Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Emotional intelligence is the ability, competency and the personality trait of an employee to perceive, understand, utilize and manage emotions effectively. Goleman (1995) defined “Emotional intelligence aS the ability through which a person could screen his emotions, other persons’ emotions, differentiate between various emotions and label them and consequently he might use this emotional information to guide his thinking and behavior”. In the similar context, Mayer et al. (2004) defined “Emotional intelligence as a skill which could help a person to accurately perceive, understand, manage and use emotions in facilitating appropriate thoughts and behaviors”. A person also, can handle the dispute properly. This is a powerful skill from which a person can understand one’s own emotions, others’ emotions and causes and consequences of these emotions. Salovey and Mayer (1990) defined EI as “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and action”. In short; EI is a capacity from which a person manages emotion of our self and of others at any conditions. Therefore, emotional intelligence can be understood as the ability to use and understand the feelings and effective management in dynamic social environment.
The term emotional intelligence contains two words that are emotion and intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand and think in a logical way about things; the ability to do this well. Whereas emotion is a multiple thought and indication of feelings and reactions. Emotion is the part of a person’s character that consist of their feelings, as opposed to their thoughts. Emotion can be defined as a strong feeling such as love, fear or anger; the part of a person’s character that consists of feelings. Emotional means connected with people’s feelings. Goleman (1995) also states that emotion is a mental condition that involves biological, psychological, or the inclination to act. Consequently, emotions can be touch to the feelings and movements of specific person. Most employees with high level of emotional intelligence can utilize and regulate their own emotions and they also have social competence to manage others and maintain interpersonal relationship. Those with high level of EI or Emotional quotient (EQ) are generally able to manage their emotions in terms of retaining a positive mental state, a situation that leads to improved job performance. For certain employees, changing work situations can affect their emotions, so they are less able to control their emotions when dealing with colleagues and the community.
The EI Paradigm Evolves
The roots of emotional intelligence were traced by Darwin’s early work on the importance of emotional expression for survival, in the 1900s. Thorndike (1920) used the term social intelligence to describe the skill of understanding and managing other people. Wechsler (1939) referred to both non-intellective and intellective elements of intelligence. It established the effects of on intellectual factors on the intelligent behavior. Gardner’s (1983) frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, included both interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence.
For the first time the term Emotional Intelligence (EI) was used in 1985 from Payne and the same was considered to indicate person’s ability to relate to fear, pain and desire. But as separate concept of EI form general intelligence, for the first time it was introduced from Salovey and Mayer (1990) as a type of social intelligence which covers the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions.
Bar-On (1997) explained that Emotional Intelligence reflects our ability to deal successfully with other people and with our feelings. Richardson (1996) explored some methods for teaching social and emotional competence within a culturally diverse society. That emphasized to assistance targeted group to connect with each other, in order to assist them in developing interpersonal, intrapersonal and emotional intelligences, and they concluding that these aptitudes are vital for individual achievement. Many researchers arguing differently.
Models of Emotional Intelligence
Literatures have shown that the models of emotional intelligence have been categorized into three models known as (1) ability model, (2) mixed model and (3) trait model as different theorists defined emotional intelligence differently. Generally, the existing models have described emotional intelligence as personal intelligence and social intelligence.
Ability model was developed by Salovey and Mayer (1990) and suggested that, there are four different level and components of emotional intelligence including emotional perception, the ability to reasoning, understand and manage emotions. Ability Model of emotional intelligence thought and focus to individual’s ability to progression emotional evidence and use it to management of changing circumstances. This model considers emotional intelligence as an ability that can be initiated, developed and enhanced. The ability EI model could be concluded that, emotionally intelligent person uses their ability to quiet one’s own emotions down in every type of problematic condition in a valuable method. The Trait Model considers emotional intelligence as a personality trait encompassing through behavioral dispositions. The Mixed Model of EI is the combination of both ability and trait model of EI. The mixed model describes emotional intelligence as a collection of skills and human features.
While mixed model of EI was developed by Goleman (1995) and suggested five competencies model of EI at the beginning. That is Self-Awareness, Self-Regulations, Motivation, Empathy and Social Skills. At last Goleman (2001) merged that five competencies into four components of emotional intelligence. They are: (i) Self-awareness: the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact while using gut feelings to guide decisions. (ii) Self-management: involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances. (iii) Social awareness: the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions while comprehending social networks and (iv) Relationship management: the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing conflict. Trait Emotional Intelligence model developed by Petrides and Furnham (2001) and argued that, this is a mixture of emotionally-related self-perceived aptitudes and attitudes.
Regarding the discussion with Indian Context; Three psychological domains developed by Singh (2001) were emotional sensitivity, emotional maturity and emotional competence. Singh (2001) founded his model on the idea that the concept of emotional quotient (EQ) as it is understood in the Indian context differently from the current model of EI established by many authors, which are nearly related with the Western society. Singh argued that the degree of power distance and collectivism in Indian culture varies from that of western society while westerners are cultured to respond emotionally, Singh also contends that Indians are trained to recognize emotions as an intelligent workout.
Needs and Importance of EI
There are various needs and benefits of emotional intelligence in the organization. Workplaces need emotionally intelligent employee who are able to identify, manage, and focus their emotions effectively and deal successfully with the demands of daily life. Goleman (2001) as well as Salovey and Mayer (1997) claimed importance of emotional intelligence as; gain greater self-awareness, strengths, values, goals, purpose; Learn the core skills of healthy EI; Understand to manage emotional reactions; Deal more effectively with difficult people and situations; Learn problem-solving skills; Make smarter decisions; Grow in empathy and the ability; Resolve personal and team conflicts; Enhance team awareness and performance; Discover ways to increase stress tolerance; Build trust and team cohesiveness; Improve interpersonal communication and Increase leadership capacity to achieve the organizational goal and success. Further importance and advantages of emotional intelligence are: to improve relationships, make better empathy skills; act with integrity; help you to get respect from others; to improve career prospects; manage the change more confidently; enjoy the work wholeheartedly; feel confident and have positive attitude; to reduce stress levels; to increase creativity; to learn from mistakes. These variables could be included for the evaluation of employee.
Emotional intelligence (EI) could be enhanced through provision of emotional intelligence training and coaching interventions. Hence, researchers, on the basis of findings, concluded that emotional intelligence is a learnable skill. Therefore, the organizations should consider emotional intelligence as a key success factor in enhancement of employee performance. EI can not only be educated but also improved at any circumstances of human life. Also, empirical studies, self-efficacy theory supports the notion that emotional intelligence can be learnt and enhanced. There are some problems and difficulties regarding less competent leadership, conflict and ineffective management of emotional intelligence which creates the grievances, unstable leadership and organizational failure. EI mostly differs in the nature of individual. EI can play vital role to overcome such problems and help in employee management and enhancement of favorable environment. It may be possible through the enhancement of emotional intelligence which justifies the significance of EI in the organization.
Emotional Intelligence in the Nepalese Context
In Nepal, none of the organization has done any research for evaluation and mapping of emotional intelligence of the employees. As per the academic research; The research study by Dhungana and Kautish (2020) Concluded that there is positive and significant impact of emotional intelligence on organizational commitment and job performance on both private and public sector bank’s employees. Most of the study were focused in health sectors where the level of emotional intelligence is relatively high and concluded that emotional intelligence really matters to gain success. The study of Deupaa, and Singh (2018) concluded that the students with high mean intelligence score were found to be enrolled in science stream, average mean score in management stream and the students with low mean score were enrolled in education stream.
Another research study of Gyawali (2016) identified that there is a significant and positive relationship between the Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Management. The result shows that EI was significant predictor of overall Conflict Management. The result revealed that Conflict Management is pointedly correlated with all five variables of emotional intelligence. Likewise, the highest impact of motivation followed by social skills and self-awareness can be seen as top three components of emotional intelligence over conflict management. Finally, Emotional intelligence is the element that leaders essential to have in command to attain upper enactment in organizations.
Training content and Practices of emotional intelligence are included and providing by Nepal Rastra Bank and Nepal administrative staff college with the aim of improving behavioral aspects of employees for development of competent leadership, conflict management, better performance and effective management. It includes; Management and Development; self-awareness, self-management, relationship management, conflict management, leadership development etc. It is pragmatic that self -management, social -awareness and relationship-management capacity can be improved with training.
Conclusion
Emotional Intelligence education, knowledge and awareness must be expanded as per the changing present circumstances after COVID-19 and need to evaluate the EI of employees from the organizational level in Nepal. Organization should provide the proper training and favorable circumstances; it significantly supports to increased emotional intelligence and better leadership skills that makes proper conflict management. Higher the emotional intelligence (EI) helps in leadership development, effective management and to minimize the conflict and organizational commitment. It is suggested to increase employees’ emotional intelligence and development of transformational leadership. Creating a sense of self- awareness, self -management, social -awareness, and relationship management among the employees are factors that should be considered to increase employee EI.
It is better to include emotional intelligence as a criterion for selection and recruitment of employees and can be utilized for intervention to enhance the level of competencies, organizational success, intelligence leadership development, conflict management and goal achievement in the banking and finance sector. organization must include adequate training programs with regard to the perfection of emotional intelligence in their overall organizational management practices, enhance leadership competencies and conflict management skills. In conclusion, we can say that EI is an emerging important concept of management required for all level of employees in the Nepalese organization.
References
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