will label it with the aim of justifying our ignorance as if it were an invention, as something harmful and so many more pejorative for emotion in particular. Understand how fear manifests will facilitate adaptation, evolution, until we reach what the German philosopher Nietzsche called "Ubermensch" or superman. We will be people not only with emotional intelligence, but, people who have reached spiritual, psychological and physical maturity.

Daniel Goleman (1995): For better or worse, our valuations and our reactions to any interpersonal encounter are not the exclusive fruit of an exclusively rational judgment or of our personal history, but also seem to root in our ancestral remote past ancestral.

How Emotional Intelligence affects work

As described, emotional intelligence allows us to understand their own emotions and those of others, something similar to what the Greeks called Sofrosyne (the virtue of care and intelligence of the government of life itself); What Christians call as temperance, that ability to contain emotional excess. This virtue of self -care, self -knowledge, government and temperance that facilitates emotional intelligence is evidenced in the work we do in customer relationships, collaborators (employees) and with employers (bosses), in the way in which the problems arising at work are faced or solved and in the determination and passion that is dedicated to labor actions.

Be slaves of our nature

A little control over the way in which our limbic system responds to stimuli, the absence of the art of containing or defering passions (emotions), of the inability to self -regulate (balance or calm), of emotional illiteracy (not being able to Describe what others feel or feel) can conclude in difficulties in learning, concentrating, remembering and especially in decision making. The stress that a normal body response to survival threats can become a factor of labor conflicts or problems in the performance of work tasks by not being able to express it and guide it to an objective.

Stress is necessary, as well as happiness, sadness and anger but you should know with great intelligence How to be able to express them in healthy ways.

Here are some of the characteristics of the Effects of emotional intelligence at work:

• Employees with greater frustration tolerance.
• Employers with discernment and leadership capacity.
• Employers capable of understanding and empathizing with the needs of their collaborators and their customers or users.
• Employees who usually propose goals, offering their skills for the development of the company or institution.
• Relationships between fellow collaborators and employers with empathy.
• Reduction of mental pathologies (depression, anxiety, sleep-vigilia problems, eating behavior problems)).
• Higher productivity.

How to apply emotional intelligence at work

The advance towards a strategic conception of labor relations starts from the use of collaborators (employees and employers) as tools for management and knowledge participation (contribution and collaboration of the human intelligence of employees) and the response to the concerns of the resource Human (Emotional Intelligence Management of Labor Relations). The restructuring of the work environment occurs unstructively, employees perform a function within the organization as individual subjects that differ in the most visceral and original sense of the concept (different training profiles, origins, remuneration concerns, personal concerns and development expectations ). The prosperity of organizations is based on Improve the health of your workers; A counterproductive act is to deduce that health needs will always be the same for each collaborator. The development expectations in which each one can not completely adjust to the offers of the organization; Formative profiles and experiences may not be used or exploited by organizations.

To achieve healthy labor relations from this subjective address of employees, the sensation of each one must be created that their professional expectations are not committed or compelled to get stuck within the organization, but rather that, They focus on growth and improvement perspectives. This approach predicts personal growth by empathizing and recognizing that Each employee contributes their capacities to the collective benefit, but that also coexists and socializes with another environment, and therefore lives other experiences that must be addressed.

How to develop intelligence in the workplace

Here are eight Strategies to develop emotional intelligence at work:

1. Training: Emotional Intelligence Training Processes.
2. Support: Offer psychological support to collaborators.
3. Self -knowledge: Offer opportunities for each of the collaborators to get to know each other (their skills, their difficulties and the expression of their emotions at the physiological level).
4. Motivation for the scope of objectives, goals and new challenges.
5. Knowledge of the environment (collaborators), know the subjective expression of their emotions.
6. Training About nonverbal language. This will facilitate reading the emotions of the interlocutors.
7. Learning of social skills, such as developing active listening, listening to the ideas and objectives of each collaborator.
8. Closeness and empathy, implies understanding beyond the ideas and emotions of others. This allows the recognition and valuation of the personal history of each collaborator, so we understand many why their reactions.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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