Question

This week you will be discussing a workplace change or a workplace culture. You will be responding to a list of questions to get you thinking about the topic and the benefits of emotional intelligence and mindfulness training in the workplace.

Answer 1

THE IMPORTANCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE WORK PLACE

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. Recently, it has become a bit of a buzz word in human resources departments across the globe but researchers are saying that it is time emotional intelligence be taken seriously. Embracing the nuances of human emotion in the workplace can have pragmatic benefits, such as better collaboration among employees and a happier workplace, according to Rex Huppke. His argument is that we are human beings every day, not just when we leave the office.

HOW DOES EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE HELP?

With many areas of psychology, there is lively debate about how the brain works but Daniel Goleman, a world-renowned behavioral scientist said that “the part of the brain which supports emotional and social intelligence is the last circuitry of the brain to become anatomically mature and because of neuroplasticity, the brain shapes itself according to repeated experience” Goleman goes on to say this should be taught in a systematic way to children. “This has been trialed in over 100 schools and there was a reduction of anti-social behavior, an increase of pro-social behavior and academic scores rose”, Daniel Goleman goes on to say.

It’s evident then that emotional intelligence is beneficial – both in and out of the workplace.

HOW TO ADDRESS OUR EMOTIONS

The unfortunate trend that has swept western society is the inability to fully understand and tackle human emotions. This trend has spilled into other areas of life - including in the workplace. While emotions are often left at the door when you begin work, this has devastating effects not only on businesses but also employees (all the way from assistant to CEO). After all, we are emotional people. Businesses are changing, however, and are beginning to offer extensive and individual work schedules and new services (for example, some healthcare plans include mental health coverage) to ensure people at work are looked after. This includes hiring psychologists for human resources teams: getting to understand your workforce as best as possible, and offering useful training has direct results on employee/employer relationships.

ELEMENTS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:-

SELF-AWARENESS

It is about understanding yourself: knowing your weaknesses, strengths, drivers, values, and your impact on other people – forces for good intuition, essentially. 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

It is the ability to control and redirect disruptive impulses and moods. Think of trustworthiness, integrity, and comfort with change. It is not letting your emotions crippling you and instead marshaling your positive emotions and aligning your emotions with your passions. For example, if a team botches a presentation, the leader ought to resist the urge to scream. Instead, they could consider possible reasons for failure, explain the consequences to their team members and explore solutions together.

MOTIVATION:

Motivation is enjoying achievement for its own sake. A passion for the work you do, optimism and energy to improve are the key hallmarks of an emotionally intelligent and motivated person.

EMPATHY:

Empathy is understanding other people’s emotional makeup. It’s considering others’ feelings, especially when making decisions. Some trademarks of empathy include expertise in hiring and retaining top talent, an ability to develop other people and sensitivity to cross-cultural differences. Imagine a consultant and their team trying to pitch something to a potential foreign client, in this case, it’s a Japanese client. After the pitch, the client is silent and the team interprets this as disapproval. The consultant, however, senses interest owing to the body language and continues with the meeting and the team gets the job. That is what empathy is.

SOCIAL SKILL:

social skill is building a relationship with others to move them in desired directions. Think influence here.

HOW TO BECOME MORE EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT:

It’s clear that we are all emotionally intelligent 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. Much as you would regularly exercise your biceps or any other muscle for that matter, you need to practice working on your competencies so that they improve.

Admittedly, when we look at leaders in some of the most successful companies, it’s clear that all of these leaders have and demonstrate high levels of all the key components of emotional intelligence. It’s important to keep in mind that these are a range of abilities. On the whole, women tend to have higher emotional empathy on average: sensing how someone is in the moment, managing relations between people and groups. Goleman’s view on the connection between emotional intelligence and leadership is that there are differences between men and women in this domain but as people grow, they pick up skills in the area they need.

IMPACT OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AT THE WORKPLACE

Every day we make emotionally charged decisions. We feel plan A is better than plan B and we sometimes make choices based on our emotions or gut feelings. When we understand the origin and source of these emotions, especially when working in a team, we are more at attuned to each other. With globalization, emotional intelligence is more significant than ever when teams are cross-cultural and global, increasing the complexity of interactions of emotions and how they are expressed. Essentially, emotional intelligence in the workplaces comes down to understanding, expressing and managing, good relationships and solving problems under pressure.

BENEFITS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AT WORK

Gary Yukl, a prominent researcher in leadership agrees and goes on to say “Self-awareness makes it easier to understand ones own needs and likely reactions if certain events occurred, thereby facilitating evaluation of alternative solutions.”

For emotional intelligence to be effective, it has to start with yourself. You can not distill or enhance other peoples well-being, improvement and sense of self without first understanding how you operate on an emotional level. What distinguishes leaders is usually their level of emotional intelligence and it is those skills which help to develop a more effective workplace.

RELEVANCE OF MINDFULNESS WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

A number of studies have explored the relationship of mindfulness to emotional intelligence, and a valuable review of the literature has been undertaken by Charoensukmongkol (2014). He concludes: “scholars have reported a positive relationship between mindfulness and EQ (Baer et al., 2006; Brown & Ryan, 2003). Since the objective of mindfulness meditation is to enhance the level of mindfulness, it can significantly facilitate the development of EQ.” Charoensukmongkol identifies three specific ways this can happen. The first is that regular practice of mindfulness meditation can enhance our ability to understand our own emotions. He cites Brown, Ryan, & Creswell (2007), who found that since meditation training requires practitioners to closely observe their thoughts and feelings moment-to-moment without any judgment or interference, practitioners tend to develop a higher tendency to be aware of their emotional state and change than those who do not. Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, and Laurenceau (2007) support this in their study, which found that the level of mindfulness was associated positively with more clarity of feelings, attention to feelings, and lower distraction. His second argument is that “people who regularly practice mindful meditation can easily develop the ability to detect and understand the emotions of others.” Again this is supported by Brown et al who found that being mindful allows people to focus their attention better on how other people around them are feeling (Brown et al., 2007), which subsequently helps them decipher emotional cues of others more accurately (Krasner et al., 2009). Another study by Shapiro, Schwartz, and Bonner (1998) found that participants who attended their mindfulness programme tended to score higher on the overall empathy self-reported measurement. And a study by Brown and Kasser (2005) found that the level of mindfulness tended to associate positively with a felt sense of relatedness and interpersonal closeness. The third contribution identified by Charoensukmongkol from the literature is that regularly practicing mindful meditation can significantly enhance the ability of individuals to regulate and control their emotions (Cahn & Polich, 2006). In particular, Feldman et al. (2007) found that people with a higher level of mindfulness tended to recover quickly from emotional distress compared with those with a lower level of mindfulness. Moreover, research found that practicing mindful meditation could heighten one's metacognitive ability (Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010), which is considered a higherlevel cognitive ability that allows individuals to monitor and control their thought process (Flavell, 1987). In EQ literature, this meta-cognitive ability was proposed as a crucial ability for people to effectively regulate their emotions (Mayer et al., 2000; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Charoensukmongkol also points to evidence that mindful meditation can allow individuals to effectively use their emotions. This is because the quality of being mindful to one's own emotions, both negative and positive, enables one to appropriately focus on a task that might be performed better when a specific emotion is in place; and to avoid performing a task that cannot be performed well under such emotion (Averill, Chon, & Hahn, 2001). For example, George (2000) argued that while being in positive moods is important for tasks that require creativity, integrative thinking, and deductive reasoning, being in a negative mood tends to make people become more effective in tasks that require attention to detail, detection of errors and problems, and careful information processing. Without being sufficiently mindful, on the other hand, it can be difficult for people to focus on a task that could benefit from their currently felt emotion.

Schutte and Malouff (2011) examined the relationship between emotional intelligence, mindfulness and subjective well-being. They concluded “The present study found that higher levels of characteristic mindfulness were associated with higher trait emotional intelligence, higher levels of positive affect, lower levels of negative affect, and greater life satisfaction. These results are consistent with previous preliminary research on the relationship between mindfulness and emotional intelligence (Baer et al., 2004; Brown & Ryan, 2003) and subjective well-being (Baer et al., 2008; Brown & Ryan, 2003; Brown et al., 2009; Falkenstrom 2010)” Another study has been undertaken by Chu (2009), who also reviewed the existing literature. He concludes: “Mindfulness and EI, as defined by Salovey and Mayer (1990), are similar in that both are meta-cognitive and meta-mood constructs, that is, they both emphasize people's abilities to perceive, understand and regulate their thoughts and emotions (Donaldson-Feilder & Bond, 2004).” Chu cites several studies which have supported the potential importance of mindfulness to EI more generally. “Ciarrochi, Blackledge, Bilich and Bayliss (2007) indicated that mindfulness-based EI training could improve EI. Kabat-Zinn (1993) and Welwood (1996) argued that mindfulness promotes attunement, connection and closeness in relationships. Baer, Smith and Allen (2004); Baer et al. (2006); and Brown and Ryan (2003) showed that the components of EI, which are social skills and perspective taking, interpersonal closeness, cooperative response patterns and marital partner satisfaction (Schutte, Malouff, & Bobik, 2001), are significantly related to mindfulness. Davidson and Harrington (2002) also suggested that the greater insight into self, others and human nature, along with an easing of ego-based concerns that is afforded by mindfulness, encourages a more compassionate concern for others. Consistent with the proposition, Beitel, Ferrer and Cecero's (2005) point to correlational evidence which supported this notion (see Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007, for review). In addition, individuals can develop self-awareness, which is one of the major tenets of EI, by practicing mindfulness meditation. This means that they could be mindful about their environment and whatever is happening in the here and now, rather than focusing too much on the past and the future (Epstein, 1990).” Chu’s own study examined 351 full-time working adults in Taiwan. All of them meditated, although at different levels of meditation experience. Those participants with greater meditation experience exhibited higher EI, less perceived stress and less negative mental health than those who had lower levels of meditation experience. Chu then randomly divided 20 graduate students with no previous experience of meditation into a mindfulness meditation group and a control group. He measured both groups for the same variables and found that those who completed the mindfulness training demonstrated significant improvements with respect to EI, perceived stress and mental health compared to the control group. Research by Snowden et al (2015) on student nurses and midwives found that mindfulness training was associated with higher emotional intelligence when the latter is viewed as an ability. They conclude “from a practical perspective, in line with the findings from this study, it also raises the possibility that mindfulness training may be a better way of enhancing emotional and cognitive abilities than pre-nursing programmes”..

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