Wanted: Patience, Empathy and Understanding

​The employee you just promoted to management has always been fast, productive, smart and creative. However, some of the qualities that make them such an asset aren't translating well into their new role: they get impatient with people who move more slowly than they do. They tend to get frustrated with direct reports who aren't as prolific as they once were. In addition, they grow annoyed with workers who need things explained more than once. How can you as their employer help them acquire the skills—patience, empathy and understanding—that don't come naturally to them?

Emotional intelligence is the capacity to understand and manage your emotions. The skills involved in emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Recently, it has become a bit of a buzz word in human resources departments across the globe but researchers are saying that it is time emotional intelligence be taken seriously. Embracing the nuances of human emotion in the workplace can have pragmatic benefits, such as better collaboration among employees and a happier workplace.

​The unfortunate trend that has swept western society is the inability to fully understand and tackle human emotions. This trend has spilled into other areas of life - including in the workplace. While emotions are often left at the door when you begin work, this has devastating effects not only on businesses but also employees.

---

Elements of Emotional Intelligence
​
Self-awareness. Self-awareness is about understanding yourself: knowing your weaknesses, strengths, drivers, values, and your impact on other people – forces for good intuition, essentially.  In practice, this would look like self-confidence and a thirst for constructive criticism. If you are a manager, you might know that tight deadlines bring out the worst in yourself. A self-aware and emotionally intelligent manager would plan their time properly and get the work done well in advance of any deadlines.

Self-management. Self-management is the ability to control and redirect disruptive impulses and moods. Think of trustworthiness, integrity, and comfort with change. It is not letting your emotions crippling you and instead marshaling your positive emotions and aligning your emotions with your passions. For example, if a team botches a presentation, the leader ought to resist the urge to scream. Instead, they could consider possible reasons for failure, explain the consequences to their team members and explore solutions together.

Motivation. Motivation is enjoying achievement for its own sake. A passion for the work you do, optimism and energy to improve are the key hallmarks of an emotionally intelligent and motivated person.

Empathy. Empathy is understanding other people’s emotional makeup. It’s considering others’ feelings, especially when making decisions. Some trademarks of empathy include expertise in hiring and retaining top talent, an ability to develop other people and sensitivity to cross-cultural differences. Imagine a consultant and their team trying to pitch something to a potential foreign client, in this case, it’s a Japanese client. After the pitch, the client is silent and the team interprets this as disapproval. The consultant, however, senses interest owing to the body language and continues with the meeting and the team gets the job.

Social skills. Social skill is building a relationship with others to move them in desired directions. This would include influence.

In summary, rational intelligence focuses on rational, “objective” analysis of facts and figures. Whereas, emotional intelligence consists of insight into others’ emotions as well as your own. Having high emotional intelligence drives collaborative leadership and win-win outcomes. Emotional intelligence is correlated with confidence, resilience, and perseverance. Testing for emotional intelligence can help with hiring and leadership development. Finally, both rational and emotional intelligence have roles to play for “whole” leaders.

Just as it’s important to seek new hires with emotional intelligence, it’s vital for managers and other business leaders to operate in emotionally intelligent ways to meet the needs of today’s workers.

Adapted from SHRM.