Emotion Vs Emotion
By the time Kumar reached office, he was late by 30 minutes and Ezaz was waiting for him. Kumar leads HRD of the organization while Ezaz heads Finance. “One more of my team members has resigned this morning. How am I going to handle the audit now? You could not even fill the vacancy created by the exit of David four months ago.” Angrily asked Ezaz as he entered Kumar’s cabin which is just next to his.
“That’s for you to figure out. That’s precisely what you are being paid for” retorted Kumar, still trying to switch his laptop on. This response really got into the nerves of Ezaz and he yelled “this arrogance of HR department is exactly the root cause of most of the problems here…I am not going to tolerate this anymore” This ensued into a bitter argument between Ezaz and Kumar, including blaming each other’s subordinates and it was audible to their team members sitting outside the cabins.
While they reconciled later and took damage control measures, this incident disturbed the harmony between the two teams. Little did Ezaz know that Kumar had narrowly missed an accident while driving to office. Kumar’s nerves have not yet settled by the time he reached office. Kumar being in fury, in spite of knowing fully well regarding an upcoming audit, could not understand Ezaz’s worries and anger. Handling the audit with one team member completely gone and another half-gone was an uphill task.
Had at least one of them shown awareness of the rising impulses and handled the discussion without anger or had a scheduled and well-prepared discussion at a later time, this could have been avoided. In some similar cases though, the spats are not verbal but transform into silent battles of ego and are not mended for great lengths of time. Quite often, they lead to ‘office politics’. If colleagues can be empathetic to one another, work places would be much better and consequentially more successful. This is just one example depicting the need for a higher state of emotional intelligence at workplace. Emotional intelligence, as the name suggests, is about being intelligent with Emotions. What is intelligence and what is emotion?
Thoughts about Feelings
Intelligence simply put, is the ability to absorb relevant information from various sources, process it and derive meaningful output. Emotion is relatively hard to define and is explained as a feeling or a cluster of feelings and the related psychological and biological states. It relates to instinctive or intuitive feelings as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. There are two processes our brain hosts – thinking and feeling. While thinking dwells on intelligence, feelings relate to emotional triggers in the mind and are derived more from instincts.
Thinking and Feeling are strongly intertwined and the richness of each depends on the strength of the other. If you can really think (or analyse) about the feelings of yours and the others around you, you would be able to understand them well and make appropriate choices. Emotional Intelligence simply is the ability to spot and understand information related to the emotions of self as well as others, think (process the information) and act appropriately for the best possible outcome.
Following are some interesting facts regarding thoughts and emotions:
- Emotions precede thoughts. Our emotional reactions occur first in response to an event, much faster than our thoughts. It almost is like lightning that precedes thunder. In many cases we first develop feeling of like/ dislike towards things or individuals and then think to justify.
- Thoughts seek to reason whereas Emotions stem from instincts or a blend of instincts and are seldom logical.
- Emotions in raw state are far more overpowering and can push us into action even before we consciously understand the event and draw a reasoned conclusion.
- Emotions have physiological repercussions whereas thoughts necessarily need not lead to physiological responses.
Life minus Emotions = Void
Imagine a life without emotions. Throughout our life, we crave for giving and receiving love, affection, admiration and other such emotions that can culminate into happiness. As Humans, we constantly strive to build and sustain happiness in life. We are, but emotional beings. Without emotions, life would be empty…how much ever intelligence one may possess it becomes irrelevant if the ability to feel /experience emotions is missing. Developing intelligence in handling emotions well enriches the fabric of life.
Emotional Intelligence Recipe – Five Ingredients
The five building blocks of emotional intelligence are:
Self-Awareness is knowing what’s happening within oneself. It is about the ability to recognize the feelings within self as they originate and put a name to the feeling. Words are powerful in shaping our thoughts and feelings. Putting a name helps us develop right feeling/thought about the feeling. Self-awareness is the very first step in the path of self-development.
Self-Regulation is the ability to handle feelings so that they are appropriate and not becoming a slave of feelings. It is about the ability to not live in denial.
Internal Motivation is the ability to cultivate the right mindset and emotional state in the journey towards a goal. Being overwhelmed by initial success or getting bogged down by hurdles can derail the journey itself.
Empathy is the ability to identify with or understand the perspectives and motivations of others and to comprehend their emotional state. Individuals, who are good at empathy quickly spot opportunities to make others feel good, understand their motivation hotspots and can use them effectively.
Social Skills/Relationship Management: Skill in managing emotions in others. Not manipulation. These are social stars. They are generally good communicators, interactive and are good at building and managing relationships.
Emotions @ work
Emotions can energize or de-energize thoughts. Say, you believe that doing a particular task would fetch you recognition and reward. The belief results in a feeling of motivation and helps in completing the task better and faster. If you believe (even if it is a wrong notion) that the credit of your achievement would not be given to you or would be stolen by someone else, it would result in a feeling of demotivation and thereby lack of interest in performing the task. In both the cases, the task and ability of the individual is the same. It’s just the feeling of motivation or demotivation which influences the result, irrespective of whether the feeling originated from the right perception or not. An emotionally intelligent manager would be able to identify the feelings and the undercurrents involved and manage people and work in an effective manner and can build happier & highly effective teams.
HRM @ Emotional Intelligence – Cultivating EI
HR Department would expectedly be the custodian of cultivating EI in organizations, in partnership with other business leaders. Some of the ways that can be adopted are:
- Awareness sessions on EI. EI has only gained partial awareness among general public. The very awareness of EI and consciousness of the concept would lead to a certain degree of improvement. It would help if awareness sessions are conducted as a series of interventions rather than as onetime event.
- Building self-awareness – Various tools are available online and with EI experts to measure the EI in each individual. Providing access to such tools is an effective way of building self-awareness. Among other options available are 360 degree feedback exercises regarding EI.
- Visual Displays and Literature can help EI constantly exist in the realm of consciousness of associates and thereby result in improvement. Individual journals may be provided where employees can write their observations regarding their own EI during each day. This helps individuals study themselves, draw patterns in their own behavior, make corrective action plan and implement.
- Recognition to employees who are role models of EI can also be an effective approach. Idolize them so that others emulate them.
Cultivating EI would bring calm to associates’ thinking and can enrich quality of their thoughts. They can be more objective in thinking without being influenced by individual biases. The benefits to both, the individuals and the organization are many and obvious.
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