Photo by misocrazy

Great article a recent Wall Street Journal, “When the Boss Is a Screamer”.

Given that research shows that managers spend between 25-47% of their time resolving conflicts, screaming may be very tempting. But, according to the article, the practice of yelling has been sublimated to other, more subterranean modalities. Witness an increase in snarky e-mails, avoidance, silence, or subtle forms of sabotage. This means that workplace conflicts can fester unaddressed even longer than when conflict is directly expressed, however unpleasantly.

Sometimes workplace conflicts are exacerbated by stress at home. Colleagues rarely simply leave their current emotional condition in the parking lot along with the car, or in their pocket when they pick up the phone.  So let’s apply some emotional intelligence!

What is emotional intelligence? The capacity to understand emotional information and to reason with emotions. It can be divided into four areas:

• the capacity to accurately perceive emotions
• the capacity to use emotions to facilitate thinking
• the capacity to understand emotional meanings
• the capacity to manage emotions

Sounds extremely beneficial. The problem is that while some organizations provide encouragement to “get emotional intelligence,” and some companies provide training, rarely are simple, sustainable and transparent tools employed.  Employees are asked to “perceive emotions.” If we want to quickly foster emotional intelligence, it may be more practical and immediately useful to first help employees recognize and apply behavioral skills, rather than first addressing capacities. We don’t actually have to first understand emotional meanings in order to communicate and behave more effectively. Communicating more effectively, whether we understand underlying emotions or not, will help us “get emotional intelligence.”