Emotional intelligence can be traced back to the works of Charles Darwin on the importance of emotional expression for adaptation and survival. The term was first used by Wayne Payne in his doctoral thesis. This field is still new in its development within the psychological field. The term emotional intelligence itself refers to the ability of one to be able to assess and manage their feelings and emotions besides being able to understand other people’s emotions and moods.
This is a potential that comes from within oneself and it helps the individuals to be able to communicate and maintain healthy relationships between themselves. Over the years, different scholars have continuously involved themselves with research within the field. Emotional intelligence is one of the aspects that are highly acknowledged by the human resource departments in organizations today as an important tool for maintaining healthy relationships within the work environment (Poskey, p18).
Building and maintaining relationships within the work environment requires the individuals to be able to identify different emotions expressed on different faces and aspects of work within the working environment. Emotional intelligence within an individual here plays a very important role in helping individuals read different emotions that people may express (Salovey, p17). This on the other hand becomes an important aspect of understanding how different people may react to different situations and this then guides us on how to behave and act when referring different matters to different people. People have different emotions and how one reacts to certain information or situations is different from another person.
Emotional intelligence is therefore important in helping individuals to learn and identify these emotions. With emotional intelligence, individuals are in a position to understand better their physical states their feelings, and also their thoughts. It also becomes very easy for them to accurately identify the emotions in other individuals and be in a position to identify what they are feeling through the expression of their body language and also appearance.
Relationships are very sensitive in an organization since we have different people who all have different thoughts and feelings about various issues. It is therefore important for the individuals to be able to relate different situations with different emotions expressed by individuals in the workplace. Emotional intelligence here plays an important role in helping individuals improve their ability to relate different emotions to different situations.
The ability to relate emotions to other aspects then becomes an important aid in helping individuals understand how emotions occur and what causes them (Lonsdale, p42). This is very important in helping individuals understand each other within the organization through relating their emotions with the occurrences and information received. Emotional intelligence, therefore, promotes reasoning in different situations since individuals require a lot of reasoning to effectively relate emotions (Goleman, p32).
Organizations are comprised of different individuals and their actions, thoughts, and reactions to different situations are different. Conflicts are therefore a possibility that is always within the organizations. How problems are solved between individuals and groups within the organization is a great determinant of whether that organization will succeed in maintaining healthy relationships or not. As an aid to solving problems, emotional intelligence helps individuals to understand the emotions that are similar to each other and those that are parallel to each other. This guides the individuals to know the progress of a solution to a problem within the organization. Individuals within the organizations who uphold emotional intelligence should be able to adequately express their feelings about different situations within the work environment.
This then guides the way individuals within the organizations think about themselves and others. The wisdom of emotional intelligence plays an important role in problem-solving by controlling how individuals react to each other and giving them knowledge of the implications of their actions to other people around them (Salovey, p28).
In conclusion, emotional intelligence is an important aspect of an organization as an aid to building and maintaining sound and healthy relationships between individuals. An organization that upholds emotional intelligence enables the individuals within the work environment to have the ability to accurately express their moods and feelings in a manner that is easily understood by others and also how to react to various situations. It helps the employees to set their priorities of thinking and also to direct their attention to important issues and information. Emotional intelligence becomes an important base for judging how other people feel.
It helps the individuals within the work environment to relate with each other in a more understanding manner. By having emotional intelligence, individuals can be in a position to identify, describe, understand and explain the emotions of other people (Poskey, p23). This is an important aspect of communication between individuals within the organizations as it guides how individuals relate with one another.
Works cited
D Goleman. Importance of Emotional intelligence. New York, Bantum Publications, 2007.
Mike Poskey. The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace. U.S, McGraw hill Publishers, 2006.
Perry Akasha Lonsdale. The Importance of Emotional Intelligence. Da Capo Press, 2004.
P Salovey. Emotional intelligence in organizational behavior. American Psychological Association, 2008.
