More jobs are lost and careers derailed because of one thing: the way people act with each other.
I have no scientific proof of this. Just what I see everyday in companies and in careers. Perfectly qualified candidates don’t get offers because of how they act or the way they say something to the interviewer. And highly competent workers get demoted or let go because of how they treat others, respond to stress or deal with a conflict.
Many times the problem comes down to this: People don’t understand how they come across. They don’t notice how they get swept away by their emotions. They don’t recognize the feelings of others. And they don’t see how all that adds up and deters their success.
Some of the smartest people don’t get this. You can be super smart when it comes to IQ and not so smart in this other area called emotional intelligence, or EQ.
The subject of emotional intelligence has been researched and studied for years and discussed a lot in the last 20 years. It’s been written about extensively by Daniel Goleman in his well-known book, “Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ,” in which he focuses on the essential human competencies of emotional intelligence such as “self awareness, self-control and empathy, and the arts of listening, resolving conflicts and cooperation.”
It’s been covered in Time magazine, on “20/20,” even “Oprah.” Still, so many workers don’t understand how it makes a difference in their careers. Many people confuse this with simply being nice.
Many insist they have no time to pay attention to what they are feeling, let alone the emotions of others. What they don’t understand is that put simply, emotions can’t be stopped — even when you’re at work.
Dual Nature
Without getting into the science (Goleman’s book does that well) you have, as he points out, two minds — the emotional and the rational — and they operate in tight harmony for the most part to guide us through the world. But “when passions surge the balance tips” he says, and it’s the emotional mind that captures the upper hand.
A new book, “The Other Kind of Smart,” by Harvey Deutschendorf, defines emotional intelligence as “an array of attributes and tools that enable us to deal with the pressure and demands of our environment.” It’s like an “advanced common sense,” he says.
Testing shows that 27 percent to 45 percent of success on the job is determined by our emotional intelligence, says Deutschendorf.
The good news is you can increase yours. You start by learning more about what it is. Then it’s a matter of practicing new approaches with other people, consistently over a long period of time.
For example, part of emotional intelligence is having empathy, which is noticing and acknowledging others’ feelings. This ability allows you “to see the situation that the person is in, yet step back and act in a manner that would ultimately be in that person’s best interest,” says Deutschendorf.
If this doesn’t come naturally to you, he offers a few techniques to increase your ability to empathize. One is to observe a group of people having a conversation that you’re not directly involved in. Then try to figure out how each person is feeling by noticing tone of voice, facial expressions and words with underlying meanings.
The smartest workers know that even with all the high-tech ways we conduct business, it still involves high-touch interactions with living, breathing humans.
