Alicia has over 15 years of corporate experience and has been helping professionals, managers and executives identify and develop extraordinary powers they didn’t even know they had, for over 5 years.
To find out more view Alicia's full bio or visit Alicia's website www.keysteps.com.au March 2nd, 2008
Workplaces Are Loaded With Emotions
By Alicia Karwat, KeySteps Pty. Ltd.
Workplaces are loaded with emotions. Therefore employers are looking for workers who are skillful in recognising what is happening emotionally to them and others, and are able to manage these emotions appropriately to the situation.
I read an interesting article recently in Business Review Weekly magazine, Feb 21-27, 2008, by Sarah Neill. It describes how Freehills, a large Australian legal firm, embraces emotional intelligence as a critical skill in the workplace. The article starts with a statement “Legal brilliance may no longer be a golden ticket to partnership in Australia’s law firms”and explains that Freehills “seeks explicitly to foster ‘outstanding’ experiences for staff in the workplace as well as for clients”.
These statements simply say in the legal profession context that although the technical brilliance is necessary it may not be sufficient to progress you career and this is exactly what I was talking about in one of my previous posting “What does Emotional Intelligence have to do with Career Management”.
To achieve its vision, Freehills put almost all its partners through a partner development program including two-day course that “explores the role of emotional intelligence as a complement to intellect in promoting success”.
Freehills recognises that such skills as emotional intelligence, dialogue skills, ability to persuade, interpersonal skills are critical areas for all lawyers. People who seek employment in the firm have to demonstrate the potential to grow in all the critical aspects during the interview process.
There is growing evidence that companies start to realise and embrace EQ as a critical success factor. If you want to progress you career you have to seriously look at yourself, do your self assessment of your EQ skills and ask for feedback how other people perceive you.
Workplaces are loaded with emotions. So where do you think you are, how would you assess yourself in the four categories of EQ? Use the quadrants below to categorise your EQ skills.
| Awareness | Management | |
| Self | In this quadrant assess your ability to recognise your emotions | In this quadrant assess your ability to manage your emotions appropriately to the situation |
| Others | In this quadrant assess your ability to recognise others’ emotions | In this quadrant assess your ability to manage others’ emotions appropriately to the situation |
Think about as many situations as you can for each of the quadrants. Assess how skillful you are in recognising and managing your boss’ emotions. Mastering this skill is useful not only when you negotiate your salary increase. Maybe you would like to share your thoughts with others. We would love to hear from you. Which quadrant is the easiest for you and which one is the most difficult?
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Mar 4, 2008 at 4:20 am
In technical professions, it is very easy to slip into thinking about and executing our technical skills. But, we work with people and we usually work as part of a team. These team skills — emotional intelligence, if you will — is almost more important than the technical skills.
Once past technical competence, the team skills become the most important thing in looking for work or doing your work.