Emotional and Cognitive Intelligence - Literature review Example

Organisational behaviour involves understanding the behaviour of a group or an individual as well as patterns of structure. This is aimed at improving the performance and effectiveness of the organisation. The principle issues underpinning the organisational behaviour include the behaviour and performance of an individual at work, the working as well as the nature of people in groups, the nature of organisation design and structures at work, and the process of adaptation of the behaviour to meet the conditions under change. A psychological aspect is one of the main disciplines in studying the organisation behaviour (McShane, Olekalns & Travaglione, 2010). McShane et al (2010) ascertain that the psychological aspect of organisational behaviour involves the study of the behaviour of human most importantly, the individual traits. The main focus is the individual as a whole or the personality system which includes the attitudes, perception and motives among others. Organisational psychology is aimed at facilitating understanding and effective interaction with people at work. For instance, it helps to understand the ways to influence the attitudes of employees; the differences in the behaviours of people when in groups; and difference in leadership and management among others (Moorhead & Griffin, 1992). McShane, Olekalns & Travaglione (2010) adds that the concepts of foundation which are responsible for guiding the development of organisational behaviour include individual differences and motivational behaviour among others. In case of individual differences, the authors ascertain that every individual is different from the other in the way they perform different tasks. They further state that the differences in individuals originate from psychology. Intelligence and personality at work are very important aspects of individual differences that determine and predict the behaviour at the workplace. Intelligence involves the individual’s capacity to process and use information to behave effectively. It is an important aspect of an individual that determines the extent of success within an organisation. It is important to initially understand the meanings of emotional and cognitive intelligence as they are play a great role in the success of any organisation. According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence is referred to as the individual’s ability to monitor his or her own emotions as well as the emotions of other people. It also involves the ability of an individual to discriminate among the negative and positive effects of the emotion and to apply emotional information to guide his or her actions and thinking. Most scholars’ views on emotional intelligence are its potential to contribute to more positive outcomes, attitudes and behaviours. It can be conceptualised as a personality trait as well as ability. Bar-On (2001) understands emotional intelligence as a type of a non-cognitive intelligence regarding to it as an arrangement of social, emotional and personal abilities and skills which influence the ability of an individual to cope with the environmental pressures and demands in an effective manner. Emotional intelligence consists of four factors. The first factor involves an expression as well as appraisal of emotions in oneself where an individual has the ability to understand and express his or her own emotions naturally. The second factor involves recognition and appraisal of others emotion such as the ability to understand and perceive the emotions of other people. Third, it involves the regulation of oneself emotions which includes the ability to regulate your own emotions. Finally, it consists of the facilitation of performance using emotions which involves ability to apply emotions through improved performance and constructive activities (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Cognitive ability on the other hand involves understanding of complex ideas, learning from experience, effective adaption to the environment, overcoming various obstacles through careful thinking, and engaging in different types of reasoning. It represents general intelligence in the domain of cognition such as the reflection of learning and experience on the cognitive process, for instance, the memory (Luo & Petrill, 1999). It is important to consider that non-cognitive as well as cognitive abilities are greatly related. The importance of emotional intelligence over cognitive intelligence in influencing success of an individual can be examined through their effect on job performance as well as the success of the organisation. The emotional intelligence abilities have depicted the capability of influencing the behaviours in the workplace. This includes contributing to the performance of a leader through self awareness and maintaining relationships in the place of work using emotional regulation (Sosik & Megerian, 1999). In addition, measurement of emotional intelligence is also connected to the performance of the job (Daus & Tuholski, 2000). Emotional intelligence is a very essential and predictive aspect of the behaviour of an organisation. For instance, in a case where the employees rated the emotional intelligence of their colleagues in the place of work, high levels of emotional intelligence were recorded in relation to the job performance. This shows that emotional intelligence has a strong relationship with the performance of the job. Given that job performance is one of the aspects to consider for the success of the business, it becomes essential to apply emotional intelligence for better results as well as increased profits (Daus & Tuholski, 2000). Emotional intelligence is also related to features of organisational behaviour. In consideration of entrepreneurs, those with sufficient ability to read their rivals in business are in a better condition of earning more as compared to those experiencing low ability to read their rivals. Thus, in such businesses low emotional intelligence will mean low productivity and less or no profit. This shows that high aspects of emotional intelligence are very essential determination of the success of a career of an individual (Jordan, Ashkanasy & Härtel, 2003). In addition, the ability to be sensitive and being keenly aware of other people proves to be a very essential contributor in terms of success in many jobs. It is worth noting that regardless of cognitive intelligence, the individuals experiencing high levels of emotional intelligence resulted to high performance levels. Thus, the success of in individual in such a case depends more on emotional ability than cognitive ability. This puts the importance of emotional intelligence above cognitive intelligence (Sosik & Megerian, 1999). Cognitive intelligence relates positively to dimensions of job performance such as task performance in variety of jobs. Task performance relates to core duties which are recognised in a formal way as part of job (Chan and Schmitt, 2002). Thus, cognitive intelligence allows the performance of task through the knowledge of procedures, facts as well as rules in relation to technical core of the job. But it is worth noting that without emotional intelligence, low cognitive intelligence will lead to low performance in job. Thus, with low cognitive intelligence, large returns may be generated as a result of high emotional intelligence (Motowidlo, Borman, & Schmit, 1997). For instance, a sales person may fail to hold the potential customers’ interests. In such a case, there is still high potential for the sales person to reduce such future mistakes. This means that the sales person failed to achieve the required job performance using cognitive intelligence. On the other hand, the failed achievement in job performance may be attained using emotional intelligence. This makes the emotional intelligence very essential as compared to cognitive intelligence because it is also used to correct mistakes resulting from cognitive intelligence. Use of emotional intelligence to bring back the job performance at higher levels can be accomplished using various complementary mechanisms. The first mechanism involves expertise in identification and understanding of other individuals’ emotions. In most jobs, the members of the organisation usually interact with co-workers, supervisors, support staff and various outsiders such as client, customers or patients depending on the industry. The display of information from the individuals is done publicly through vocal, facial and bodily signals which convey very important information in regard to their intentions, attitudes as well as their goals. This crucial information may then be converted into high performance of tasks especially by individuals who have low cognitive intelligence and high emotional intelligence. Thus, an employee with the capability to detect the emotions of his or her colleagues in an accurate manner may lead to facilitation of interpersonal and coordination functioning. This may lead to enhancement of performance of a task. In this case, emotional intelligence proves its importance in achievement of organisational objective through a better utilisation of the available information from the individuals (Law, Wong, and Song, 2004). The same information on intentions, goals and attitude can also be transformed into frequent organisational citizenry behaviour by the individuals who possess high emotional intelligence as well as low cognitive intelligence. For instance, in this case, an individual may be in a position to detect the anxiety and sadness in other individuals which calls for assistance. The process of detecting, identifying and addressing the anxiety and sadness requires high emotional intelligence. Second mechanism in which job performance by be enhanced by emotional intelligence especially where individuals has low cognitive intelligence involves regulation of emotions in order to influence the quality of social relationships. In this case, if an employee is capable of displaying and generating emotions that are genuine, they are in a condition of showing reactions that are more favourable as compared to those who choose to show fake emotions (Grandey, 2003). This means that for employees who are capable of showing genuine concerns about the problems of co-workers, they are in a condition of developing stronger relationships than those with less genuine concerns (Pearce & Randel, 2004). In that case, it is due to high emotional intelligence that individuals will employ their abilities to handle and manage emotions in order to develop very strong social relationships. In turn, this increases the performance which is referred as the main aim of every organisation through high emotional intelligence. The third mechanism involves employment of high emotional intelligence in order to enhance the performance of a job for individuals who have developed low cognitive intelligence. Application of emotional intelligence in this case is based on the effects of emotions in relation to how people act and think (Seo, Feldman Barrett, & Bartunek, 2004). In case where the performance of a job is low as a result of low cognitive intelligence, those individuals that are emotionally intelligentlead to achievement of high task performance levels through their capabilities in motivation enhancement as well as the quality of their decisions (Jordan & Troth, 2002). In real field application, a manager with a good understanding that anger will make people to underestimate the extent of the risk will hold back the anger before making essential decisions. This will in turn result to good performance of the task. The same case applies to an individual within an organisation who recognises that the enhancement of motivation is effected through positive emotions. This will lead strengthening of relationships among the individuals as they will focus on the success of the organisation. In this way, emotional intelligence will be responsible for high levels of job performance. Thus, the above discussions show that emotional intelligence is positively related to the job performance as well as success within the members of organisation who exhibit low cognitive intelligence. Emotional intelligence has played a significant role in order to rectify the poor performances recorded as a result of low cognitive intelligence. This has been made possible by understanding the emotions of the individuals before coming into a final conclusion. This has proved as a way of increasing the levels of job performance and success among the individuals as well as the entire organisation. The study has shown cognitive ability to be playing a limited role in considerations of why some individual are more successful as compared to others. Thus, non- cognitive abilities play a significant role in enhancing success at the workplace. This means that it is also important to study the essence of emotional intelligence for success in work and also in life (Luo & Petrill, 1999). The ability to handle stress and to manage feelings serves as an important feature of emotional intelligence which is very essential for success within the places of work and in one’s life. In case of management, a manager who has the ability to handle stress during the performance of duties predicts an increase in sales as well as profits. Thus, through emotional intelligence, firms are able to be successful through the achievement of their goals and objectives (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002). In management, emotional intelligence also proves its importance when an individual is able to know when and also how to express emotions. It is also important to know how to control it. For instance, through emotional intelligence, a manager has the ability to infect the individuals or employees within an organisation with his or her skills as well as feelings. In this way, the openness leads to expression of every individual’s emotions. This in turn results to strong relationships, improvement in fairness, cooperation as well as the overall performance of individuals in the organisation. Studies show that most effective leaders in different sectors have proved to be emotionally expressive (Jordan, Ashkanasy &Harte, 2002). Empathy also proves to be an essential element of emotional intelligence. Through research, empathy has been recognised as an aspect of emotional intelligence that contributes to occupational success. In business sectors, it was discovered that those individuals with the ability to identify the emotions of their colleagues become more successful in performing their duties, a factor that is also reflected in their social lives (Sosik & Megerian, 1999). From this discussion, it has been clear that low degrees of cognitive intelligence leads to a decrease in levels of performance as well as the success of organisations. It is also important to note that emotional intelligence has proved to be very essential especially where there are low degrees of cognitive intelligence. Thus, in matters of job performance as well as success within the organisation, emotional intelligence has proved to be very essential. This means that emotional intelligence is a strong predictor of the performance of an organisation. In addition, employee possessing low degrees of cognitive intelligence requires emotional intelligence in order to achieve high job performances. Conclusion In short, we can see that emotional intelligence becomes more important as compared to cognitive intelligence in influencing the success of an individual. This is explained in different ways. From the article, emotional intelligence involves being sensitive as well as being aware of other individuals in the places of wok. Understanding these individuals makes it easy to motivate and support them in overcoming failure which in turn, this will increase their levels of job performance. Irrespective of the cognitive intelligence, high levels of emotional intelligence will result to high levels of performance. It has also been made clear that with low levels of performance that are attributed to low cognitive intelligence within an organisation, emotional intelligence becomes very effective in increasing the level of performance through understanding of the emotions expressed by individuals. This is reflected in the success of the organisation as its profitability increases through improved job performances. In this case, even if individuals are experiencing low degrees of cognitive intelligence, they are able to increase the levels of performance through higher levels of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence involves understanding of the emotions of an individual. Thus, if the interaction within the organisation is enhanced, display of the intentions, goals and attitude of an individual will be easy to understand. In turn, it will be easier to achieve high levels of performance where individuals posses high emotional intelligence. This means that job performance in individuals is enhanced by emotional intelligence where the emotions of individuals with low cognitive intelligence are regulated to improve performance. From these results it is clear that when it comes to the performance and success in the place of work, emotional intelligence compensates for cognitive intelligence. Thus, emotional intelligence contains various components that significantly influence the ability of an individual to manage change in a successful manner. It also influences the behaviour of individuals during change. However, it is worth noting that non-cognitive and cognitive abilities are greatly related. References Bar-On, R. 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