The Tribune

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.

As emotional beings, our primary and secondary emotions often turn up in various areas of our lives. Our actions in response to these emotions - particularly at work - sometimes leave much to be desired, demonstrating that we are not as emotionally intelligent as we should - and could - be in corporate settings. Let us view for a moment the dimensions of emotional intelligence.

Self-awareness is about understanding yourself: Knowing your weaknesses, strengths, drivers, values and your impact on other people. 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 is the ability to control and redirect disruptive impulses and moods. Think of trustworthiness, integrity and comfort with change. It is stopping your emotions from crippling you, and instead marshalling your positive emotions and aligning them with your passions. For example, if a team botches a presentation, the leader ought to resist the urge to scream. Instead, they could consider the reasons for failure, explain the consequences to team members and explore solutions together.

Having the ability to empathise is understanding other people’s emotional make-up. It involves considering others’ feelings, especially when making decisions. Some trademarks of empathy include expertise in hiring and retaining top talent, and an ability to develop other people and sensitivity to cross-cultural differences. This skill helps a male manager coach his star female employee through a difficult patch in her career because of a challenging pregnancy and/or bitter separation. Despite his inability to fully understand the psychological and physiological nuances, his emotional intelligence allows him to empathise with her and, ultimately, help her cope.

Finally, social skill is building a relationship with others to move them in desired directions. Think “influence” here. Evolved leaders with good emotional intelligence are able to coerce even difficult team members to buy into the vision of their department and support the initiatives.

We all have a measure and degree of emotional intelligence, but we need to take more time to self-assess and work on our emotions. As with anything it takes practice, but even small steps can make a big difference.

• NB: Ian R Ferguson is a talent management and organisational development consultant, having completed graduate studies with regional and international universities. He has served organsations, both locally and globally, providing relevant solutions to their business growth and development issues. He may be contacted at iferguson@bahamas.com.