The Importance of your EQ (Emotional Intelligence) at Work

Someone once joked, “Daniel Tiger is my three year old’s life coach.” This garners a laugh, until you realizes they’re SPOT ON.

Daniel Tiger, just as his predecessor Mr. Rogers, doesn’t teach about the ABCs, numbers, state capitals or names of planets. No, he’s teaching what to do when your parents bring home a baby sister and you’re really jealous. Or someone messes up your birthday cake and you’re really mad. He teaches social and emotional learning. It’s a beautiful thing and the songs are catchy – and stick with kids. They learn and reference the lesson when it comes up in real life.

It’s very appropriate, and needed in our modern day. Emotional learning. The key being: learning. Learning implies it’s a process and it’s okay if you don’t get it right the first, third, or tenth time, because you’re learning. And emotions are hard! They somehow keep sneaking up on us. After a while, we grow up and enter the world of work.

Suddenly, we’re supposed to have emotional intelligence. Implying we already have the knowledge. Of our emotions. Like the names of them, what causes them, and how to not let them rule us. It’s often said you need more of this “EQ” (Emotional Quotient) than IQ (Intelligence Quotient) in order to succeed at work. Except it never really gets formally taught. We take and receive personality assessments, and those certainly teach us some things about ourselves, usually behaviorally.

But as for becoming “smart” about our “feelings” – this typically doesn’t happen unless someone receives a working knowledge of how emotions work from their counselor. A common talk therapy approach is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; the name says it all – first cognitive, then behavioral. We think things, which makes us feel things, which causes us to act on things. (Or not act. Like procrastinating. An action in itself.)

Emotions can feel chaotic and are known to change quickly – and there’s so many of them! Ahh, the human experience. It’s a messy one. (“Business would be easy, if it weren’t for all the humans.”) Emotions certainly can be messy to deal with, however, they don’t have to be messy to understand. They actually can be quite linear and logical. Learning more about your and others’ emotions will help you be infinitely more impactful at work. You learn how to respond in situations and rule your feelings, rather than them ruling you.

No matter the field you’re in, if you’re dealing with people, having a working understand of true EQ will multiply your effectiveness and impact.

Potential Costs Of Having a Low EQ at Work:

• Your emotions control you, versus you controlling them.
• You can’t stand a teammate. You’re not realizing this situation is blocking opportunities.
• You feel small even thinking about asking for a raise, and know you need to feel more confident, but don’t know how.
• You feel overwhelmed, much of the time. But your boss is evaluating your stress tolerance.
• You feel your productivity and creativity tanks are low, and don’t know how to get the spark back.

Potential Gains In Increasing Your EQ At Work:

• Able to release tension and resistance towards a teammate that annoys you.
• Increase your stress tolerance.
• Make gains in productivity and creativity.
• Feel more secure, confident, abundant, and peace filled.
• Feel and act more generously towards others