From the days on the playground to your next job interview, emotional intelligence supports your success in many parts of life. In this deep dive, Top Applicant is discussing calculated approaches for being more in touch emotionally at work while still respecting professional boundaries.
Whether you’re leading a company or trying to land your dream job, create your account to put your professionalism and personality on display. Or, keep reading to learn all about emotional intelligence at work!
Table of Contents
- Emotional Intelligence Defined
- EI for Employers
- EI for Employees
Emotional Intelligence Defined
Before we discuss the intricacies of emotions at work, let’s clearly define what professional emotional intelligence means to the Top Applicant team. There are 5 essential elements of EI that both employers and employees need to consider for improving day-to-day interactions.
Self-Awareness
Every successful interaction starts when you take stock of your own strengths, weaknesses, emotions, and actions. By understanding your own communication style and controlling any emotions tied to work, you’re taking the first step toward effective professional interactions. This can help you push pause in stressful situations and persevere through daily challenges.
Learn more about the power of pause in our related read!
Pausing to Rethink Conflict Resolution in the Workplace
Self-Regulation
Understanding your emotions during daily interactions is one thing. But perfecting them is something entirely different! Emotionally intelligent workers have a strong grip on how they express themselves in what they do and say every day. But there’s more to self-regulation than just watching your words.
Your body language, posture, and facial expressions can all reflect your internal emotions. Many people struggle to stay calm and collected in high-stress situations, but cooler heads always prevail in the end for a reason! Only by improving your internal EI can you effectively help others and lead a team.
Motivation
Many effective leaders have the “it-factor”: a magnetism that makes people want to do or believe what they say. That magnetism directly relates to the level of emotional intelligence these leaders display in everyday interactions.
Studies show that companies with highly engaged employees outperform others by 21% in profitability and show 17% higher productivity than companies with disengaged workforces. With this in mind, it’s easier to justify making the investment in programs driven to foster emotional intelligence in the workforce.
Empathy
So why do companies that improve how they work together work better? It all boils down to how much people feel seen, heard, and valued. Encouraging empathy for employees on and off the clock helps create a more emotionally intelligent workforce. But how can emotional empathy bring professional profit?
A recent survey of 1,000 professionals by Ernst & Young shows that 89% of workers agree that empathy is a quality that is directly attributed to better leadership. Additionally, the report shows that 88% of the surveyed group thought that empathetic leadership would inspire positive change within their workplace. Finally, 87% also said that more empathy would foster organic trust between employees and management.
All of these efforts lead to lower turnover, higher productivity, and lasting satisfaction across the board. These are the essential elements of a well-developed workforce.
The more a team feels they can rely on one another, the more they socialize and develop successful relationships!
Social Skills
The final essential element of emotional intelligence at work is the social skills that make every interaction successful. From avoiding everyday faux pas to representing your organization well at events, positive interactions are essential to working with any group of people. In the workplace, this can mean everything from respecting cultural differences to using the right fork at a big dinner.
No matter what your personality type, proper everyday social skills are essential to your success on any team. The social skill set your specific role requires varies greatly depending on the industry and responsibilities. To help you find a good company culture fit, Top Applicant includes information on the demographics, values, and other intricacies tied to every organization featured on our platform.
Inevitably, emotions tie into your work in one way or another. To help career builders and companies navigate the basics of emotional intelligence at work, let’s dive into both sides of the equation below.
Emotional Intelligence for Employers
Organizations around the world have started investing in intelligence like never before. But there’s nothing artificial about the people these initiatives impact!
As companies invest in their employees’ mental health and overall well-being, emotional intelligence takes center stage. Here’s how each essential pillar plays a pivotal role in the success of a company!
Self-Awareness
To start improving your EI IQ as an employer, focus on the only thing you can completely control: yourself. The most effective leaders are self-aware people who understand the balance between their organizational needs and the emotional needs of team members.
Setting and maintaining balance helps organizations mitigate stressors and triggers to create more effective interactions and productive day-to-day work for everyone!
Self-Regulation
Once you know what you’re capable of and you feel ready to recognize that in your employees, work on controlling your actions and ideas as you see how they affect the people you depend on.
In this case, effective management of emotions and stress comes from consistent, positive interactions. Whether it’s during your morning stand-up meeting or an after-hours gathering, staying approachable, fair, and warm to employees satisfies fundamental emotional needs that most companies never consider!
Motivation
Being a confidant for your team is one thing, but guiding them to success is something entirely different! Effective leadership means turning this emotional understanding into motivation, passion, and inspiration for the team. Managers with high emotional intelligence excel at creating supportive, motivational, and positive cultures.
Empathy
Basic professional empathy means understanding your team’s needs and motivations. This empathy empowers leaders to motivate their team members effectively by understanding their individual needs and aspirations. Experts agree that leaders who display professional empathy perform significantly higher in coaching, engagement, and equitable decision-making.
Social Skills
What comes to mind when you think of a beloved manager with poor social skills? Michael Scott from the television show The Office gives a great example of how much communication and relationship-building play a part in leadership.
Although he’s a comically subpar performer, Michael makes up for it by being an effective (occasionally extreme) communicator to his team. While unorthodox, his socially awkward leadership style displays a hallmark of emotionally intelligent leadership. Staying social and connected helps build trust and credibility throughout your team.
The Impact of Elevating Your EI
Organizations with a high level of collective emotional intelligence stay more agile and responsive to market shifts and challenges. Leaders can navigate crises more effectively and maintain employee morale through challenges in their professional and personal lives.
A leader’s ability to understand and manage emotions at an organizational level determines how thoughtful and effective their decisions can be. This matters the most in ambiguous or high-pressure situations. Handling difficulties with the correct devotion to emotion in every aspect of life keeps your company moving forward.
Fostering a supportive culture also means valuing emotional intelligence while encouraging open feedback and continuous improvement. Efforts like feeding-forward in reviews, continuously developing clear goals, and understanding personal needs create impacts that develop long-term organizational success and resilience.
To elevate your culture and the expertise of your team, fill your next role for free with Top Applicant!
Emotional Intelligence for Employees
Self-Regulation
Truly impactful interactions start when you take stock of everything you can control in the situation. In many workplaces, employees only truly have 100% control of what they say and how they act.
To become more self-aware in your day-to-day interactions, we recommend keeping a log of a week or two at work and then reading through each entry to reflect on how you felt and what you did in those moments. This helps you reflect and regulate better in the future!
Empathy
Understanding and respecting your co-workers goes a long way when building a career. Everyone you work with, regardless of their role, has thoughts, feelings, and aspirations too. So when showing empathy in your everyday work, we recommend fostering mutual respect, courtesy, and being receptive to new perspectives.
Social Skills
The catalyst to display your emotional intelligence as an employee of any company are your social skills. How you talk to clients, co-workers, and managers on a daily basis shapes the track record of your career.
As you climb the corporate ladder, more social interactions and expectations require special refinement. Our experts suggest developing a professional vocabulary, working on presentation skills, and getting good at productive small talk. All these skills, and more, add value to your resume beyond your work history.
The Value of EI on a Resume
Emotional intelligence is not merely a “soft skill” but a critical competency that drives tangible success. From the C-Suite to the mail room, emotional intelligence is an exceptionally important skill to display on your resume.
Companies look for candidates who can keep their cool under pressure, rally a team, and generate excellent work. To share your EI IQ on a resume, start by thinking of instances where you demonstrated excellent self-regulation and showed empathy, and discuss practical ways your social skills helped get things done.
Instead of a long-winded cover letter cluttering an employer’s inbox, Top Applicant’s features make it easy to stand out from the crowd. Find out how by signing in!
