How to Foster Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Around 75% of employers are said to use emotional intelligence (EQ) to determine promotions and pay rises. We often praise and promote people who have a seemingly high intelligence quotient (IQ), but, today, emotional intelligence is an equally valuable skill, especially in the workplace.

Demonstrating emotional intelligence is vital for managers and HR teams, as it helps encourage better connections and collaboration, so you can reach the best possible outcome for everyone.

A world and workplace without emotional intelligence can feel like a cold place. Employees may feel their feelings and opinions are disregarded or ignored, which can lead to disenfranchisement with a business.

Understanding what emotional intelligence is and why it’s important in the workplace is therefore crucial. To help you make the most of your investment in company culture, we’ve gathered our top tips on how to improve emotional intelligence in the workplace.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions and the emotions of people around you. EQ is impactful in a variety of situations, but especially in the workplace with looming deadlines, shifting expectations and high stakes. An individual’s level of emotional intelligence can be measured in a standardized test that generates an emotional quotient, or EQ (as opposed to IQ, which refers to cognitive intelligence).

The concept of emotional intelligence was popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman in 1995, who divided it into four core components:

• Self-awareness: Recognizing and understanding your own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses, and how they impact your behavior and reactions.
• Self-management: Regulating your emotions in stressful situations.
• Social awareness: Understanding the perspectives and emotions of others.
• Relationship management: Building strong relationships through communication, collaboration, and respect.

Using emotional intelligence in the workplace can help engage employees and improve communication and productivity, with unified companies often performing better and maintaining higher retention. In fact, managers who demonstrate emotional intelligence are said to retain 70% of their employees for five or more years.

Why is emotional intelligence important in the workplace?

Improving emotional intelligence in the workplace can help people succeed both personally and professionally. This is because those with high emotional intelligence are more likely to:

• Remain calm under pressure
• Resolve conflict effectively
• Behave empathetically
• Lead by example
• Carefully consider business decisions.

Emotional intelligence is especially important for leaders to master, as most of their job involves working with others. Being more aware of your employees’ emotions and cultivating these strong relationships can also lead to increased workplace satisfaction.

In fact, according to our Eggshell Economy Report, 84% of employees said they had some satisfaction at work, with 45% attributing that to a good working relationship with their manager.

Goleman writes, “For leaders, the first task in management has nothing to do with leading others; step one poses the challenge of knowing and managing oneself.”

The benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace

There’s a reason 75% of Fortune 500 companies invest in emotional intelligence training in the workplace—strengthening emotional intelligence creates more well-rounded employees and positively impacts an entire organization. Here are some individual and company benefits of emotional intelligence:

• Fosters effective leadership. Emotional intelligence can help you better understand employees and foster a positive and inclusive culture. EQ also enhances decision-making by enabling you to consider the impact of your choices.

• Improves communication. Emotional intelligence enables you to better understand your impact on others and communicate with empathy. People with high EQ are also skilled listeners who value feedback.

• Fuels strong collaboration. EQ allows you to better connect with your co-workers, creating a more respectful and positive environment. Developing these people skills are essential when building a rapport.

• Helps with conflict resolution. Emotional intelligence opens you up to accepting feedback, which can foster understanding. EQ can also lead to better stress management and self-awareness, which can help control conflict.

Examples of emotional intelligence in the workplace

Emotional intelligence is crucial to a positive work environment, but what does it look like in practice? Here are a few examples of how emotional intelligence can be demonstrated in the workplace.

Developing active listening skills

Practicing active listening in meetings and conversations is an effective way of illustrating to others that you actively want to understand them and appreciate what they’re saying. The key to active listening is not to interrupt people, and not to give the impression that you’re waiting for them to stop speaking so you can have your say. Instead, seek to understand and support their feelings and perspectives.

Providing useful feedback

Providing and receiving honest, constructive feedback can demonstrate that you have taken a sincere interest in someone, their opinions and their progression. This can include having an open mind when receiving feedback, not taking it personally, and finding empathetic and supportive words when giving feedback.

Maintaining flexibility

Being adaptable and agile when changes arise is a great way of illustrating keen, personal emotional intelligence in the workplace. This includes being open to change and new ideas and finding positive elements in challenges. When changes and scaling in a business happen, it’s important for managers and HR leaders to be open and compassionate with employees.

Effectively recognizing triggers

Recognizing both your and your employees’ triggers that cause emotional reactions can help you avoid and manage them. For example, if a missed deadline or performance feedback causes you to spiral emotionally, taking a walk, talking to a mentor, or putting yourself in a calming environment can lessen the emotional response.

Understanding strengths and weaknesses

Practicing emotional intelligence can help you recognize people’s strengths, weaknesses, and emotions—including your own. This can include keeping physical records of both your and your employees’ strengths and achievements, and where they can improve.

Improve emotional intelligence in the workplace

Emotional intelligence is, luckily, a skill you can master. Although it may come naturally to some people, there are also ways to improve your EQ skills, whether in the workplace or not. For example:

• Providing training in active listening: This key skill is important in both one-to-one conversations and meetings.
• Encouraging empathy in managers: A better understanding of empathy helps managers form more sincere relationships with their team.
• Improving communication from the top down: Open communication and compassion are key EQ skills that leaders can harness to ensure transparency.
• Offering support networks: Support networks can encourage people to put their emotional intelligence to good use among their peers.
• Encouraging reflection sessions. These sessions provide people the opportunity to look back on conversations, meetings or projects to see where they could’ve demonstrated better EQ.