EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AT WORK: ADVANTAGES AND DEVELOPMENT - JOB - 2025

The emotional intelligence at work is the ability to understand the emotions to perform the tasks of the job position, and understand the emotions of others peers.

It is a fundamental skill for self-performance, for creating a good work environment, developing teams, and for leadership. It allows to regulate the mood, manage conflicts, motivate, train, among other fundamental tasks for all jobs, especially those of leadership and people management.

Why is emotional intelligence so important at work?

These are some of the reasons:

You will have better personal relationships

Improving your emotional intelligence will allow you to interact and communicate more effectively.

Improve leadership skills

If you are a team leader, it is essential to have this competence. With it you will be able to better understand your collaborators, motivate them, improve their commitment or make them work well as a team.

Increase your motivation

Perhaps this is the most important. To work well it is not only necessary to have the right skills, but to have motivation. And with emotional intelligence you can learn to motivate yourself.

Conflict resolution

There are always conflicts between people and therefore also at work. The best thing is that these are based on the task (for example on how to make a report, what day to present it, what to include…) and not on personal relationships (criticizing personal qualities of coworkers).

Self control

Self-control is also one of the most important skills, not just at work, but in life in general.

Developing it will allow you to avoid doing things or saying things that you should not, work better or treat customers better.

Sometimes it is very difficult to bear the most demanding customers. There are always those who are right, although there are also those who complain for no reason, are too demanding or rude.

Having self-control in these situations is important to serve people well, one of the most important aspects of any business.

Control or avoid burnout

Burnout syndrome (emotional exhaustion) is one of the most serious problems today and one of the most common. Anyone who has to serve clients is at risk of suffering it.

It also depends on external situations (rude clients, too much work) although it can be learned to control by improving your self-esteem, learning relaxation techniques, planning your work or creating social support.

Promotions and achievements

With a high emotional intelligence you can increase your motivation, avoid procrastination and improve your ability to focus on goals.

You can also create better work connections and be more resilient. All these skills will help you in possible promotions and in achieving achievements.

How to develop emotional intelligence at work?

Now I'm going to tell you about some ways you can learn it. At first it will be more complicated, although over time you will learn little by little and you will see results.

Giving and receiving constructive feedback / criticism

With the feedback you will know if you are doing your job well if you have to improve it or if you have to change how you do it, especially if you are new to your job.

Without it you have no information, you do not know how to relate, how to work or what your bosses expect of you.

If you are a boss, it is very important that you give it, and if you are an employee it is very important that you receive it properly and that you also give it to your colleagues. The way in which it is given is particularly important and not doing it well can lead to lack of satisfaction, lack of commitment, worsen productivity and ultimately the loss of competitiveness of the company.

How to give it correctly?

• Avoid personal or destructive criticism: destructive criticism is the one that is given in a generalized way and goes directly to the person. Something like: you do everything wrong! in a tone of contempt and loudly.

Logically, this type of criticism is harmful because it can lower the self-esteem of the other person and shows a total lack of emotional intelligence on the part of the person who gives it.

Never, never, never criticize someone's personality or any personal trait. This will only worsen productivity, engagement, and motivation.

• Use feedback and constructive and task-focused criticism: an appropriate criticism or feedback could be: "I would like you to review the report, include more specific information and I would appreciate if you can do it more quickly." In this case, the criticism is not directed at personal characteristics and important feedback is given (it is said that you can do to do better) and it is done in a polite way.
• Give concrete information: feedback should have two objectives - to give information on how to do things better and to reinforce.

It is not the same to say "please, improve the report" than "please, I would like the report to have more specific information on the subject, to be longer, improve the appearance and include the references from where you obtained the information".

The second way is much more complete and that way you will know what to do specifically to improve.

• It reinforces: feedback should not be given only when it is observed that others do things wrong, but when they do them well.

If you see that a coworker is trying hard and you say "you are very good, you did great today", you will reinforce their behavior and they will be more likely to act that way again.

Also, you don't have to wait for others to reinforce you. If they don't, do it to yourself when you've tried hard or gotten good results: "today I've done it great" or I'm the best. "

Work on empathy

People value a job much more in which others respect us. That way, we will be engaged, motivated and less likely to leave the company.

Empathy is basically the competence of putting yourself in the shoes of others. With it, the rest of the behaviors can be guided. If you see someone who does things wrong and you have empathy for him / her, you will tend to want to help him / her and communicate assertively.

To improve it, the best thing is to remember to put yourself in the shoes of others, not simply to tend to judge. Every time you see someone have a hard time, ask yourself what their life will be like and what they must be feeling.

Take advantage of collective intelligence

If there is a good atmosphere in a work team and the members are competent - and have emotional intelligence - better results will be obtained than in one where the environment is bad and personal relationships are conflictive.

The great advantage of teams is that when several people come together, different talents, skills and knowledge are contributed. In this way, a group with greater potential than each individual is formed. "The whole is greater than the parts."

I do not know if the intelligence of the whole group will be greater than that of each individual separately, but the capacity for creation and influence will be greater.

One person may be good at communicating, another leading, another very creative, another knows languages, another is researching. That allows possibilities that would be impossible with just one skill or knowledge.

To maximize the power of the equipment:

-Try to get all individuals to participate: this is done by taking turns speaking and encouraging the most timid people to participate.

-Being clear about the rules: the rules should be forbidden to insult or personal criticism.

-Encourages camaraderie: it can be created by doing free-time activities in which people get to know each other better or by performing dynamics in which people talk more about their personal issues than work.

-Avoid fostering resentment or rivalry.

Improve the work environment

Having a good work environment is essential for workers to feel engaged, motivated and comfortable working.

The factors that influence a good work environment are:

• Leadership: that the boss has an appropriate style, preferably democratic, that is, that he cares that things are done well, but also about people and that he asks for their participation.
• Work groups: that the relationship in the work teams is harmonious.
• Good personal relationships at work.
• Autonomy: that the employee has a certain autonomy to work and does not have to constantly ask for permits or ask what to do.
• Communication: that there is adequate communication between employees and with clients.
• Remuneration: that salaries and other rewards are adequate.
• Training: adequate training is provided when necessary.

Create informal relationships at work

If the relationships at work are not exclusively labor and there are also informal relationships (friendship), productivity can be improved and problems will be solved more efficiently.

The resolution of problems that are not anticipated is especially better in informal work teams. In critical situations - such as a fire, a flood of customers, an accident - it will be very important that the members of the company trust each other. There will be a sense of cohesion that will promote the will to solve the problem.

If there is no cohesion and trust, it is likely that some mistrust each other and that the actions are not carried out together.

To create informal relationships, it is not only the personality of the members of the company that matters - whether they are more or less extroverted - but also the environment or climate, the norms, culture and processes: if there are breaks in which to talk and drink coffee, if it is allowed to speak, if the culture is relaxed, if humor is encouraged…

Embrace diversity

Because diversity is a reality (for example Spain is the most multi-ethnic country in the EU), we must know how we can increase the positive consequences of this phenomenon. Thus, the research affirms that diversity, if it is promoted under certain conditions, increases the information, communication and quality of work teams.

To take advantage of the benefits of diversity, I advise you to read this article, although briefly I leave you several tips:

• Avoid prejudice towards race or ethnicity.
• Control task conflicts and avoid personal ones.
• Use heterogeneous groups for difficult tasks and homogeneous groups for tasks that require easy tasks: heterogeneous groups (with people from different cultures) perform better on tasks that involve creativity and are not urgent Homogeneous groups perform better on simple tasks, with time pressure and monotonous.
• Promote communication: hold meetings or dynamics.
• It promotes a culture of positive attitudes towards differences, in which diversity is valued as an added value.

And what do you think about this competition? Have you put it into practice? What problems do you have at work? I am interested in your opinion. Thank you!