Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
Have you ever heard of the phrase 'filling your emotional tank?
If you've played competitive team sports, or worked in schools or teaching, the chances are it's a phrase you may have come across before. Its premise is simple: everyone has an emotional tank – and just like the gas tank in your car, you need to make sure that it stays balanced and not just topped up with energy.
If emotionally you are in an environment where you feel disrespected, ignored, or unrecognized – it can drain your energy and you may end up feeling tired, irritable, and disengaged from what's going on around you.
Whereas when you feel appreciated, acknowledged, and included, your emotional tank feels full, giving you tons of energy, positivity and action.
Our emotions can deeply affect how our energy operates.
Simply put, our emotional tanks fuel our performance. If you have a full tank you will perform better, but if your tank is empty, you won't perform as well.
This week’s blog, we're talking about emotional intelligence and the role it plays in our day-to-day lives, with particular focus on balanced approach in the workplace. Understanding your emotional capacity, as well as the capacities of those around you, can help to supercharge your impact at work and throughout your career.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence, also known as EI or EQ, is a behavioral model that was first developed by psychologists Howard Gardner, Peter Salovey and John 'Jack' Mayer in the 1970s, becoming more widely-known in the mid-90s with Daniel Goleman's book on the model. According to these leading researchers, emotional intelligence is defined as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” Through understanding and managing your emotional state in a positive way, one gains awareness of how thoughts and feelings can impact your behavior – and in turn, how this effects others.
Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence, identifies five key components to understanding EI:
Emotional self-awareness – recognizing how you feel and the impact your emotional state has on those around you
Self-regulation – the ability to act impartially from your emotions
Motivation – harnessing your emotions as drivers to achieve your goals
Empathy – observing the emotions of others
Social skills – how you handle your relationships and get the best from them
In the context of the workplace, emotional intelligence can be used to develop strong interpersonal relationships with co-workers, employers and clients. By embodying this principle, teams can build trust, manage expectations and deal with difficult situations more effectively, resulting in positive enhancement of team dynamics and performance.
“First know yourself, then know others.”
~ Gichin Funakoshi
Emotions drive us as humans. Our everyday actions and decisions are fueled by how we feel. Our thoughts and cognitive thinking is influenced by our mood. Even the way we communicate, including our body language, is determined by our emotional state. So in order for us to increase our effectiveness and impact in our careers, we must first gain awareness around our own emotional behavior. And because emotional sentience is inherent and often subconscious, many of us need support and guidance in developing this self-awareness.
How can we create abundance using emotional intelligence?
As a certified Project Management Professional with decades of leading financial transformation IT projects , and now additionally as a BG5 Career and Business Professional, the importance of emotional intelligence has so much relevance in today’s business world.
As founder of Shining Compass and as an Evaluator ( Reflector) BG5 Design Human design type, I recognize the powerful effect that understanding your emotional intelligence can have on your life. In the realm of career and the workplace, understanding your Career Design through the BG5 system gives you a clear picture of how you are designed to live, with deliberate focus on your career direction, business interactions, interpersonal skills, and leadership.
As a Coach practitioner, I know that the principle values of the BG5 system closely mirror the key components of emotional intelligence, assisting in identifying your core expression (motivation), as well as identifying emotional traits (self-awareness) and offering practical tools that you can use in every day business decisions (self-regulation).
In the last few years we all were challenged with pandemic and currently the recessionary trends have placed enormous strain on all of us, creating additional challenges and uncertainty in the workplace. Many of you may have experienced exhaustion and burnout – and almost all of us may feel that our emotional load is at an all-time high.
This is why so many millions of people are quitting their jobs, in what's been coined the 'Great Resignation'. According to the Bankrate Job Seekers Survey conducted in 2022 and 2023 , in a study of over 2,000 working Americans, over 56% employees said they plan to leave their jobs in the next 12 months. And many experts believe this is to do with our emotional state – how people are feeling in their roles. That's because when we feel overwhelmed, undervalued or disengaged, it can lead to emotional volatility, and this can affect our decision-making and interaction with others. In some of the rapidly growing economies like India, Michael Page Talent Trends study published in Business Today reveals whooping 75% of the surveyed employees are still job seekers.
In BG5 System we can specifically see how you are designed to utilize your emotional intelligence through analyzing your Career Design. This can help us understand not only our emotional state, but how we interact with others around us. Approximately 47% of the population has an inconsistent way of dealing with emotions. When they are around the other 53% of the population who are more emotionally expressive, these individuals can amplify the emotions of others, making them feel worse (or better). Quite often, those that have an inconsistent way of dealing with emotions will avoid conflict by not sharing how they feel or playing nice.
When interacting in the workplace, understanding your BG5 Career Design can be a huge help in understanding how you interact in your work environment. Some of the examples below help to demonstrate the differences in action and reaction based on the way of dealing with emotions is consistent or inconsistent.
Emotional Intelligence Function (Solar Plexus Center) Examples
Here are few examples using the BG5 Personality assessment tool for assessing few situations based on Emotional Intelligence (Solar Plexus) state:
Tom person has a consistent way of expressing his emotions, but is in what we call a not-self or unhealthy state, where he offloads his frustration onto everyone around him. The healthy state for Tom would be to observe how he is feeling, allowing the moment of frustration to pass, before responding more calmly to his team, thus avoiding any upset.
Tom person has a defined Emotional Intelligence (Solar Plexus center) Function, but is in what we call a ‘not-self’ state, where he offloads his frustration onto everyone around him. The healthy state for Tom would be to observe how he is feeling, allowing the moment of frustration to pass. Taking time to release this high emotional state before responding to the situation. This will allow Tom to think calmly with his team, thus avoiding any upset.
Sarah works in a team and gets on with everyone except for Jack, who is loud and shares vulgar jokes, which makes Sarah uncomfortable. But Sarah doesn't say anything and instead fake-laughs at his jokes, pretending that she doesn't mind
In this example, Sarah has an inconsistent way of expressing her emotions and in her not-self state, minimizes how she feels to avoid conflict and to please others. The healthy state for Sarah would be to tell Jack the truth about how she really feels without reacting, even if his feelings get hurt.
Ameera leads a team in an HR department at a large company. Ameera is well-respected for her decision-making and strategy when dealing with complex and often delicate staffing issues
Ameera has a defined Emotional Intelligence and is in her natural state. She does not react to emotion, but rather observes it, which gives her the clarity to make difficult decisions without losing the respect of her peers.
Bav works in a garage as a mechanic. He is one of a team of 10, and although he is not a manager, his colleagues look up to him. They nominate him to represent them at local Union meetings because they trust him
Bav has an undefined Emotional Intelligence , but in his natural state, he is able to act impartially on behalf of his peers. He understands their concerns due to his empathetic nature and is not afraid to speak up to represent his co-workers when necessary.
We can learn a lot from these examples. Going back to our emotional tank by identifying our unique code, as well as observing how we feel from moment to moment allows us awareness and space to honor our feelings, the ones that make us feel happy and energetic, as well as the ones that make us feel uncomfortable.
By simply connecting to how we feel in the present moment, we are given an opportunity through self-observation and self-regulation to recognize that emotions are just waves that ebb and flow. Our emotional state is always changing – and we are at our most authentic when we honor and identify these emotions, rather than stifle them. From this position of emotional authority, we can make decisions that help us to cultivate boosting our creativity and purpose in life and workplace.
Once we have identified these emotional traits for ourselves, we can use them in our day-to-day relationships in the workplace to help us understand one another's emotional needs and motivations. When we give ourselves and those around us the space needed to observe, feel and replenish our emotional tanks, we find balance, productivity and abundance as a result. And if you are an employer, or you manage a team, understanding and embodying these principles can help your organization flourish, both in the business sense but also on a personal, individual level.
If you are interested in learning more about your personal or business teams BG5 charts with their emotional intelligence design to maximize team work, then a BG5® Career Design Overview may be what you need. It is the perfect way to learn more about your innate talents and interests in the field of work, as well as discern where to invest your time, effort and energy to lead a more fulfilling life.
Being a certified BG5 Business Consultant, Loveleen also authors articles for BG5 Institute. Read more about the application of BG5 personality tool in context of emotional intelligence at business, in her article published on BG5 Institute.
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