Low emotional intelligence can be a significant obstacle to success, impacting job performance and overall achievement. Since emotional intelligence accounts for 58% of job performance, improving this skill is crucial. Elevating your emotional intelligence enhances communication and fosters better relationship development.
Unlock Success by Boosting Your Emotional Intelligence
Research indicates that individuals with high emotional intelligence are ten times more productive than those without it. It's no wonder that 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence (EI) is frequently referred to as the "other type of smart" and is a relatively new concept quickly gaining popularity, especially in the corporate world. EI provides the capacity to recognize, understand, and manage our feelings and those of others - ultimately impacting our success.
Why Should We Invest in Emotional Intelligence?
By elevating your emotional intelligence, you develop the skills necessary to navigate the complexities of human interaction, make more informed decisions, and lead with empathy, all of which are critical components of success in any field.
Elevating emotional intelligence (EI) can create success in several key ways:
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Improved Communication: High emotional intelligence lets you express yourself clearly and understand others better, leading to more effective communication. Clear communication reduces misunderstandings, fosters collaboration, and builds stronger professional and personal relationships, all of which are critical for success.
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Better Decision-Making: Emotional intelligence helps you manage your emotions and consider the emotions of others, leading to more balanced and thoughtful decisions. Making better decisions, especially under pressure, enhances your ability to navigate challenges and seize opportunities, contributing to success.
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Stronger Relationships: EI allows you to empathize with others, build trust, and maintain positive interactions, essential for creating and sustaining relationships. Strong relationships are the foundation of a robust network necessary for career growth, business opportunities, and personal fulfillment.
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Enhanced Leadership: Leaders with high emotional intelligence can inspire, motivate, and manage their teams more effectively by understanding and addressing emotional dynamics. Effective leadership fosters a positive work environment, increases productivity, and drives teams toward achieving common goals, which are crucial to organizational and personal success.
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Increased Resilience: Emotional intelligence equips you with the skills to manage stress, adapt to change, and bounce back from setbacks. Resilience is crucial for maintaining momentum in the face of challenges, allowing you to persevere and achieve long-term success.
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Greater Self-Awareness: High EI includes strong self-awareness, which enables you to recognize your strengths, weaknesses, and triggers. Self-awareness allows you to leverage your strengths, work on your weaknesses, and align your actions with your goals, leading to more effective personal and professional growth.
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Conflict Resolution: Resolving conflicts prevents disruptions, maintains harmony, and fosters a collaborative environment, which is vital for sustained success.
Using EI To Combat Low Employee Engagement
Recently, I worked with a company where employee engagement was extremely low, and employee stress was at an all-time high, creating a direct obstacle to success. Management needed to communicate more effectively with employees, which caused tension and decreased productivity. To eliminate these obstacles, we executed a customized program to strengthen emotional intelligence's core components, successfully transforming communication and increasing overall productivity.
Here's the thing: often, we need to pay more attention to how essential communication can become an obstacle to an organization's success. In adverse work environments like this, I suggest implementing a six-week emotional intelligence program that includes group and one-on-one consulting for all employees and specialized management training. This program featured training on the four core competencies of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. In addition, we review corporate and employee values to ensure alignment success and reduce potential obstacles.
Successful Results of Emotional Intelligence Training
Within six weeks, we witnessed a noticeable difference in management and employee relations. Over time, the obstacles began to vanish, meetings that used to end up in frustration became more productive, and team members better understood their emotions and how they influenced others and themselves.
The investment in emotional intelligence training with Marshall Connects removed the obstacles preventing success and transformed communication, resulting in higher productivity, employee engagement and lower employee stress.
Emotional intelligence is crucial for your success; without it, you may be your own biggest obstacle. I explore this topic in my book, The Power of Emotion. For additional insights and motivational content, be sure to check out my other blogs.
This article was originally published on September 1, 2018, and has been updated (September 2024).
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