Argument for Emotional Intelligence - Essay Example

 Emotional intelligence Introduction Emotional intelligence represents humans’ ability to analyze and control their feelings. Some individuals believe that it is inborn while some believe that it is taught and developed. Emotional intelligence has four constituents that entail perceiving emotions, analyzing emotions, comprehending emotions, and management of emotions. Perceiving emotions is the initial step of emotional intelligence. It involves comprehension of signals. Analyzing emotions is the subsequent step that involves reacting to situations through thinking. The third step involves the comprehension of emotions by predicting the consequences. The final part of emotional thinking is the management of emotions that involves controlling of humans’ feelings. Payne indicates that emotional intelligence affects the organizational behaviors positively and unconstructively as apparent in the paper (2002, 62). Argument for emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence increases self-awareness Emotional intelligence is vital since it helps in the prediction of the workers’ performances. It affects the employees’ performances by influencing their emotions at work settings. Consequently, it is stated that emotional intelligence enhances the workers’ self-awareness (Stouph, Donald & James 2009, 130). Self-awareness helps the workforces to know their strengths and shortcomings when performing certain tasks. According to several research outcomes, self-awareness leads to excellent business performance. The appropriate self-awareness is triggered by emotional intelligence. If workers in an organization exude elevated levels of self-awareness, they are likely to acknowledge their competences (Goleman, Richard & Annie 2002 1). Such competences entail self-confidence, self-evaluation, and emotional control. Emotional intelligence also helps workers to learn from their errors and know the areas that need improvement through the self-awareness. In addition, such an attribute helps the workers to know when to interact with other individuals with complementary strengths at the work places. This attribute is vital especially to exemplary performers because it raises their self-confidence (Cherniss, Extein, Golman et 2006, 3). Investigations indicate that self-awareness is a stronger determinant of performance than individuals’ skills. This means that if the level of self-awareness is high, the degree of performance is likely to be high too. Additionally, it has been proved that individuals develop self-confidence that is attributable to self-awareness in their early ages are successful in life. This is especially the case when they record success in their careers (Druskat, Sala &Mount 2005, 30). Emotional intelligence enhances self-management Emotional intelligence enhances self-management, which is also vital in organizational performance. Self-management helps the workers in managing their values and conduct. Workers can have too much work within the organization; thus, resulting into stress (Van Roy & Charles 2004, 2). However, self-management can reduce such stress because it helps workers to handle depression. Management of stress and depressions is a vital part of high performing organizations. Furthermore, self-management increases the workers’ value since it makes organizations to trust its workers. Self-managed workers are usually responsible for their mistakes. In the event that the attribute is lacking, the chances of workers’ performing exemplarily would reduce (Fineman 2000, 45). In addition, self-management helps in attaining high level of discipline in business. Through it, workers can ensure that they are disciplined when carrying out their tasks. This contributes to excellent results. A vital competence that employees acquire from self-management is adaptability. Adaptability increases the profitability of organizations because it reduces tension in the work places. Self-management also enables managers to trust the workers since it leads emotional resilience (Stys 2008, 53). This enables managers to have confidence in the workers; thus, involving them in decisions-making processes. It also creates autonomous and flexible environments that also increase the organizations’ profitability. This is because the autonomous business settings enhance the workers creativity. Creativity is vital in a business because it improves the problem solving strategies. In addition, the self-management makes the workers to be optimistic in the work places. This drives the business towards its goals (Hughes, Thompson & Terrell 2009, 40). Emotional intelligence enhances social awareness Emotional intelligence makes workers in the business to know what is acceptable in the business social settings. Empathy is part of social awareness; thus, it helps in creating a good relationship in the work environment (Petrides & Furnham 2006, 3). This is because empathetic individuals can understand the emotions of other persons in the workplace. Organizations’ competencies are upgraded by the good relationship between individuals in the workplace. This is because personnel can work effectively in teams through the social awareness. Self-aware persons can be effective in problem resolution. This is because they can analyze situations by placing themselves in other people’s positions (Zerbe, Charmine &Nael 2008, 23). Furthermore, the social awareness enables corporate managers to know the workers’ needs. Knowing of the workers’ needs enables managers to increase the employees’ satisfactions. Workforces’ satisfaction is vital in a business because it increases their loyalty to the business. Loyal employees are always committed to the business. This can increase their outputs. Social awareness helps the employers to implement the best employees’ motivation strategies since they understand their needs (Ashkanasy, Neal & Cary 2008, 57). Socially aware managers can also increase innovation in businesses. This is because the managers acknowledge the tasks that each worker can handle. Working in an area that one is best at enables him to find the new better ways of doing the task. This increases outputs (Charmine, Neal & Zerbe 2009, 73). Social awareness helps in relationship management in organizations because it increases the social skills (Stys & Brown 2004). Social skills involve individuals’ ability to understand varied reactions from people. Effective organizational leadership requires the socials skills. Organizational leaders should sense the workers’ reactions especially when implementing changes in the work places. The currents business world requires frequent organizational changes so that organizations can fit in the competitive business world (Murphy 2006, 93). Additionally, social awareness helps in enhancing effective communication in work places. This is vital because it creates a good relationship between workers (Stough Saklofske & Parker 2008 2). It involves giving feedbacks to employees at the right time, effective listening skills, and sharing of knowledge. Murphy indicates that communications is vital when workers are involved in the decisions making process because they can easily communicate their ideas (2006, 60). Workers can perform highly when dealing with managers who have effective relationship management skills (Shipley, Jackson & Segrest 200 42). Managers with effective relationship management skills are able to solve conflicts in the workplaces. Payne indicates that effective management of conflicts creates a friendly working environment, which elevates organizations’ profitability (2000, 21). Empathy enables managers to handle workers from different backgrounds with diplomacy. This aspect of emotional intelligence is vital especially in retail businesses where businesspersons interact directly with consumers. It makes a retailer to have effective negotiation skills, which enable both him and consumers to benefit. This increases the customer’s satisfaction, which in turn increases the business sales (Golman, Richard & Annie 2002, 18). Arguments against emotional intelligence It is argued that workers’ emotional intelligence alone cannot boost the organizational performances. It enhances the organizational outputs, however; in the absence of skills, organizations can fail to realize goals. Therefore, Payne indicates that it should not be substituted with the employees’ skills and knowledge because it can have some negative effects on the organizational performance (2000, 21). Critiques of emotional intelligence claim that it can distract a worker from unique aspects within the social setting (Petrides Fredrickson & Furnham 2004, 8). This can make the worker not to work effectively in such situations. Additionally, since emotional intelligence is independent and people have different forms of emotional intelligence, it can result into distortions and distractions in work places. Therefore, McMans indicates that it can reduce organizational profitability (2001, 7) Furthermore, organizations cannot rely on emotional intelligence to improve its performances. This is because it is difficult for managers to regulate the workers’ emotions. It is hard for organizations to force workers to feel and act in certain ways (Emmerling, Vinold & Manas 2008, 12). Since many employers want employees to be courteous, most of them have been abused. However, they cannot defend themselves because they fear that their employers might fire them. The organizational ethics require that individuals should be true to themselves. It is wrong for organizations to ask individuals to pretend (Shahzad, Sarmad, Abbas et al 2010, 4). Most customers prefer workers to be themselves. Organizations can enhance their workers’ emotional intelligence by encouraging them to be themselves up to reasonable limits (Van Rooy, Alonso &Viswesvaran 2005 5) Conclusion Emotional intelligence is individuals’ ability to know and manage their feelings. It positively influences the performance of corporations. For instance, emotional intelligence enhances social awareness, which helps in creating a good relationship in the work place. This is because it makes organizational workers be empathetic. These workers can understand each other because they place themselves in their workmate’s positions. Additionally, social awareness enables the organizational managers to increase employees’ satisfactions. This is because the managers can understand the workers’ needs. This can make the corporate leaders to know the best ways to motivate the workers in organizations. Furthermore, organizational leaders will know the areas, which each worker is good at. Managers will have to give the workers assignments based on their specialization to increase their performances. Emotional intelligence also enhances self-awareness, which also increases organizational profitability. This is because self-awareness increases the workers’ confidence when performing their tasks. Critiques also claim that organizations should not rely on emotional intelligence because it varies and it can lead to distraction. Bibliography Ashkanasy, Neal, and Cary Cooper. 2008. 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