Employees work for money – this is a universally known and accepted phenomenon. Many employees would not be doing the job they are doing if not for the money. This leads to them performing their duties without putting in their heart and soul. They do the minimum required to complete the job and get the salary at the end of the month. This sounds alright because as long as they are doing their job, the business is also achieving its goals.
But you will also see that regardless of the fact that they are motivated by money, you cannot get the same level of performance every month for the same salary. This is because employees are influenced by emotions.
Therefore what businesses need to realize is that if they want to progress and grow and become successful, they need an actively engaged workforce who does their job happily and willingly. An actively engaged workforce performs to their true potential and can take businesses to new heights through their superior performance. So how can you make your employees like their jobs and perform the work happily for you?
The answer is quite simple; enhance the emotional intelligence of your people. Emotional intelligence is about understanding and managing emotions at the workplace. An emotionally intelligent workforce will effectively manage relationships with:
- Colleagues, superiors and junior staff;
- Customers, business partners, suppliers, vendors;
- Networks and contacts.
How an Emotionally Intelligent Workforce Enhances Business Growth Potential
An emotionally intelligent workforce is:
- Highly motivated thus highly productive;
- Happy and efficient;
- Committed to their work and success of the business;
- More confident thus more effective and efficient;
- More likeable, friendly, mature and professional thus working successfully as leaders and as team members.
A business operates and grows due to efforts of the people working in favor of its success. When these people work in harmony, through management of their emotions, there will be:
- Lesser workplace conflicts
- More openness towards diverse opinions giving room to creativity and innovation
- More openness to technology and change
- Better leaders who understand their workforce
- Better ability amongst workers to receive critical feedback positively.
Develop Emotional Intelligence in Your Workplace
If you also want your people to work with synergy so that your business can grow, follow these four steps:
- Assess the current level of emotional intelligence at your workplace and communicate the results to your people. Prepare them by communicating to them the requirement for enhancing emotional intelligence in your business;
- Train people through formal and informal means and show them how they can increase their own emotional intelligence and practice emotionally intelligent behaviors in the workplace and their personal lives as well;
- Encourage people to practice emotionally intelligent behaviors at the workplace by recognizing their behaviors and rewarding them accordingly;
- Evaluate the progress of your business, transfer the benefits to your employees and show people how being emotionally intelligent has helped the business grow and has also helped their careers.
Remember, an emotionally intelligent workforce is an actively engaged workforce that works to their true potential, thus raising output levels to a stage where the business achieves success and growth.
