12 Workplace Benefits of Emotional Intelligence Training
Are you looking to improve the atmosphere of your workspace? Free massages and oat-bran muffins will only go so far. To truly make your company a place where workers feel comfortable, you need to improve the soft skill set of your staff.
Often the enhancement of this skill set is referred to as emotional intelligence training or soft skills training. Let’s look at 12 areas where emotional intelligence training can benefit your workspace.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is the ability some people have to understand their emotions and how those emotions come into play when they interact with others. Employees with high emotional intelligence are those who can disagree without being disagreeable.
They are known as a “people person.” People like to be around them because they bring out the best qualities in others.
Someone with high emotional intelligence will be able to listen effectively, communicate more clearly, defuse tense situations, and go the extra mile to make a client feel valued. The best employees, managers, and executives have high emotional intelligence.
The problem? Not everyone is born with high emotional intelligence.
We learn people skills from our parents, friends, teachers, and mentors. But only a tiny fraction of people have a high competency in all areas of emotional intelligence. That’s where training becomes so important.
The 12 Benefits of Emotional Intelligence Training
Here are twelve workplace benefits of emotional intelligence training, also known as soft skills training (like the training we offer here at Habitly).
Enhance Communication
Someone once said that communication is like playing catch with a ball. You can choose to toss the ball gently to your partner, or you can hurl it with all of your might. Too many workplaces are ruined by coworkers hurling words at each other with all their might.
Emotional intelligence training helps people learn how to toss their thoughts and opinions to their partners gently. If you’ve sat through a meeting where the members of different departments spent the entire session accusing the other side of dropping the ball, you realize why training is essential.
Good communicators won’t verbally shut down when opinions differ, but neither will ratchet up the volume and invective. Instead, they take the time to get a grip on their emotions before responding. They learn to reframe questions so that they invite meaningful answers rather than defensive counterarguments.
Deal With Feedback
People who love their jobs and are talented at what they do may have trouble dealing with anything but positive statements about their performance. However, negative feedback is part of the growth process.
Unfortunately, without emotional intelligence training, promising employees with a bright future may not know how to accept criticisms as a way to improve. They may allow the feedback to erode their self-view or their relationship with others.
The result can be either self-sabotage or complacency. The former carpe diem kind of worker may suddenly begin submitting work that's just okay or even less than satisfactory.
Sharpen Social Skills
Each employee comes from a unique background filled with personal experiences that helped shaped them. It’s inevitable that coworkers from polar opposite histories will have trouble navigating through a project where they have to work closely.
For example, when you walk into the conference room, do you quietly take a seat, or do you acknowledge the others in the room? One person could view taking a quick seat as efficient and business-like, while another sees it as rude and disrespectful.
Emotional intelligence training can’t make everyone agree on how to behave in every situation, but it can help employees realize how their behavior may negatively impact those around them. It can then offer ways to mitigate potential points of irritation.
Foster Unity
It’s a cliché that you’re likely to hear at any job interview. Interviewers nearly always brag that employees at their company aren’t just workers. No, not at all. They’re like family.
Getting coworkers to believe that they are part of a family is a lot harder than upper management pretends. But, fortunately, it doesn’t have to be your goal.
More realistically, you want to create an atmosphere of unity. You want a place where, despite differences, everyone is committed to achieving a particular objective.
Emotional intelligence training enables people to see how their disparate backgrounds and opinions can assist each other. In turn, people look forward to coming to the office because they know it’s a space where they will be heard and respected.
Create Happier Customers
Your company may be the best at what it does, but it may have trouble getting new clients and hanging on to the old ones because of how your staff behaves toward them. It's not difficult to adopt the opinion that “we’re right, the client is wrong, and we just have to prove it to him.”
The problem isn’t that the client is wrong. The problem is the way that you intend to go about resolving the conflict.
If you humiliate clients, what’s the likelihood that they’ll want to stay with you? More likely, they’ll want to end the relationship and start fresh with your competitor.
Emotional intelligence training gives your staff the tools it needs to deal with irate, unreasonable, and uninformed clients patiently. This single technique may be enough to convince the decision-makers within your company that emotional intelligence training is time well worth spending.
Reduce Employee Turnover
How often do you have to replace new hires? Each industry differs, but you should know the average length of employment within your niche for each key role. If your hiring practices indicate that you're outside that average, perhaps you should consider emotional intelligence training.
You may think that you’re improving the company by incorporating the changes suggested by employees in their exit interviews. However, that's the point—you have to have too many exit interviews.
And besides, it’s doubtful that you hear even a tiny amount of what you need to hear during those final interviews. Instead, you can use emotional intelligence to create a place where people feel they can grow and develop. You’ll spend more time celebrating your employees’ promotions rather than conducting exit interviews.
Improve Leadership
Project leaders with workplace emotional intelligence are more likely to know how to motivate their teams to succeed. They’ll also know the warning signs to look for that tell them that a coworker feels disconnected from the goal.
Those under their leadership will appreciate having a team captain who can look after their best interest. They’re more likely to work more diligently for someone who appreciates them not only for their work but for who they are as a person.
Learn Responsibility
Unfortunately, many adults recreate their childhoods at work. For example, when something goes wrong with a project, people are quick to point fingers and swear that the problem isn’t their fault.
The reluctance to take responsibility for one’s actions indicates immaturity. It also makes it challenging to work with certain people. These people never take chances because they need someone to take the blame if things go wrong.
Employee emotional intelligence training can help people to see how counterproductive their conduct is. Training can also help them understand how this technique isn’t an effective model for a satisfactory life either at the office or elsewhere.
Identify At-Risk Employees
Do you know how close one of your employees is to experiencing an emotional breakdown? Emotional intelligence training can give you the tools you need to monitor the emotional health of your company.
For example, has their speech, demeanor, grooming changed lately? Have you noticed uncharacteristic errors in their work?
Emotional intelligence training can help you and your employees to spot warning signs in each other. The goal is not to highlight errors in others but to assist coworkers when they may sorely need help.
Push Past Fear
Your staffers’ fears may be holding them back from achieving something truly remarkable. Sometimes, it’s not a matter of eliminating the fear. Instead, the more reasonable goal may be learning how to acknowledge the fear and still do your best work.
De-Escalate
Two strong-willed coworkers may begin a simple debate that escalates until names are called, fists are shaken, and fellow employees are taking cover. What you want is an office full of people who know how to de-escalate a volatile situation.
Telling the combatants to calm down won’t do the trick. But there are some proven techniques that the proper training can give you to keep a hot-tempered confrontation from boiling over.
Consider the Other Side
It’s valuable to have employees who see different sides of an issue. The disparity can help you produce a better product. However, if not handled correctly, the oppositional approach to problem-solving can also create warring factions within your company.
You can reduce the likelihood of an ideological cold war by using emotional intelligence training to help staffers see the point of view of the other side. People who receive training to practice mentally debating within themselves the opposing argument are less likely to attack others who are strongly attached to that argument.
Bring Emotional Intelligence Training to Your Workspace
Habitly works each day with companies just like yours to improve the soft skills of employees and managers. Our courses and episodes teach people to cultivate successful habits and behaviors that will allow them to thrive in the workplace. Contact us today to bring emotional intelligence training to your workspace.
