Emotional Intelligence ➳ a phrase that’s become one of the latest business buzzwords. Articles and books are popping up about the importance of emotional intelligence and how it may rival your on the job knowledge. Here are three ways to enhance emotional intelligence in the workplace:

Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence with Awareness

First, it’s important to be aware of your own emotions. You must become more self-aware and know how you’re feeling, how to recognize those feelings and how to find a way to appropriately deal with them in the workplace. Not recognizing your feelings and/or repressing them in your day-to-day nine to five can be detrimental to your emotional intelligence and thus make you less focused on the work.

Improve Emotional Intelligence by Asking the Right Questions

Secondly, you must learn to ask the appropriate questions to gauge how others are feeling. Learn how to read the people you work with daily first. Then, learn how to read others that you may do business with less frequently. It’s also important, in today’s working world, to recognize tonal cues that a person may give as much business today is done remotely.

Leverage Empathy & Motivation for Greater Emotional Intelligence

Finally, you must use your heightened emotional intelligence to react to others through both empathy and motivation when appropriate. A nod or conversation that says you understand will be just as helpful as a pick-me-up when used in the right situations. If we all heightened our emotional intelligence levels in the workplace, we could go a long way to improving our businesses from the inside out.

We found another helpful post from the folks at Advanced Systems Inc, with more information on how EQ can improve your business –> Emotional intelligence and the Future of Work.

How is your organization incorporating EQ? We’d love to hear. If we can help you and your team improve relationships, work performance, and hone your emotional intelligence to achieve greater levels of personal and professional success, please contact us.