EMOTION MANAGEMENT

During my days of employment, I had come across Ms.Ragini Gupta, a smart, conscientious, industrious and caring girl in the marcom dept’ of the company that I worked. In spite of these qualities, she never got invited to parties and get-togethers conducted by her friends and colleagues. When checked, I was told that Ragini had a fiery temper and she was an angry young woman. Nobody wanted deal with her and be with her. Such a caring an industrious girl but got isolated due to her negative emotions!

The other day my wife told me the story of her neighbour Anand Menon, a gifted kid, creative and intelligent. He was such a dream child and every mother wanted him to be her son. But late in life, she found Anand making a living out of repairing electrical appliances in his apartments. What happened, she enquired. She was told that Anand snapped when his father walked out of his house when he was 15.

In my brother’s company there was this brilliant accountant, Ajit Kumar who had an IQ 0f 160+. But whenever promotion came, he was passed over. I asked why. My brother replied that Ajit never cared for others. He is such a selfish fellow that nobody had sympathy for him.

In all these cases, you will notice that the person’s downfall was due to the negative emotions pocessed and expressed by him/her.

What are the negative emotions that are so powerful enough to block the progress of one’s life and career? Fear, anger, rage, jealousy, frustration, sadness, anxiety, depression etc are some of them. These extreme emotions when taken into the head result in spontaneous, irrational decisions and actions that mess up one’s life. Because negative emotions produces negative words and deeds, it dearly affects interpersonal relationship and the social fabric and therefore, it calls for managing negative emotions.

Most of the time, instead of managing the extreme emotions, we try to suppress them.
Suppressed emotions manifest later in life in the form of health challenges such as migraine, asthma, palpitations, BP, ulcer, arthritis, depression, mental aberrations etc. And these are extremely dangerous for one’s health.

Earlier in organizations, in the selection process, intelligence quotient (IQ) was given high consideration. IQ, which is cognitive in nature, is tested through problem solving abilities, logical and analytical skills and is not connected to any social and emotional aspects and therefore do not help individuals in managing people.

David Wechsler, the famous American psychologist, gives the best definition of intelligence. He says intelligence the aggregate capacity of an individual to act purposefully, think rationally and deal effectively with his environment. Not only on IQ (cognitive abilities), Wechsler says that a person must be evaluated based on his/her non-cognitive abilities too.

In the cases of Ragini Gupta, Anand Menon and Ajit Kumar, one could surmise that while IQ is important, what makes one successful with people, group and organizations is the emotional balance that one apply in trying situations. Thus we come to the importance of emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence is defined as a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

How do we manage with our negative emotions?

Before we go into it, we must have emotional self-awareness. This is about recognizing one’s own feelings and seeing how they impact one’s performance. This leads to an accurate self-assessment of recognizing one’s strengths and weaknesses. The assessment will boost one’s self-confidence. Through studies, it was proved that accurate self-assessment is a hallmark of superior performance. Once we are self-aware, we can deal with our emotions.

After being self-aware, we should start understanding the social awareness too. That needs empathy. Empathy makes us understand other’s emotions. This will give us a service orientation to recognize other’s un-stated needs and concerns and the ability to read undercurrents of emotion and political realities of a group.

Once we are self-aware and socially aware, then we can get into the management of the emotions. This is achieved through applying emotional self-control, showing adaptability, having self-initiative, attending to responsibilities, by striving to improve oneself and by displaying trustworthiness to others.

Management of emotions in social domain is all about relationship management. This is done through developing others, communicating, resolving conflicts, practicing team work and collaboration competencies at group level and by showing leadership abilities (motivating, influencing, inspiring etc),

How do we achieve emotional wisdom?

We need to understand that emotions play a major role in our head. This definitely could mess up our words and deeds. So, instead of allowing emotions to go to the head, take it on your body. This can convert emotional feelings to physical sensations on the body that would not impact on the thoughts. How true is the Chinese proverb when it says that you cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair.

To take the impact of emotions on our body, we must have a healthy body lest the body would be affected and that would result in our health going down. It is therefore important to care for one’s body. Physical fitness can reduce the impact of emotions on the body. To acquire emotional wisdom, keeping the body fit is absolutely important.

We should build upon the emotional muscle every day by taking time to focus on emotional experiences. Slowly we should go through the emotions that we feel and by doing so, we must master them. Practicing is the key. It is something similar to swimming. The more you swim and learn, the better the swimmer you are!

We should be accepting of all that we feel. Neither should we suppress our emotions nor, reject it.

By opening your heart to others, you can apply the empathy in social interactions. When you take action, do those things that make you feel useful and relevant in the society.

Forever, create an attitude of gratitude in you. We should be thankful to the world and its inhabitants for making our life worth living.

Applying humour in words and deeds can help increase our emotional wisdom. A person with the highest EQ (emotional quotient) is the one who has the ability to laugh at himself without inhibition and shame.

Examples

US Navy study reveals that most effective leaders were warmer, outgoing, emotionally expressive, dramatic and sociable.

Study in retail segment had found that a store managers’ ability to manage feelings and stress of his sub-ordinates is directly related to net profit, sales per sq ft, sales per employee etc.

A survey of buyers found that apparel sales reps were valued primarily for their empathy. The buyers reported that they wanted reps who could listen and understand what they wanted.

In a research at an insurance major, it was observed that new salesman who were optimists sold 37% more insurance in their first 2 years than did pessimists. When the company hired a special group of individuals who scored high on optimism but failed the normal screening, they outsold the pessimists by 21% in the first year and 57% in the second year.

Research in leadership reveals that almost 90% of success in leadership is attributable to EQ.

Conclusion

The importance of emotional intelligence in people management and situation management is extremely high. Application of EQ had given better turnover and higher profitability to companies. Leaders with high EQ are much more successful than the rest. It is felt that in every field, EQ is two times as important as the cognitive abilities. Based on the cornerstones of empathy and optimism, EQ has come to be identified as the winning intelligence.