Emotional intelligence

In­creased suc­cess thanks to emo­tions: feel­ings are a prod­uct of evo­lu­tion, which have al­ways helped us deal with life. And they can al­so help us in our every­day busi­ness, if we han­dle them cor­rect­ly.  

The term in the ti­tle de­scribes the abil­i­ty to (cor­rect­ly) per­ceive, un­der­stand and in­flu­ence our own feel­ings and those of oth­ers. But do feel­ings have any­thing to do with the world of busi­ness? Where it’s all about mea­sur­able fig­ures, as­sertive­ness and suc­cess. Yes and no. The so-called “cool” side still ex­ists in the busi­ness world; fig­ures con­tin­ue to play an im­por­tant role in mea­sur­ing suc­cess. How­ev­er, we all know that emo­tions play a big role as well, such as with brand aware­ness. Hand on heart: when did you last pur­chase an Ap­ple prod­uct be­cause it was the best val­ue for mon­ey on the mar­ket? Ex­act­ly. But the emo­tion­al el­e­ment doesn’t just play a ma­jor role in brand aware­ness.

Emo­tion­al per­for­mance

The most suc­cess­ful man­agers all share cer­tain sim­i­lar­i­ties: they all have above-av­er­age emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence. Yes, spe­cial­ist skills and IQ are im­por­tant, but they are just the pri­ma­ry re­quire­ments for man­age­ment po­si­tions. Emo­tions and the ways in which we con­trol and cor­rect­ly ap­ply them al­so count for a lot. Man­agers who were re­gard­ed as pop­u­lar by their staff due to their emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence achieved five times as much to­tal re­turn on in­vest­ment for the com­pa­ny as those who were clas­si­fied as less pop­u­lar. Hap­py em­ploy­ees = hap­py cus­tomers.

Can this be learned?

Un­for­tu­nate­ly not. But don’t wor­ry, emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence can be de­vel­oped. Be­cause feel­ings are a prod­uct of evo­lu­tion and have al­ways helped us over­come prob­lems. IQ and per­son­al­i­ty are fixed, but emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence is elas­tic; as soon as we work on it, neu­rons in­crease the flow of in­for­ma­tion be­tween our ra­tio­nal and emo­tion­al brain. So, good news then.

The over­all ben­e­fit

The abil­i­ty to con­trol our feel­ings de­ter­mines how they are per­ceived. This is the on­ly way we can work with them and mean­ing­ful­ly ap­ply them. And it’s worth it, es­pe­cial­ly in the busi­ness world. Emo­tions are deeply en­trenched in us, have helped us cope with life in the past and will con­tin­ue to do so in fu­ture. Take the plunge.

Soon on this chan­nel: five tips for de­vel­op­ing your emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.