Why every member of an organization must have emotional intelligence skills to ensure effective organizational communication

Why every member of an organization must have emotional intelligence skills to ensure effective organizational communication

If you have gone through my recent article on the need for every public relations professional to possess psychological skills, you would know where I am heading towards to in this article. Emotions are part of people and most people are too emotional sometimes that they tend to forget that excess emotions at the workplace are not advisable. You tend to cry at the least provocation, rebuke, and teasing; what would you do when your supervisor or manager rebukes an action you did that cost your organization? Imagine an organization management that has no knowledge about emotional intelligence managing employees without emotional intelligence, one would always feel that they belong there and this is happening at various workplaces today. Employers shouting at employees there and there and a whole lot. Who is to blame?

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This is why every member of an organization needs to have emotional intelligence skills right from the management to the last rank. In organizational communication, emotional intelligence is essential for building strong co-worker relationships and managements-employees relationships, conflict management, and making the working environment conducive to every type of emotion present. In this article, I will take you through why every organization must enrich its members with emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence in the first place is the ability to identify and understand our emotions and that of others which would guide our thought and behavior towards ourselves and others. Emotional intelligence exposes you to diverse emotional traits and this helps you to understand why a manager would act in a certain way or why a co-worker would act in a particular manner towards you. Once you know this, you are said to have guided your thoughts and behavior and that is the essence of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence encompasses five key components and I will discuss them in detail with you.

The first key component of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. If you don’t know yourself, how ready are you to understand and know others to build connections with them in an organization? You have to identify your personal feelings, biases, and flaws so that you do not include them in your communication with others. If you communicate with emotions, it always ends up disrupting the purpose of that communication. Your emotions should not be others' own to bear hence you should be self-aware. Self-awareness helps us to recognize our emotions therefore ensuring that we communicate without being clouded by personal feelings. 

For instance, you know that when people yell at you, you become so emotional because you are not used to it. That is self-awareness and then you tend to understand that you cannot carry your emotions to the workplace hence you try to control that emotion that comes up when you are yelled at by a manager or even a co-worker.

The next key component is self-regulation. Just like I stated in the latter part of the self-awareness example I gave, you must be able to control your emotions once you can identify them. You should learn to remain calm and cool in situations that trigger your emotions. If your weakness is being yelled at, learn to comport yourself in the first place to prevent being yelled at, and if even it comes, learn to prevent your emotions from making you react. You are there to work and nothing else.

The next key component is motivation. When you are always motivated to communicate with others in an organizational context, effective organizational communication never becomes a challenge. Emotional intelligence has a lot of benefits when you learn and learn it well because everyone will be happy at their various organizations with no grudges against anyone. All these conflicts come up because employers and employees lack the emotional intelligence to understand why some people act in a specific manner and why some people should prevent their emotions from leading them to act in a specific manner that would disrupt organizational communication. If the organization’s environment is very okay for everyone, there will always be the motivation to communicate and you all know the essence of effective communication in organizations.

The next key component is empathy. In other words, and literally, putting yourself in others’ shoes. Not everyone would have a good day like you all the time and not everyone can open up to you all the time. At a point in time, some people have their own problems haunting them from home before getting to the workplace and on such occasions, no amount of engagement would make these people give you the feedback you intend to get. This is where you need to put yourself in their shoes and understand that this behavior being exhibited does not happen often and it could be due to a circumstance; with that, you would give such persons the space needed and get back to them later. I am more particularly concerned with management-employee relationships when it comes to empathy. Employers should have empathy for their employees most of the time and this is achievable through getting emotional intelligence skills.

Lastly, social skills. This is a key component that really helps a lot in organizational settings. You need to socialize with your employees as an employer and vice versa. You should be approachable and relate well with everyone in the organization. This would enable everyone to feel free to articulate their thoughts and respond to communications appropriately which is the aim of organizational communication.

When you can acquire emotional intelligence skills, conflict resolution will not be a challenge since it will be done with empathy and understanding of both parties involved. It would also foster team building which is when workers collaborate with each other through social skills. Leaders in organizations would also be able to motivate and support their subjects or employees in their organizations leading to good outcomes.

Emotional intelligence just like psychological skills needed by public relations professionals is key to effective organizational communication. Humans operate organizations and it is important to have emotional intelligence skills to understand each other work in harmony and create a healthy organizational environment.

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