Category: Emotional intelligence

Introduction

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the “subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”¹ EI is essentially the capacity of an individual to recognize, control, and assess emotions.

Effective application of EI requires four factors namely, “perception of emotions, ability to reason using emotions, ability to understand emotions, and ability to manage emotions.”²

In the last decade, most fortune 500 organizations have focused on implementing policies that facilitate the development of EI among their employees. The rationale of this strategy is that EI promotes high productivity through its positive effects on organizational behavior.

In this regard, EI enables employees to manage stress, challenges, and conflicts, as well as, to communicate effectively and to empathize with their colleagues. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the arguments for and against the application of EI.

Arguments for Emotional Intelligence

The factors that underpin the application of EI in the modern business environment include the following. First, EI promotes intuition and empathy among employees.³ Concisely, it enables employees to recognize the feelings, needs, and concerns of other stakeholders of the organization. Understanding the feelings and perspectives of others is the first step in boosting employees’ motivation.

High motivation often develops in organizations in which the management understands the concerns of the employees and shows an active interest in addressing the concerns. Through intuition, managers can correctly anticipate, and recognize customers’ needs. This leads to the development of products that meet customers’ expectations.

The resulting improvement in customer satisfaction leads to high sales and profits. Intuition also helps managers to recognize the weaknesses and strengths of their juniors. Consequently, they are able to develop the right training and development programs for their workforce. Finally, ability to understand others promotes diversity at the workplace, thereby averting the tensions that might occur due to cultural conflicts.

Second, EI promotes effective leadership. Individuals with high EI are associated with excellent political acumen, as well as, social skills that enable them to lead others effectively. In this regard, EI enables leaders to develop and to use effective communication skills to influence others. Leaders who are able to influence the stakeholders of their organizations are likely to be change catalysts.

Concisely, they are able to use their communication skills to create a sense of urgency for change and to market the desired vision for the organization. High political acumen enables managers to win the support of their juniors and to build relationships with all stakeholders.

This promotes collaboration and cooperation between the employees and the management, thereby improving team capabilities. Empirical studies indicate that effective teams often boost the performance of the organization by sharing ideas, resources and complementing the weaknesses of their colleagues.

Third, EI promotes self-awareness among employees.⁴ Self-awareness is the ability of a person to understand his or her strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and capabilities. Emotional awareness enables employees to recognize their emotions, and the effects of such emotions on their colleagues. Consequently, employees will be able to manage their emotions well in order to boost their productivity.

Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses is a fundamental step in human resource development. Employees who are aware of their weaknesses often focus on improving their competence so that they can be more productive and competitive in their organizations. Similarly, employees who are aware of their self-worth tend to have high self-esteem and confidence.

Consequently, they develop high morale and commitment to their work. In the context of organizational behavior, self-awareness is the basis of change and action learning. Concisely, self-awareness enables employees to change their behaviors by imitating the actions of their role models.

Fourth, self-regulation can be achieved through EI.⁵ In this case, EI shapes organizational behavior by enabling individuals to manage their disruptive emotions and impulses. Self-control is a necessary condition for the development honesty and integrity at the workplace. Trust is likely to develop in a work environment in which the employees have high standards of integrity and honesty.

One importance of trust at the workplace is that it enhances teamwork. Additionally, it promotes accountability by encouraging employees to take responsibility for their work. EI influences organizational behavior through its impact on innovation and adaptability among employees.

Individuals who are able to regulate their behaviors are likely to be flexible enough to handle change. Similarly, self-regulation enables individuals to tolerate novel ideas or innovative ways of doing things. In this context, EI is essential in organizations that intend to achieve change through innovation.

Fifth, EI has positive impacts on employees’ emotional and physical well-being.⁶ Effective application of emotional intelligence is essential for stress management. Effective control of work-related stress is one of the best ways of avoiding health conditions or illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, and high blood pressure.

Individuals who are able to control their emotions tend to be less susceptible to anxiety and depression. Generally, physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the employees is a major determinant of productivity. In this context, EI determines the productivity of an organization due to its positive impact on employees’ well-being.

Finally, EI facilitates goal achievement and relationship management.⁷ Emotional intelligence is one of the major determinants of achievement drive. Individuals with high EI tend to set ambitious goals, which they strive to achieve. Furthermore, employees with high emotional intelligence are likely to be initiative. Such employees are often able to identify and to take advantage of available opportunities.

High emotional intelligence is essential for the development of optimism. It is apparent that optimism encourages risk-taking behavior and persistence in the pursuit of organizational goals. Similarly, relationship management helps employees to interact with each other in order to share ideas and to access technical and personal help.

People who are able to understand their emotions and to exercise self-control are likely to forge strong relationships with their colleagues. This premise is based on the fact that EI enables individuals to express themselves in a better manner and to understand the feelings of their colleagues.

Strong relationships are necessary at the workplace because they help in reducing conflicts, improving teamwork, and increasing productivity.

Arguments against Emotional Intelligence

The concept of emotional intelligence is often criticized due to the following reasons. First, measures of emotional intelligence are unreliable and unscientific. Measurements of EI are mainly based on the use of commercial tests rather than scientific data that facilitates the verification of the validity, as well as, the psychometric properties of constructs.

Most of the tests depend on selective anecdotal evidence, which cannot be analyzed scientifically. Most emotional intelligence models use measures that were developed from personality factors such as “emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.”⁸

Consequently, using reliable personality test instruments should be the most appropriate approach for measuring emotional intelligence. One factor that reduces the reliability of emotional intelligence measures is the reliance on self-reported questionnaires.⁹ In most cases, self-reported questionnaires contain fake information.

Including false information in self-reported questionnaires is a common practice among jobseekers since it helps them to get jobs. This explains the unreliability of emotional intelligence tests that are done during staff recruitment process. It is against this backdrop that emotional intelligence measures are considered unscientific and ineffective in measuring or predicting performance.

Second, research findings on emotional intelligence are yet to add significant value in the process of measuring or predicting workplace outcomes. Concisely, there is no significant difference between the validity of the results obtained through EI measures and those obtained through traditional personality tests. This weakness is attributed to the use of weak research designs in emotional intelligence studies.

EI measures are not reliable because they merely collect information about individuals’ semantic knowledge about emotion.¹⁰ A reliable measure of emotional intelligence can only be achieved in a context in which the respondent is actually experiencing the emotion that is being measured. Emotional intelligence measurement scales are meaningless because they mask too much variation.

This is because the results are based on expert judgment or consensus rather than true or false answers. In most cases, a panel of experts or a focus group uses their judgment to decide whether the answers are right or wrong. The problem with this approach is that the panel of experts hardly agrees on a single set of answers.

In this regard, conformists who provide common answers tend to get high scores, whereas brilliant non-conformists often get low scores. Besides, the results are likely to be unreliable if the members of the panel are biased.

Third, the application of EI is complicated because it consists of numerous constructs, which measure an individual’s ability.¹¹ Since constructs are not observable, their interpretations and definitions vary from person to person. In this regard, the application of EI is limited because it lacks a universal definition and measurement. Organizations tend to use observable behaviors to measure emotional intelligence.

However, lack of consensus on the specific behaviors that should be used to measure EI limits the application of the concept in the context of a business organization. One factor that complicates the assessment of EI is that measures that focus on ability are not correlated with those that focus on traits. Measures of trait-related emotional intelligence have close associations with personality tests.

Similarly, measures of ability-related EI have close associations with tests for coping strategies. Thus, using EI to predict business performance has little utility. Furthermore, there is no evidence to support the claim that EI can predict leadership success in business.

It is apparent that there is no particular skill set or a form of intelligence that is applicable across the board in most organizations. In this context, emotional intelligence can only be useful if it is used in conjunction with other concepts such as intelligence quotient (IQ).

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, control, and assess emotions. In the context of organizational behavior, EI influences the actions of employees by enabling them to manage their emotions effectively. Proponents of EI believe that it promotes high productivity, and cohesion at the workplace. In addition, they believe that EI can predict leadership success.

However, the critics of EI believe that it has little or no value in predicting leadership or business success. This perspective is based on the fact that EI is a construct. Thus, its definition is ambiguous. In this regard, measuring EI has always been very difficult, thereby limiting its application.

Bibliography

Ashkanasy Neal and Daus Catherine. “Rumors of the Death of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behavior are Vastly Exaggerated.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 26, no. 4 (2005): 441-452.

Ashton-James. Is Emotional Intelligence a Viable Construct? Brisbane: UQ Business School, 2003.

Blell Denys. Emotional Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Dulewicz Victor and Higgs Malcolm. “Emotional Intelligence: Review and Evaluation Study.” Journal of Managerial Psychology 15, no. 4 (2000): 341-372.

Goleman Daniel. Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 2000.

Leary Myleen, Reilly, Michael and Brown William. “A Study of Personality Preferences and Emotional Intelligence.” Leadership and Organization Development Journal 30, no. 5 (2009): 421-434.

Moon Taewon. “Emotional Intelligence Correlates of the Four-factor Model of Cultural Intelligence.” Journal of Managerial psychology 25, no. 8 (2010): 876-898.

Prati Melita, Douglas Ceasar and Ferris Gerald. “Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Effectiveness, and Team Outcomes.” International Journal of Organizational Analysis 11, no. 1 (2003): 21-40.

Footnotes

1Denys Blell, Emotional Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011), 12.

2Myleen, Leary, Michael, Reilly and William Brown, “A Study of Personality Preferences and Emotional Intelligence,” Leadership and Organization Development Journal 30, no. 5 (2009): 421-434.

3Victor Dulewicz and Malcolm Higgs, “Emotional Intelligence: Review and Evaluation Study,” Journal of Managerial Psychology 15, no. 4 (2000): 341-372.

4Taewon Moon, “Emotional Intelligence Correlates of the Four-factor Model of Cultural Intelligence,” Journal of Managerial Psychology 25, no. 8 (2010): 876-898.

5Melita Prati, Ceasar Douglas and Gerald Ferris, “Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Effectiveness, and Team Outcomes,” International Journal of Organizational Analysis 11, no. 1 (2003): 21-40.

6Blell, Emotional Intelligence, 142.

7Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books), 98.

8 Blell, Emotional Intelligence, 231.

9Neal Ashkanasy and Catherine Daus, “Rumors of the Death of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behavior are Vastly Exaggerated,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 26, no. 4 (2005): 441-452.

10Claire Ashton-James, Is Emotional Intelligence a Viable Construct?, (Brisbane: UQ Business School, 2003), 72.

11Blell, Emotional Intelligence, 245.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) involves understanding one’s emotions plus those of others and using these capabilities to ensure the best outcomes for all concerned. EI also revolves around knowledge of the source of emotions, what emotions mean, and the kind of information they provide towards being able to work well with others.

The Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), is an assessment tool that measures and tests aspects of EI. This analysis concentrates on knowledge and rarely on the ability to perform the tasks related to the knowledge measured.

Unlike the past, when all a person needed was intelligence in order to be successful, the present day scenario has made EI mandatory for success; way above intelligence quotient (IQ). Both managers and employees should be capable of managing themselves as well as other persons in order to be successful. Emotional intelligence is practical within a working environment if an individual handles the moods, emotions and impulses of other individuals with utmost sensitivity (Eisenberg, 2000).

According to Sutton (1991), emotions, both negative and positive play a vital role in an individual’s life, both in the workplace and at home. Excitement and satisfaction are common when an employee gets an appreciable hike, wins a contract or a promotion from the management.

However, frustration and anger prevail when an individual’s efforts are not appreciated by the right people. Emotions shoot up when an employee is pressured to work within stringent deadlines. Such stressing situations that are common within the context of a home or office, especially while dealing with different individuals, result from the inability to make an intelligent assessment of the various possible emotions.

Emotional intelligence in the recent past has received considerable attention as potentially useful aspect in predicting and understanding an employee’s performance and success in the workplace.

According to Rotundo & Sackett, (2002), EI is a complex and multifaceted ability to be efficient and effective in majority of the life’s domains, as well as job success. Further, EI has been defined on the basis of competencies as a learned capability associated with emotional intelligence that translates to phenomenal performance in the place of work.

Cognitive intelligence

On the other hand, Cognitive intelligence is defined as the intellectual capabilities such as writing, reading, logic, analyzing, reason and prioritizing. Tests conducted to measure cognitive ability are used in performance analysis. Such tests are used to measure an individual’s ability to solve problems in various cognitive spheres. The distinction between emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence is evidenced in the psychometric tests of assessing cognitive ability and psychometric tests of intelligence (Sparrowe et al., 2001).

Cognitive intelligence as a latent trait is assessed by psychometric tests. The cognitive ability is also assessed by tests that change over time; varying on the age as well as intelligence.

Strengths of emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence

With reference to job performance, cognitive intelligence has been identified to relate to such job performance dimensions as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and task performance. While OCB involves activities that are vital in achieving the organization’s objectives, though not formally considered as part of a job, task performance concerns the primary substantive duties that are formally considered part of the job (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002).

Theoretically, cognitive intelligence fosters task performance through the knowhow of rules, procedures and facts relevant to the technical core of the job. It further enhances OCB through such aspects as rules, procedures and facts vital for effective cooperating, helping and endorsement for the organization.

Employees considered limited by their cognitive abilities may reconsider focusing on the benefits of high emotional intelligence as they often report low job performance in most jobs. With low job performance, there is a relatively larger room for correction and improvement.

For instance, a salesperson who fails to retain the interest of possible customers is likely to lower the possibility of mistakes in future. As such, failure to attain job performance through cognitive intelligence can be compensated for through complementary mechanisms under emotional intelligence. Some of the strengths of emotional intelligence are as follows:

First, additional mechanisms include proficiency at identifying and understanding the emotions of other individuals. This is achievable within the working environment whereby organization members interact with coworkers, supervisors, support staff, and with outsiders such as patients, clients and customers. In the process of interacting, emotions are publicly displayed through vocal, facial and bodily signals that relay vital messages about their intentions, attitudes and goals (Sutton, 1991).

For individuals with low cognitive intelligence and high emotional intelligence, such pertinent information may be transformed to high-risk performance. On the contrary, an individual with high cognitive intelligence and low emotional intelligence can accurately detect the publicly displayed emotions to facilitate interpersonal functioning and coordination necessary for enhancing task performance.

Additionally, information about other people’s intentions, attitudes and goals may be transformed into frequent OCB by individuals exhibiting low cognitive intelligence and high emotional intelligence. Such individuals can, for instance, depict the need for assistance for individuals exhibiting anxiety and sadness (Eisenberg, 2000).

Secondly, emotional intelligence can enhance job performance of low-cognitive-intelligence individuals’ through regulating emotional influences to cater for social relationships. If an employee generates and displays genuine emotions, rather than fake ones, he/she is likely to receive favorable reactions. Showing genuine concern for coworkers’ problems enable employees to develop stronger relationships than employees showing less concern.

To develop good social relationships, individuals with high emotional intelligence and low cognitive intelligence may use their abilities to manage emotions. With well established and strong social relationships, there are higher chances of enhancing task performance through advice and social support. Similarly, favourable working relationships will highly prompt employees to participate in OCB more often to the advantage of colleagues (Sparrowe et al., 2001).

Thirdly, job performance individuals with low cognitive intelligence can be enhanced by emotional intelligence through the effects of emotions on the individuals’ thoughts and actions. Individuals with low cognitive intelligence but intelligent emotionally can attain high levels of task performance and OCB in most jobs, by managing their emotions towards strengthening their motivation and quality of their decisions.

For instance, understanding that anger leads individuals to undermine the level of risk in situations prompts managers to suppress anger while in the process of making an important financial decision; thus portraying positive task performance. Similarly, an employee that understands the importance of positive emotions in enhancing motivation will boost positive emotions towards engaging in OCB (Gardner, 1983).

Although open for discussion, it has been proven that emotional intelligence will often relate to the job performance of an individual within the organization with low cognitive intelligence, and in turn compensate for the low cognitive intelligence. However, as cognitive intelligence increases, emotional intelligence should be less positively related with job performance.

Emotional intelligence is associated with certain benefits. Unlike in 1918, the Intelligence quotient (IQ) is now rated 24 points higher; a direct consequence of more schooling, better nutrition and smaller family sizes. However, emotional quotient (EQ) is lower between the two periods.

The low EQ is evidenced by the bahaviours common with kids in the current times; more aggressive, more angry and unruly, more lonely and depressed, nervous and prone to worry. Cases of crime and violence are on the rise; drug abuse is persisting, cases of alienation and despair rising, unwanted pregnancies, school dropouts, eating disorders and even bullying (Wood et al., 2010).

In business and psychology, it has become a pass time to predict job performance. When the performance assessment is carried out comprehensively using data from subordinates, peers and superiors, EQ predicts a higher performance thrice as good as IQ. Emotional intelligence contributes up to 90 percent for leadership through the influence, team skills, self-confidence, political awareness and achievement drive. However, unsuccessful leaders, we depicted as being angry, lacking empathy, moody, defensive and critical.

In corporate setting and blue-collar occupations, emotional intelligence assessments have been employed in predicting success and failure. Furthermore, the assessments have been instrumental in predicting aggression in the workplace, academic dropout, ability to recover from severe mental conditions and ability to cope with extreme medical conditions (Eisenberg, 2000).

Limitations of emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence

Although many writers and scholars of intelligence have denoted the need for emotional intelligence as a necessary condition for effective leadership or productive leader-members relations, an empirical study to scrutinize this link suggests otherwise. Contention and issues of controversy touch on the definition and methods of measurement or predicting emotional intelligence; and what EI is supposed to measure or predict.

Although it allows us to maintain relationships and keep our actions under control, emotional intelligence is variously dismissed as being just another management concept.

More often than not, organizations encourage their employees to embrace emotional intelligence both during the hiring and development stages of their careers at the organisation. Individuals with low emotional intelligence view the move by the HR as an intrusion or hindrance into their personal lives. Consequently, emotional intelligence cannot be learned overnight but requires time and effort to learn and practice it correctly (Sosik & Megerian, 1999)

Unlike cognitive intelligence, that is measurable using psychometric tests, emotional intelligence is people ability and measurement of the social skills among individuals is a daunting task. Numerous analysis and effort are required in order for a successful analysis to be conclusive.

Cognitive ability and emotional intelligence in modern organisations

Organizations instituting leadership development programs depend on the feedback of coworkers to have a clue of how their leaders conduct themselves in the workplace. Variations exist in the results of employees’ self-ratings compared to the ratings by their supervisors, coworkers and subordinates. Management development often focuses on primary skills, abilities and knowledge that are considered fundamental to high-performing individuals or effective leadership behavior.

The important leader behaviours are defined and acknowledged in a way that allows for their assessment and feeding back to the individual. Once an analysis of the key traits is done, the concerned individual is motivated to increase their understanding of areas of strength and weakness, in turn driving the development of improved leadership behaviour (Conway & Huffcutt, 1997).

In an effort to improve the organization as well as the individual’s performance, organizations invest considerable resources into skill development the individuals on the management level and above. As expected, increase in the return on investment points to the progressive employee development strategies.

In addition to the management of skill development during a management-development initiative, it is essential to consider the skills an organization terms crucial for improvement. Organizations are guaranteed of better performing leaders championing for higher returns on investment if investment in the right skills is successful (Wood et al., 2010).

In a similar tone, the lines of intelligence testing movement are adhered to by roots of emotional intelligence. Various forms of intelligence, such as social intelligence or the ability to act wisely towards other individuals exist. This aspect of intelligence has since its conception been a daunting task to measure, compared to measuring an individual’s cognitive abilities.

Despite the challenges, attempts to measure social intelligence have established that it is composed of three aspects: social knowledge, attitude toward society and degree of social judgment (Gardner, 1983). Further research was instrumental in coining of the concept emotional intelligence, as the presence of cognitive ability.

It was a few years later that emotional intelligence was brought to the mainstream public and was quickly embraced by the leadership development community. Organization value emotional intelligence as it provides a framework for the measuring and designing of emotionally-based soft skills. According to Goleman et al. (2002), emotional intelligence is designed for use in organizational theory, research and practice to develop effectiveness of individuals both in leadership positions and workplace.

Emotional intelligence in organizational outcomes has also been correlated with performance, and especially with linkage to leadership performance. Research conducted by Sosik and Megerian (1999) established leaders with high emotional intelligence performed better than their low emotional intelligence colleagues. Performance on job-related cognitive ability tasks have also been linked with emotional intelligence.

A survey conducted in 1997 on benchmark was conducted on various corporations. From the survey, Goleman (1998) discovered 80 percent of companies focused on trying to promote emotional intelligence in their employees through training and development. While it was implemented during the recruiting and evaluation processes, almost 90 percent of desired traits for entry-level workers but were correlated with emotional intelligence.

Following the results of various studies conducted across corporations the world over; it was conclusive that evidence pointed to the importance of emotional intelligence for the entry and success in the workplace today. Similarly, inclusion of emotional intelligence competencies is important as concluded by the agricultural education research.

Goleman (1998) further argues that in order to apply emotional intelligence in the workplace, two set of competencies ought to exist: personal and social. Similarly, a divergent view postulates that eight factors should be considered while implementing emotional intelligence in an organization. These reservations arise because individuals differ in the abilities to handle emotions; while others may manage personal emotions and anxieties well, handling other people’s emotions might prove impossible.

As such, researchers have concluded that individuals’ underlying basis for their levels of ability is neutral. Additionally, the human brain is considered plastic; ready to learn at every given opportunity. Variations in emotional skills can be compensated, especially if the concerned parties are willing to take up the task.

References

Conway, J. M. & Huffcutt, A.I. (1997). Psychometric properties of multisource performance ratings: a meta-analysis of subordinate, supervisor, peer and self-ratings. Human Performance. 10, 331-360.

Eisenberg, N. (2000). “Emotion, regulation, and moral development.” Annual Review of Psychology. 51: 665–697.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basis Books.

Goleman, D. (1996). Emotional Intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. London.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership: realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business School Press: Boston.

Rotundo, M. & Sackett, P. R., (2002). “The relative importance of task, citizenship, and counterproductive performance to global ratings of job performance: A policy-capturing approach.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 87: 66–80.

Sosik, J. J. & Megerian, L. E. (1999). Understanding leader emotional intelligence and performance: the role of self-other agreement on transformational leadership perceptions. Group and Organization Management. 24, 367-390.

Sparrowe, R. T., Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J. & Kraimer, M. L. (2001). “Social networks and the performance of individuals and groups.” Academy of Management Journal. 44: 316–325.

Sutton, R. I. (1991). “Maintaining norms about expressed emotions: The case of bill collectors.” Administrative Science Quarterly. 36: 245–268.

Wood, J., Zeffane, R., Fromholtz, M., Wiesner, R., Creed, A., Schermerhorn, J., et al. (2010). Organisational behaviour: Core concepts and applications (2nd ed.). Brisbane: John Wiley and Sons.

Introduction

Organizations exist in a competitive environment and they have to keep increasing their performance in order to survive. The role played by individual members of the organization to ensure this future survival is great. In addition to the technical skills required by the employees to fulfil their roles in the business, they should also possess interpersonal skills.

Carblis (2008) acknowledges that changing patterns of economic competition have led to greater emphasis in “soft” skills which include: personal attributes of teamwork, work ethics, flexibility, and ease of adaptation to change. These desirable interpersonal skills can be conceptualized within the context of emotional intelligence competencies. This paper will set out to critically review Emotional Intelligent (EI) and evaluate the arguments made for and against this concept.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

The concept of emotional intelligence was first introduced by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990 where they highlighted it as a form of social intelligence that is different from general intelligence. According to them, Emotional Intelligence is defined as the ability of an individual to “perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; access and generate feelings when they facilitate thought; understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth” (Yaghoubi and Hadi 2011, 120).

Emotional intelligence has been shown to play a role in the way in which people develop in their personal and professional lives. It has an impact on the social skills of the person and it determines the manner in which the individual handles frustration, coexists with other people and also controls his/her emotions.

Researchers agree that emotional intelligence is the element that differentiates an intelligent manager from a brilliant one. EI will dictate how the person responds to emotionally challenging situations, how he/she deals with other people and their understanding of other people’s emotions. The significance given to EI is demonstrated by Yaghoubi and Hadi (2011, 120) who reveal that while traditional IQ contributes only 20% to a person’s success, emotional quotient contributes 80%.

Relevance of Emotional Intelligence

To Individuals

The leadership ability of an individual is greatly impacted by the EI. High EI will enable the leader to rightfully gauge the mood of the staff or team and act appropriately. Low EI might cause the leader to be insensitive to the mood of the followers and this will lead to frustration and lower the output of the team (Wilson 2004, 237). This is because followers are likely to give their best efforts to the organization if they feel that their leader is genuinely concerned about them and is sensitive to their needs.

All employees incur varying amounts of stress as they engage in their work. This stress has an effect on job performance with research indicating that job stress is negatively related to job performance (Yu-Chi 2011, 28). However, individual difference variables also determine how stress will affect the job performance of the person.

Research by Yu-chi (2011, 29) demonstrated that emotional intelligence has a positive impact on job performance by moderating the impact of stress in the individual. Employees who demonstrated high emotional intelligence are more likely to reduce potential negative effects of job stress on job performance to an acceptable degree.

Such individuals would therefore be able to deal with stressful matters associated with their jobs without letting them negatively affect their overall work productivity. In some cases, highly emotionally intelligent individuals might view stressors as a challenge and this will lead to internal arousal, which will result in better performance outcomes. However, for employees with little emotional intelligence, the stressor will be viewed as an unpleasant experience and this will result in negative work outcomes.

The emotions that an employee undergoes in the course of their work life impact not only their physical and psychological health but also their attitude towards duties and the organization in general (Moon and Hur 2011, 1087). Workers are prone to burnout which is caused by emotional exhaustion, diminished personal accomplishment, and depersonalization (Moon and Hur 2011, 1088). Burnout results in issues such as decreased concentration and cognitive difficulties in the employee.

All these decrease the individual’s performance reducing the overall organizational productivity. It helps employees to effectively manage the factors such as stress and dissatisfaction and, therefore, reduce their risk of burnout. As such, individuals with high levels of EI are less likely to suffer from burnout; their work performance as measured by organizational commitment and job satisfaction can be expected to remain at high levels.

To Organizations

Organizations are forced to change in order to adapt themselves to the market environment. The modern organization must be able to quickly adapt change so as to enhance its competitive position and ensure its survival in the competitive business environment. However, change comes about with some emotional implications for the employees.

The range of emotions experienced during organizational change and how they are reacted to might have major consequences to the organization. Successful management of these emotions is therefore a key objective of managers during organizational change. EI can positively influence the change management process since it increases self-awareness and the ability of the individual to manage negative emotions. Research by Jordan (2004, 464) demonstrates that EI might contribute to successful organizational change.

Moon and Hur (2011, 1088) note that an employee must at all times express the organizationally demanded emotions to customers and senior managers. While the employee might be able to do this naturally, there are times when they will have to make an effort and exert control to display the appropriate feelings even if this is not what they feel inside. EI has a bearing on how the employee displays the emotions that the customers expect and, therefore, positively contributes to the organization’s productivity.

Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in the workplace that goes beyond role requirement as stipulated in the work contract, is becoming increasingly crucial in the businesses today. Yaghoubi and Hadi (2011, 119) asset that due to the positive impact that OCB has on the overall organizational effectiveness, employers are today seeking workers who have this extra-role behaviour that predisposes them to impulsively take actions beyond the stated job requirement.

Research by Yaghoubi and Hadi (2011, 121) revealed that EI had a positive correlation with the conscientiousness of employees. Employees with high EI are more likely to demonstrate Organizational citizenship behaviour, which will translate to higher productivity for the organization.

Organizational learning is today a very important issue and it is considered crucial in achieving competitive advantage. It is one of the instruments that allows the organization to quickly adapt to the changing internal and external environment. Rafiq, Zainab, and Ali (2011, 321) assert that emotionally intelligent employees ease organizational learning, therefore, increasing the chances of the organizations to maintain the desired competitive advantage.

EI plays this significant role by helping managers and employees to manage the change by identifying their emotions and properly managing their relationship with others. Emotional skills are needed to successfully achieve learning. High EI will therefore promote organizational learning by helping employees to manage destructive emotions and promoting their convergent and divergent thinking (Rafiq, Zainab, and Ali 2011, 321)

Arguments Against Emotional Intelligence

Since the topic of emotional intelligence was proposed in 1990 by Salovey and Mayer, it has become a popular subject for research with various measures and inventories of EI being used by organizations. Sungwon, Choi, and Kerry (2011, 270) observe that these overwhelming attention has been given to EI since it is believed that it predicts important life and work outcomes. Overreliance on EI tests can be detrimental to the wellbeing of an organization.

There is a significant risk of self-distortion in the self-report EI measures. Sungwon, Donald, and Kerry (2011, 270) point out that self-report measures are susceptible to self-enhancement bias or socially desirable responding which greatly undermines their predictive validity. When an individual’s employment prospects or their chances of getting a promotion are dependent on their EI score, then these respondents have motives to distort self-reports.

The individual will offer the most socially desirable answers in the self-report which will render the attained EI score useless. If the organization goes ahead and uses this information for its organizational decision making process, the decisions reached will be faulty since they are based on wrong information. The self-enhancement motive of a person will affect the validity of self-report EI since the individual will demonstrate a tendency to distort self-report in a favourable direction (Sungwon, Donald, and Kerry 2011, 271).

As a result of the popular notions concerning EI, it can be expected that activities such as hiring, promoting, or retaining staff are influenced by it. Antonakis (2004, 172) surmises that more organizations are basing decisions on these activities on EI models whose credibility is in question since the models lack adequate scientific backing. In spite of the popular interest in EI, the scientific status of emotional intelligence in organizational research is still not well grounded.

Antonakis (2004, 171) notes that too many academicians and practitioners have been fascinated by the supposed benefits of EI despite the fact that most of the claims made in support of EI have not been substantiated. Zeidner, Matthews, and Roberts (2004, 393) warn that most of the roles attributed to EI are misleading and following them rigorously might negatively affect an organization.

Critics argue that EI is not a necessity for leadership or organizational performance and the claims made contrary to this are often exaggerated. For example, the claims made that EI tests can help differentiate exemplary leaders from average performers are unsubstantiated. Antonakis (2004, 172) notes that such claims do not have any scientific backing and they only serve to misled organizational leaders who are not trained to critically evaluate research findings.

The EI models commonly used such as the Mayer, Salovery, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and the EQ360 self-report measure exhibit major weaknesses. Antonakis (2004, 176) observes that the ability based EI measure as obtained from the EI scale was weakly predictive of work performance which greatly diminished the appropriateness of the scale.

In addition to this, the results obtained from a number of performance measures such as the MSCEIT were similar to those obtained from well-known constructs such as the “big five”. This shows that EI is not unique and its application in measuring human performance is therefore overstated.

Discussion

EI has emerged as an important concept in organizational behaviour. Due to this realization, organizations have made use of a number of EI models to assist in organizational decision-making. Even so, the significance of EI can only be assured if the validity and reliability of the models used is unquestionable.

As such, for EI to continue to play a positive role in organizational success, it is important for researchers to support their claims with scientific data and refrain from making exaggerated claims about the role of EI.

Recent years have witnessed a surge in research on EI in order to provide the scientific backing needed to ascertain the validity and reliability of EI. Murphy (2006, p.189) declares that objective and critical evaluation of the claims made regarding EI is paramount to ensure that the validity of this construct is affirmed.

All models have some inherent margin of error and this should is therefore not a valid reason to discount the importance of EI. Ashkanasy and Catherine (2005, 442) reaffirm that EI is today grounded in science and specifically in “the role emotion plays in organizational behaviour”. Its role in organizational behaviour research is therefore important and the importance can be expected to increase even as future research in the field is undertaken.

Conclusion

This paper set out to analyze arguments made for and against the concept of Emotional Intelligence in order to underscore the important of this concept in Organizational Behaviour. It began by defining EI and proceeded to discuss its relevance to individuals and organizations. The paper has noted that EI has positive impacts on the individuals as well as the organization since it assist in mitigating the negative impacts of emotions such as stress, anger, and frustration.

The paper has also delved into some arguments made against EI. It noted that most of these arguments are with regard to the lack of reliability and validity of EI. Increased research in EI has led to more reliability as the concept becomes more scientifically grounded. It can therefore be projected that EI will be playing an even more important role in organizational behaviour in the future.

Bibliography

Antonakis, John. “On why ’emotional intelligence’ will not predict leadership effectiveness beyond IQ or the ‘big five’: an extension and rejoinder.” Organizational Analysis 12, no.2 (2004): 171-182.

Ashkanasy, Neal, and Catherine Daus. “Rumors of the Death of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behavior are Vastly Exaggerated.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 26, no.4 (2005): 441–452.

Carblis, Peter. Assessing Emotional Intelligence: A Competency Framework for the Development of Standards for Soft Skills. St Louis: Cambria Press, 2008.

Jordan, Peter. “Dealing with organisational change: can emotional intelligence enhance organisational learning?” International Journal of Organisational Behaviour 8, no.1 (2004): 456-471.

Moon, Tae, and Hur Won-Moo. “Emotional intelligence, emotional exhaustion and job performance.” Social Behavior and Personality 39, no.8 (2011): 1087-1096.

Murphy, Kevin. A Critique of Emotional Intelligence: What Are the Problems and How Can They Be Fixed? New York. Routledge, 2006.

Rafiq, Maryam, Zainab Naseer, and Ali Bakhtiar. “Impact of emotional intelligence on organizational learning capability.” International Journal of Academic Research 3, no.4 (2011): 321-325.

Sungwon, Choi, Donald Kluemper, and Kerry Sauley.”What If We Fake Emotional Intelligence? A Test of Criterion Validity Attenuation.” Journal of Personality Assessment 93, no.3 (2011): 270–277.

Wilson, Fiona. Organizational Behavior and Work: A Critical Introduction. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Yaghoubi, Esmaeil, and Hadi Abdollahi. “An Analysis of Correlation between Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and Emotional Intelligence (El)” Modern Applied Science 5, no.2 (2011): 119-123.

Yu-Chi, Wu. “Job stress and job performance among employees in the Taiwanese finance sector: the role of emotional intelligence.” Social Behavior and Personality 39, no.1 (2011): 21-32.

Zeidner, Moshe, Matthews Gerald, and Roberts Richard. “Emotional intelligence in the workplace: A critical review.” Applied Psychology: An International Review 53, no.1 (2004): 371-399.

Introduction

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the “subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”¹ EI is essentially the capacity of an individual to recognize, control, and assess emotions.

Effective application of EI requires four factors namely, “perception of emotions, ability to reason using emotions, ability to understand emotions, and ability to manage emotions.”²

In the last decade, most fortune 500 organizations have focused on implementing policies that facilitate the development of EI among their employees. The rationale of this strategy is that EI promotes high productivity through its positive effects on organizational behavior.

In this regard, EI enables employees to manage stress, challenges, and conflicts, as well as, to communicate effectively and to empathize with their colleagues. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the arguments for and against the application of EI.

Arguments for Emotional Intelligence

The factors that underpin the application of EI in the modern business environment include the following. First, EI promotes intuition and empathy among employees.³ Concisely, it enables employees to recognize the feelings, needs, and concerns of other stakeholders of the organization. Understanding the feelings and perspectives of others is the first step in boosting employees’ motivation.

High motivation often develops in organizations in which the management understands the concerns of the employees and shows an active interest in addressing the concerns. Through intuition, managers can correctly anticipate, and recognize customers’ needs. This leads to the development of products that meet customers’ expectations.

The resulting improvement in customer satisfaction leads to high sales and profits. Intuition also helps managers to recognize the weaknesses and strengths of their juniors. Consequently, they are able to develop the right training and development programs for their workforce. Finally, ability to understand others promotes diversity at the workplace, thereby averting the tensions that might occur due to cultural conflicts.

Second, EI promotes effective leadership. Individuals with high EI are associated with excellent political acumen, as well as, social skills that enable them to lead others effectively. In this regard, EI enables leaders to develop and to use effective communication skills to influence others. Leaders who are able to influence the stakeholders of their organizations are likely to be change catalysts.

Concisely, they are able to use their communication skills to create a sense of urgency for change and to market the desired vision for the organization. High political acumen enables managers to win the support of their juniors and to build relationships with all stakeholders.

This promotes collaboration and cooperation between the employees and the management, thereby improving team capabilities. Empirical studies indicate that effective teams often boost the performance of the organization by sharing ideas, resources and complementing the weaknesses of their colleagues.

Third, EI promotes self-awareness among employees.⁴ Self-awareness is the ability of a person to understand his or her strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and capabilities. Emotional awareness enables employees to recognize their emotions, and the effects of such emotions on their colleagues. Consequently, employees will be able to manage their emotions well in order to boost their productivity.

Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses is a fundamental step in human resource development. Employees who are aware of their weaknesses often focus on improving their competence so that they can be more productive and competitive in their organizations. Similarly, employees who are aware of their self-worth tend to have high self-esteem and confidence.

Consequently, they develop high morale and commitment to their work. In the context of organizational behavior, self-awareness is the basis of change and action learning. Concisely, self-awareness enables employees to change their behaviors by imitating the actions of their role models.

Fourth, self-regulation can be achieved through EI.⁵ In this case, EI shapes organizational behavior by enabling individuals to manage their disruptive emotions and impulses. Self-control is a necessary condition for the development honesty and integrity at the workplace. Trust is likely to develop in a work environment in which the employees have high standards of integrity and honesty.

One importance of trust at the workplace is that it enhances teamwork. Additionally, it promotes accountability by encouraging employees to take responsibility for their work. EI influences organizational behavior through its impact on innovation and adaptability among employees.

Individuals who are able to regulate their behaviors are likely to be flexible enough to handle change. Similarly, self-regulation enables individuals to tolerate novel ideas or innovative ways of doing things. In this context, EI is essential in organizations that intend to achieve change through innovation.

Fifth, EI has positive impacts on employees’ emotional and physical well-being.⁶ Effective application of emotional intelligence is essential for stress management. Effective control of work-related stress is one of the best ways of avoiding health conditions or illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, and high blood pressure.

Individuals who are able to control their emotions tend to be less susceptible to anxiety and depression. Generally, physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the employees is a major determinant of productivity. In this context, EI determines the productivity of an organization due to its positive impact on employees’ well-being.

Finally, EI facilitates goal achievement and relationship management.⁷ Emotional intelligence is one of the major determinants of achievement drive. Individuals with high EI tend to set ambitious goals, which they strive to achieve. Furthermore, employees with high emotional intelligence are likely to be initiative. Such employees are often able to identify and to take advantage of available opportunities.

High emotional intelligence is essential for the development of optimism. It is apparent that optimism encourages risk-taking behavior and persistence in the pursuit of organizational goals. Similarly, relationship management helps employees to interact with each other in order to share ideas and to access technical and personal help.

People who are able to understand their emotions and to exercise self-control are likely to forge strong relationships with their colleagues. This premise is based on the fact that EI enables individuals to express themselves in a better manner and to understand the feelings of their colleagues.

Strong relationships are necessary at the workplace because they help in reducing conflicts, improving teamwork, and increasing productivity.

Arguments against Emotional Intelligence

The concept of emotional intelligence is often criticized due to the following reasons. First, measures of emotional intelligence are unreliable and unscientific. Measurements of EI are mainly based on the use of commercial tests rather than scientific data that facilitates the verification of the validity, as well as, the psychometric properties of constructs.

Most of the tests depend on selective anecdotal evidence, which cannot be analyzed scientifically. Most emotional intelligence models use measures that were developed from personality factors such as “emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.”⁸

Consequently, using reliable personality test instruments should be the most appropriate approach for measuring emotional intelligence. One factor that reduces the reliability of emotional intelligence measures is the reliance on self-reported questionnaires.⁹ In most cases, self-reported questionnaires contain fake information.

Including false information in self-reported questionnaires is a common practice among jobseekers since it helps them to get jobs. This explains the unreliability of emotional intelligence tests that are done during staff recruitment process. It is against this backdrop that emotional intelligence measures are considered unscientific and ineffective in measuring or predicting performance.

Second, research findings on emotional intelligence are yet to add significant value in the process of measuring or predicting workplace outcomes. Concisely, there is no significant difference between the validity of the results obtained through EI measures and those obtained through traditional personality tests. This weakness is attributed to the use of weak research designs in emotional intelligence studies.

EI measures are not reliable because they merely collect information about individuals’ semantic knowledge about emotion.¹⁰ A reliable measure of emotional intelligence can only be achieved in a context in which the respondent is actually experiencing the emotion that is being measured. Emotional intelligence measurement scales are meaningless because they mask too much variation.

This is because the results are based on expert judgment or consensus rather than true or false answers. In most cases, a panel of experts or a focus group uses their judgment to decide whether the answers are right or wrong. The problem with this approach is that the panel of experts hardly agrees on a single set of answers.

In this regard, conformists who provide common answers tend to get high scores, whereas brilliant non-conformists often get low scores. Besides, the results are likely to be unreliable if the members of the panel are biased.

Third, the application of EI is complicated because it consists of numerous constructs, which measure an individual’s ability.¹¹ Since constructs are not observable, their interpretations and definitions vary from person to person. In this regard, the application of EI is limited because it lacks a universal definition and measurement. Organizations tend to use observable behaviors to measure emotional intelligence.

However, lack of consensus on the specific behaviors that should be used to measure EI limits the application of the concept in the context of a business organization. One factor that complicates the assessment of EI is that measures that focus on ability are not correlated with those that focus on traits. Measures of trait-related emotional intelligence have close associations with personality tests.

Similarly, measures of ability-related EI have close associations with tests for coping strategies. Thus, using EI to predict business performance has little utility. Furthermore, there is no evidence to support the claim that EI can predict leadership success in business.

It is apparent that there is no particular skill set or a form of intelligence that is applicable across the board in most organizations. In this context, emotional intelligence can only be useful if it is used in conjunction with other concepts such as intelligence quotient (IQ).

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, control, and assess emotions. In the context of organizational behavior, EI influences the actions of employees by enabling them to manage their emotions effectively. Proponents of EI believe that it promotes high productivity, and cohesion at the workplace. In addition, they believe that EI can predict leadership success.

However, the critics of EI believe that it has little or no value in predicting leadership or business success. This perspective is based on the fact that EI is a construct. Thus, its definition is ambiguous. In this regard, measuring EI has always been very difficult, thereby limiting its application.

Bibliography

Ashkanasy Neal and Daus Catherine. “Rumors of the Death of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behavior are Vastly Exaggerated.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 26, no. 4 (2005): 441-452.

Ashton-James. Is Emotional Intelligence a Viable Construct? Brisbane: UQ Business School, 2003.

Blell Denys. Emotional Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Dulewicz Victor and Higgs Malcolm. “Emotional Intelligence: Review and Evaluation Study.” Journal of Managerial Psychology 15, no. 4 (2000): 341-372.

Goleman Daniel. Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 2000.

Leary Myleen, Reilly, Michael and Brown William. “A Study of Personality Preferences and Emotional Intelligence.” Leadership and Organization Development Journal 30, no. 5 (2009): 421-434.

Moon Taewon. “Emotional Intelligence Correlates of the Four-factor Model of Cultural Intelligence.” Journal of Managerial psychology 25, no. 8 (2010): 876-898.

Prati Melita, Douglas Ceasar and Ferris Gerald. “Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Effectiveness, and Team Outcomes.” International Journal of Organizational Analysis 11, no. 1 (2003): 21-40.

Footnotes

1Denys Blell, Emotional Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011), 12.

2Myleen, Leary, Michael, Reilly and William Brown, “A Study of Personality Preferences and Emotional Intelligence,” Leadership and Organization Development Journal 30, no. 5 (2009): 421-434.

3Victor Dulewicz and Malcolm Higgs, “Emotional Intelligence: Review and Evaluation Study,” Journal of Managerial Psychology 15, no. 4 (2000): 341-372.

4Taewon Moon, “Emotional Intelligence Correlates of the Four-factor Model of Cultural Intelligence,” Journal of Managerial Psychology 25, no. 8 (2010): 876-898.

5Melita Prati, Ceasar Douglas and Gerald Ferris, “Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Effectiveness, and Team Outcomes,” International Journal of Organizational Analysis 11, no. 1 (2003): 21-40.

6Blell, Emotional Intelligence, 142.

7Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books), 98.

8 Blell, Emotional Intelligence, 231.

9Neal Ashkanasy and Catherine Daus, “Rumors of the Death of Emotional Intelligence in Organizational Behavior are Vastly Exaggerated,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 26, no. 4 (2005): 441-452.

10Claire Ashton-James, Is Emotional Intelligence a Viable Construct?, (Brisbane: UQ Business School, 2003), 72.

11Blell, Emotional Intelligence, 245.

Introduction

The primary aim of this paper is to define emotional intelligence and show how assisting people in a working environment co-exist together and work hard in order to achieve the organizational goal. Emotional intelligence is a core feature in the working environment as it helps in building a strong working relationship through an understanding of each other. One can know and show concern for different needs, challenges, and unique priorities. Emotional intelligence can be the one thing that sets the line between accomplishment and total failure.

Meaning of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to be able to see their own and other people’s emotions, to be able to identify different reactions, and label them correctly and appropriately. It also adopts emotional information to guide creative thinking and behavior. One applies the aggregate capacity to act with a purpose, to think with a rational mind, and to deal effectively with the surroundings in order to understand fully the emotions of oneself and people around.

Emotional intelligence means being self-aware and able to manage emotions, recognize them, deal constructively with the emotions of others, and motivate oneself. (Travis Bradberry, 2009). Emotional intelligence is a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor own and others’ emotions in order to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions (Mackay, 2010).

Social intelligence is the ability to understand and relate to people. It helps to act wisely in human factor according to Thorndike. Thorndike also explains further by including inter-personal intelligence, which is the ability to understand other people, and intra-personal intelligence, which is a correlative ability turned inward (Mackay, 2010).

Importance of Emotional Intelligence at Workplace

One is able to know when and how to express emotions and do it under control without affecting fellow workmates. Employees can handle the stress that comes with the job. They also have the advantage of managing their feelings under the situations of duress at the workplace. Emotional intelligence is necessary to learn personal and social skills that are needed to identify and calculate if we want to be able to reach performance superiority.

By knowing our emotions and how they affect us and others, and also understanding our weaknesses and strengths, we are able to assess ourselves and have a strong sense of directions along with knowing where we can be useful and where we cannot.

The employers will have an insight on how to inspire and guide employees, managing any changes, promoting collaborations and cooperation among the work team and, in turn, improving performance. Employee is made aware of the greater good they can contribute towards the benefit of the organization’s increasing performance.

Understanding feelings, duties, and demands encourages individuals to work more effectively and share ideas and opinions with the fellow employees and employers without any fear. This eases on how to boost spirits of individuals with the help of understanding their needs and feelings. This leads to a happy working environment and people will focus more on their work.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence has come to be one of the greatest characteristics in organizations of this era. It has found an attention in the eye of management, which applies it to be of more interest in the future. Those organizations that employ emotional intelligence are proven to be more successful than those companies that do not have the same practice, because such technique helps them improve the employees’ job quality.

References

Mackay, A. (2010). Motivation, Ability and Confidence Building in People. New York: Routledge.

Travis Bradberry, J. G. (2009). Emotional Intelligence 2.0. New York: TalentSmart.