The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

Being able to understand your own emotions, the emotions of others and their effects may be the ticket to attracting the things you want most in life. Each of these skills falls under emotional intelligence (EI), which applies not only to your career and home life, but may also positively impact your health and well-being.

While IQ is something you’re born with, EI can be enhanced and developed over time and can be highly significant in the development of human potential, teamwork, leadership, stress reduction, creativity and innovation.

In the workforce, EI gives you the ability to work harmoniously on teams, and build relationships and networks that benefit the organization in the long term. Dr. Lori LaCivita, an industrial and organizational psychologist and academic program director at Walden University, explains that possessing EI can help everyone in the workforce, from millennials to baby boomers, work together to produce exceptional results.

Four generations now participate in the workforce, which means a range of characteristics, leadership styles and motivators are present. When it’s not acknowledged, this mix can lead to miscommunication, conflict, lack of ability to build strong, cohesive, effective teams and loss of work productivity. It can also result in lack of job satisfaction, burnout and high employee turnover. Current studies suggest that EI allows people to validate, understand and work with others regardless of their age to develop better problem solving, collaboration and outcomes.

Understanding EI can help you to remain calm under pressure and give you the ability to resolve conflict effectively. Once you are in touch with yourself, branching out to understand the needs of others is the next step. EI provides great benefits for companies because it leads to more successful hiring, higher levels of productivity and success, greater individual performance and better leaders and managers.

To learn more about emotional intelligence and developing these skills, visit www.WaldenU.edu/EI.

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