Emotional Intelligence: How to Apply It to Your Company Culture

Everything that has to do with rationality has always been overvalued: decision-making, supposed intelligence… But over the past few decades, advances in cognitive psychology have brought to light the importance of emotion management not only for balance between oneself and one’s closest circle, but also as a measure of people’s success.

This phenomenon, known as Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman, 1995), has not gone unnoticed by the business world. Many companies work every day to incorporate their benefits into their business culture.

It is time to give the importance it deserves to emotions and their management. Started!

What is Emotional Intelligence?

The concept of Emotional Intelligence emerges from the new direction that psychology has taken over the last few decades. For many years now, psychological trends have extolled reason as an unequivocal method for making decisions and categorizing one’s intelligence.

However, in recent years, there has been a great paradigm shift. Emotions are beginning to be understood as something intrinsic to the human being, while methods are proposed to break with the overvaluation of classical intelligence (rational, logical, and analytical).

But what do we mean when we talk about Emotional Intelligence? It’s about understanding your emotions and empathizing with those of others; about having the ability to manage emotions both internally and externally.

In fact, more than just one, Emotional Intelligence is based on a set of skills: enthusiasm, self-motivation, the ability to empathize, impulse control, and trust in people.

Feelings and emotions have been found to play a critical role in our ability to make decisions. And what can it contribute to our business culture? We will see it right away!

Benefits of including emotional intelligence in your business culture

Companies have found Emotional Intelligence to be a very good tool to understand people’s productivity, the keys to success, and even the characteristics of good leadership.

Let’s see what the advantages of working on business culture taking into account emotional management:

• Improves coordination and work efficiency. Good internal management is almost always synonymous with good performance. Empathizing with the emotions and feelings of others can help you understand their actions, concerns, and motivations, which will have a very good impact on coordination. This will generate motivation and good vibes within the team and will be reflected in the results.
• It improves the work environment. Fostering a good work environment is essential for obtaining good results. That people feel listened to and, above all, understood is the first step to creating a happy company. It is essential to observe, listen, and understand others to connect with them in a more real and meaningful way.
• Team building. Building a job goes beyond the walls of the office. Listening is essential for the team to understand each other, yes, but generating a bond between the team is something that goes much further. Getting to know each other, understanding each other, creating friendships, sharing, laughing. Because a team that goes to one is the basis of all business activity.
• Decision making. As we have already seen, emotions and feelings play a fundamental role in our ability to make decisions. In fact, even the sensations we have in our stomach can be key: visceral movements give us more or less security to choose or reject certain answers. Never underestimate the power of the stomach!
• Improves conflict management and crisis management. Sometimes, dealing with stress can be tricky. One of the key skills of Emotional Intelligence is self-control. Learning to cut negative thoughts to work towards goals and objectives is essential to control the emotions that prevent us from working. On the other hand, through active listening, we will be able to know the internal opinions of the company, and it will prevent conflicts from remaining unresolved, always bearing in mind that the way in which problems are discussed is essential for their resolution.

4 Techniques to develop emotional intelligence in your business culture

While it is true that some people have more ability than others to channel and manage emotions, these types of skills can be learned over the years through certain techniques. Let’s see what they are!

1) Detect the emotions behind the actions

To educate ourselves in Emotional Intelligence, it is essential to know how to detect the emotions that motivate our actions and those of others. To do this, it is very necessary to detail as much as possible each emotion we perceive. It is not enough to say “I am sad”, but we must go as deep as possible: “Today I had a bad day and I am very negative with myself. I feel that I don’t have time to finish my tasks, and all this has led me to act in this way”. It is necessary to adapt a specific emotional vocabulary to be able to accurately capture the nuances of each feeling. All this can help us to be more empathetic with the people around us, as well as feel much closer.

2) Pay close attention to body language

Body language is a key factor in determining each person’s emotions. As the name suggests, it is a language from which we can extract a lot of information, more than we think! Learning to relate body movements to emotions will help us to know how to recognize, interpret, and work on them.

3) Observe, listen, and ask questions

Less guessing and more asking: the magic formula. Pay attention to the actions and reactions of the team, know what emotion has motivated them, and understand why certain acts can be achieved through active listening. And not only towards others… it also works introspectively. Understanding oneself, the tea, and the environment are the three basic pillars that we must always take into account.

4) Importance of feedback

Feedback is an indispensable tool to move forward with projects. A good job of Emotional Intelligence can enrich the information we can extract from it much more. It is very necessary to take care of the way things are said, always starting from constructiveness and assertiveness. The motivation, energy, and confidence of the team will never be attacked.

We are aware that there are many exchanges of opinions within a team. But we know that Emotional Intelligence can help us a lot to take advantage of each person’s mind: their ideas, their proposals, and their creative process, without damaging their motivation and enthusiasm.

The door to emotional education is always open. Adapting to a modern, critical world that demands tolerance, diversity, and professionalism is possible.

And you, do you work on your Emotional Intelligence?