The ability to manage one’s emotions and cultivate relationships is critical in all areas of life, but it can sometimes be overlooked in the business environment.

Known as emotional intelligence (EI), this asset can allow you and your employees alike to make better decisions, foster collaboration, and increase productivity at each level of your organization. In fact, a 2024 Forbes article rated EI as the most important skill for high-performing professionals to possess. For more on the value of this ability, explore this guide to its main components and how you can nurture it in yourself and your team.

What is emotional intelligence?

First defined by American researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey in 1990, the concept of emotional intelligence really hit the scene five years later thanks to psychologist Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. In essence, EI is simply the capacity to recognize, understand, and manage emotions, including your own and those of others. Strengthening it can make a person highly capable, giving them the ability to stay calm under pressure amid various situations as well as interact well with individuals, communicating and navigating conflicts like a pro. (Side note: this term is often used interchangeably with “emotional quotient” and its abbreviation, EQ.)

Emotionally intelligent individuals are frequently sought after by companies at all levels for a multitude of reasons. Their ability to exhibit empathy may allow them to build strong relationships within and outside of an organization, ultimately benefiting team dynamics and client interactions. Their exceptional people skills may also permit them to motivate others effectively toward achieving common goals, from negotiating contracts to meeting deadlines. And in high-pressure situations, these individuals can remain composed, providing a sense of calm and fostering a positive work environment for all involved.

The core facets

In general, EI encompasses four main components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. Each go hand in hand, requiring the development of all of them in order to become more emotionally intelligent.

Self-awareness
Perhaps the most important part of EI is being able to identify and label your own feelings. Many conflicts or issues, especially in the workplace, are caused by individuals letting their emotions drive their actions. For example, an employee may get hostile during a performance review out of defensiveness, or a manager may bring grumpiness over a disagreement at home into the office and inadvertently take it out on their team. Both leaders and employees will benefit from being able to pause, examine what they’re feeling, and identify its source, putting words to it so they can begin to understand how it’s impacting their behaviors.

Self-management
Naturally, self-awareness is just the first step. Emotional responses are impossible to prevent entirely, but by recognizing them, you can stop them from causing you to react in detrimental or inappropriate ways and instead take more positive action. This can be beneficial in all sorts of scenarios. Salespeople can better temper impatience or frustration over a difficult customer, allowing them to adjust strategically to still land the sale. Team members can develop a more open mind to facilitate better collaboration on projects. And leaders can mitigate any personal feelings to provide more objective and useful feedback to employees. All in all, self-management may effectively allow individuals to respond more consciously to strengthen communication and boost creativity and productivity across the board.

Social awareness
This component, also known as empathy, involves being sensitive to others’ feelings and experiences. It goes beyond simple kindness, enabling you to gain valuable insights into the desires and needs of others, which is crucial in any business context. For instance, putting yourself in the shoes of your clients can help you better intuit their preferences, needs, and pain points to improve your marketing. Likewise, learning to read the room in the workplace can reveal when your team is feeling a bit deflated and could use an understanding pep talk for extra motivation. On top of that, when said employees are similarly empathetic, they may be more receptive to others’ ideas and exhibit greater tact during collaborative meetings, fostering a more comfortable and productive work environment for all.

Social skills
As touched on with social awareness, feeling attuned to others’ emotions can allow you to speak and behave in a way that may better reach or influence them, increasing the chances of a desired outcome. Empathetic leaders, for one, may have better communication skills and excel at cooperation, allowing them to effectively coach and work with their team as well as represent their company at networking events to establish potentially worthwhile connections. Further, socially adept workers can more readily adjust their attitudes and behaviors to prevent needless conflict and offer assistance to their coworkers. This ability to help pull a group together can, in turn, make it easier for everyone to strive toward a common goal.

Building emotional intelligence

Now that you’re better acquainted with the numerous benefits of EI in business, you can actively work to both enhance it in yourself and support the development of it in your employees. As a leader, there are many ways you can improve your EI, including by connecting with a mentor. Their objective perspective may help you pinpoint your current strengths and weaknesses so you can build on the former and mitigate the latter. Another strategy for increasing self-awareness specifically is to keep a journal detailing your daily decisions, noting the emotions involved in each one so you can better understand how they impact you.

For your employees, you’ll primarily want to create a positive work environment and provide resources they can take advantage of. For instance, you could plan optional workshops on topics such as self-care and stress management or implement an employee assistance program (EAP) that offers confidential assessments, counseling, and other services to support their mental health. Or even consider fun team-building exercises they can opt into, such as games and social events, which can enable everyone to glean insights into how their coworkers think and feel.

Emotions are an unavoidable part of life, which means they are an unavoidable part of business. But if you invest in the development of emotional intelligence for the whole workforce, you can turn them into an asset that can help transform your company for the better.

TAKE ACTION:
Consider investing in EI training for yourself and your team to foster a more productive work environment.