Emotional intelligence today is recognized as a highly valuable skill. It is of high demand in everyday personal life and the process of work and career development. Emotional intelligence can be stimulated and improved; it changes over time due to various life experiences; it also can be identified and measured.
The employees with higher emotional intelligence level are more wanted at any workplace because they tend to possess a whole set of extremely valuable qualities such as collected mind, better reactions, rationalism, critical thinking, reasonable evaluation, the ability to work under pressure, higher endurance and the capacity to get along with individuals and groups of people.
To understand what emotional intelligence is, it is important to know how our brain works. The senses enter our brain at the spinal cord; they need to be transferred to the frontal lobe in order for the brain to be able to rationally process them, but on the way from the spinal cord, the senses move through the middle of the brain, where they mix up with our feelings and emotions.
This is where emotional intelligence is needed. It is the skill responsible for harmonious and successful communication between the emotional and rational parts of the brain (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009).
Unnecessary, uncontrolled, or simply challenging and unpleasant emotions are an essential part of every employee’s daily workplace experience. American business companies noticed this and started to pay greater attention to the emotional competence of their workers, hire special consultants and advisors to help the employees deal with the emotional intelligence issues, conduct training and courses for the improvement of the emotional atmosphere at the workplace (Schwartz, 2000).
Emotional intelligence level today is recognized as a determinant of professional success. The scholars started to notice that being a good student and fitting into the school’s understanding of a successful person often does not match the real life and work experiences, so the most thorough learners and the smartest kids who only got A-grades for the papers do not always become successful in the future (Stein & Book, 2010).
To improve emotional intelligence, an individual has to learn three aspects of their personality. First, a person has to know themselves, try to follow their own moods, recognize behavioral patterns and reactions, work on their own emotional literacy. Second, a person needs to motivate themselves, stimulate their own optimism, think rationally, and consequentially. Finally, a person should orientate themselves towards extraverted goals and improve empathy (Moseley, 2012).
Emotional intelligence is a complicated phenomenon. It contains many layers and is responsible for emotional and social functioning of people, their professional performance, personal life, leadership qualities, and overall inner well-being. Emotional intelligence is reflected in people’s self-perception, decision making, self-expression, stress management, and interpersonal relationships (Emotional Intelligence, 2014).
Developing one’s emotional intelligence is a complicated occupation because not many people have the capacity of recognizing their feelings and emotions and describing them or identifying them as patterns. Emotions can easily ruin our concentration, make us lose our temper, distract us, create embarrassing behavior, increase our pessimism, and this way jeopardize our relationships and careers.
People are emotional creatures by nature, dealing with emotions is essential for us, and emotional intelligence stands for the people’s ability to prevent their emotions from influencing their productivity, behavior, positive thinking, and professionalism.
The result of my emotional intelligence assessment showed that I have a high level of EQ, but there is still room for improvement. I fully agree with this statement and my self-evaluation of own behaviors, decisions, and reactions match the conclusion of the assessment. Over the years of observation of the inner changes I have been going through as a person, I got to understand some of the traits of my character a little better.
I successfully got rid of some of the qualities and habits that I thought were holding me back and causing me discomfort. Some of them are indecisiveness and excessive shyness. I believe that these features were on the way of y personal development and would certainly create issues at the workplace. Besides, I am convinced that I possess quite a high level of self-awareness. It is not difficult for me to distinguish between my emotions and find the reasons for certain feelings I experience.
One of the problems I face from time to time is my ability to control negative emotions. I rarely explode, raise my voice or say unpleasant things to people in any circumstances – at home and the workplace, but negative emotions influence my work process and make me less productive than I would like to be.
I believe that the improvement of my emotional intelligence needs to be done in the area of the connection of my mood and my professional skills and concentration. To manage this issue, I need to research some of the special techniques designed to train assertiveness and bring back focus. I know that with proper and regular practice this need can be fulfilled, my mind can learn to handle the emotions by means of focusing on more important subjects, relax and let go of the annoying patterns.
Reference List
Bradberry, T. & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Berkeley, CA: TalentSmart.
Emotional Intelligence. (2014). Clarion Enterprises.
Moseley, L. (2012). Stress and Wellness: The EQ Perspective.
Schwartz, T. (2000). How Do You Feel?
Stein, S. J. & Book, H. (2010). The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.