Do you practice good Emotional Intelligence online ?

When it comes to being happy, successful and progressive in the work place emotional intelligence is a critical factor. An MBA is not enough, as you need to have this partiular skillset in your toolkit. Certainly well armed, you can progress and develop better inter- department relationships. Helpguide.org defines emotional intelligence as: Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. Emotional intelligence impacts many different aspects of your daily life, such as the way you behave and the way you interact with others.

The site lists these attributes as core components:

  • Self-awareness
  • Self-management
  • Social awareness
  • Relationship management
Even if you can master face to face emotional relationships, how well does that translate to the online world?  Office texts and emails circulated can be “mis-read,” increasing tension amoung coworkers. We all have seen emails distributed in bold and caps at some point. Author Daniel Goleman, in a linkedin post, describes how you can maintain your “online” Emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence author, Daniel Goleman lectures frequently to business audiences, professional groups and on college campuses. A psychologist who for many years reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times, Dr. Goleman previously was a visiting faculty member at Harvard.

Dr. Goleman’s most recent books are The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights and Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence – Selected Writings. (More Than Sound). In his post, Can we be Emotionally Intelligent Online?, Goleman describes how ‘flames’ – insults, and off colour comments, can turn  legitimate work discussions into directions, where it would be best not to tread.

“Flaming is one of the most social effects and one of the earliest ones to be commented on because it’s much more severe in groups than it is in two person exchanges. One of the antidotes to flaming – especially in work situations – is to contact the instigator personally by email or phone, if possible. Very often people find that you have a much more reasonable conversation. When you take them out of the social part of the conversation where they’re performing in front of an audience, say in a web conference, forum or group email conversation, and address them as an individual, they become much less prone to the kind of name-calling and vituperation.”

According to Goleman, “The problem with communicating on the web, is that it has no channel for the social brain to attend to. Aside from perhaps video chat, you have no emotional signal in real time.” As more workers continue to work remotely and interact more in a virtual workplace it would be wise to pay attention to Golman’s tips.

A recent study at Harvard,showed that customers come back to people they like. 80% of what brings them back is the personality of the person, and 20% is the skill. In emotional intelligence it has been proven that the mood of the leader will determine the mood of the organization.

Your mood really matters at work and in business! This video is a mashup between Simon Banks of VisualFunk http://www.visualfunk.com.au and George Kalaf of gWizz  productions http://www.gWizz.com.au Together they bring ideas to life visually to facilitate communication of key messages, learning and innovation.