Ultimately, psychological health and safety in the workplace comes down to the way we treat each other and interact while at work. Building emotional intelligence can provide multiple benefits especially among those whose roles include managing, supporting or leading employees.
Emotional intelligence is described as the ability to manage one's own emotions, as well as the ability to recognize and appropriately respond to the emotional distress of others.
How can organizations improve emotional intelligence?
- Encourage all employees to take the Emotional intelligence self-assessment.
- Ask employees and leaders what time, resources, skills or training they need to improve their emotional intelligence based on their individual results.
- Consider leveraging the evidence-based activities in Building stronger teams to help build leader emotional intelligence and team resilience.
- Monitor outcomes and reassess annually for continual improvement.
- Assess organizational barriers that impact or impede the application of emotional intelligence, like:
- Organizational culture that creates pressure and incivility
- Unreasonable or unclear expectations
- Unfair or inequitable treatment of employees
- Lack of effective training or resources
- Embed emotional intelligence in your leadership training, coaching and mentorship.
More strategies and tips
Human Resources Professional Association (HRPA) hosted a Workplace Mental Health workshop series. An important topic was emotional intelligence in the workplace. The HR professionals were asked how they might support continual improvement in their workplaces. The following strategies were developed from their discussion:
- Benchmark the core competencies related to emotional intelligence as demonstrated by our best leaders. Link these identified competencies to our values and use this information for recruiting, hiring and promotion decisions. Some examples of core competencies could include adaptability, flexibility, collaboration, cultural responsiveness, effective communication, ethical conduct or leadership.
- Use behavioural based questions in interviews that specifically identify emotional intelligence in terms of recognizing and responding appropriately to workplace situations, – especially when interviewing for supervisor or senior management roles .
- Have performance reviews include competency measurements that compares behaviour against corporate values. Helpful information and tools are available in Performance management.
- Ask employees, including bosses, co-workers, and peers to identify times when corporate values were demonstrated by others. Use this information to recognize successes.
- Provide education about the value and impact of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Focus on the business case for senior leadership and the personal gains for all staff. More resources can be found in Emotional intelligence for leaders.
- Support senior leadership to walk the talk of emotionally intelligent interactions. This is intended to set the tone and pave the way for raising the expectations about interactions between and among staff.
- Provide opportunities for self-assessment of emotional intelligence for all staff.
- Post activities, tips and strategies for improving emotional intelligence on the internal website of the organization. See Emotional intelligence for employees for a variety of free resources.
Workshop materials
Emotional intelligence workshop
This workshop helps participants understand their own emotional triggers, explore the functions of emotions, reflect on when behaviours are a symptom of emotions and respond more effectively to the emotions of others.