Emotionally intelligent employees know how to balance work and life, embrace change easily, are good judges of character and neutralise negative talk in the environment. An insight by YVV Raghava, Hospital Management Consultant and trainer
Hospitals see anxious and scared human beings who walk in and are accompanied by near and dear ones who are equally anxious. Unlike a mall where customers visit in a happy state of mind and want to spend money to enjoy, hospitals are always without exception full of sad and worrisome people who bring in a lot of negative emotions into the environment and leave a highly emotionally charged environment in the hospital. Employees in the hospital are bound to get impacted by the negatively charged emotions and are also bound to suffer. If research is undertaken, people who work in hospitals may report sick more than any other industry or business because of the huge negative energies that permeate the hospital premises. The employees of the hospitals need to be trained extensively in emotional intelligence to break the effect of negative emotions prevalent in the working environment in the hospitals. Very simply defined, emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and regulate one’s own emotions and also understand and manage others’ emotions. Emotional intelligence like an intelligent quotient is measurable.
Unlike IQ, EQ can be improved by training people. Emotional intelligence can be learnt as well as taught. Training employees in emotional intelligence skills will help helps employees to move to the next level, reduce stress, teaches employees how to react to constructive criticism, helps employees conquer their fears, doubts, and insecurities, improve communication skills, enhance social skills and create a positive environment. Emotionally intelligent employees know how to balance work and life, embrace change easily, are good judges of character and neutralise negative talk in the environment. A high EQ in the team helps to build relationships, reduce team stress, defuse conflict and improve job satisfaction.
There are four basic dimensions of
emotional intelligence.
• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness
• Social Management
Self-awareness is the first step of emotional intelligence. It teaches how to identify your emotions and be aware of them, their triggers and their impact. Beyond just recognising your emotions, however, is being aware of the effect of your actions, moods, and emotions on other people. There are many tools and techniques to teach employees how to be self-aware of their own emotions. If employees are self-aware of emotions, conflicts can be avoided. Self-regulation or self-management is the second of the four dimensions of emotional intelligence. It is the ability to control impulsive feelings and behaviours, manage one’s own emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances. Having to handle everyday new situations and new customers, hospital employees need to adapt to change very fast and self-management helps them to handle the situations better.
Social awareness is the third dimension of emotional intelligence self-awareness is looking inward to learn about self and understand, social awareness is looking outward to learn about and appreciate others. Social awareness focuses on recognising and understanding others’ feelings. Strong emotions can make it difficult to think clearly. People say and do things that they later regret when they are emotionally charged. Before reacting, people should stop and think about the emotions of others and then develop better ways of handling the situations. The last dimension is social management which helps to resolve conflict and build better understanding in teams. Social management helps in choosing the correct timing of what to say and when to say it.
Research confirms that having highly emotionally intelligent teams in the workplace is a business advantage. And training has been conclusively shown to improve EI. Emotional intelligence is one of the best-known predictors of job performance. It improves job satisfaction and reduces job burnout. As workplace diversity increases, emotional intelligence as a training tool delivers wonderful results to the productivity of teams in hospitals.
