Emotional Intelligence - Benefits for Business Professionals

For more than a decade, organizations have been helping their employees improve their Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills. People at all organizational levels - from executives to administrative staff - experience the same emotions even though the challenges, pressures and demands they face at various organizational levels are quite different. People become internally self-managed and capable of making their greatest contributions when they develop their EI skills. And as they work in that zone of peak performance, so does the organization. The examples below detail how the development of EI skills can benefit various business professionals such as sales people, customer service representatives and technical professionals (i.e., analysts, engineers, information technologists, scientists, etc.).

Sales People:

Sales People frequently work with difficult prospects and customers. They often find themselves in adversarial situations over price, features, delivery schedules, etc. These situations can generate anxiety, fear, frustration or even outright anger on the part of both the sales person and the customer. This can lead to a vicious negative emotional cycle where sales decline, sales people are unmotivated, and customers are unsatisfied and leave.

When sales people enhance their EI skills, they become more capable of controlling or managing themselves and thus the situation. They are not as apt to let the customer "push their buttons". They are more able stay focused on the key issues and not "give-away-the-store". Research shows that the more optimistic a sales person is, the higher their volume and sales dollars. Optimism leads to persistence which leads to more sales. Being able to empathize with the customer allows for faster, more effective problem-solving and better communication. Consequently, the strong positive customer relationships that are developed ensure better cooperation and higher sales when problems do arise.

Customer Service Representatives:

Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) deal with angry, frustrated customers continuously throughout their day. Through no fault of their own, they can find themselves being verbally abused. The customer's anger, frustration and rage can cause representatives to become nervous, mad, disgusted, and angry themselves. If the representative does not have a high level of EI skills, the discussion may escalate and require the intervention of the CS Supervisor. Or worse, inadequate skills may cause the company to lose that customer. An upset customer will typically tell 10-15 friends about the poor treatment he or she received.

With enhanced EI skills, CSRs can easily manage their emotional reactiveness to angry customers, maintaining a polite, calm, and sincere attitude and conversation with customers. Loyal customers tell their friends. Higher customer loyalty leads to higher profitability.

Technical Professionals:

On a daily basis, Technical Professionals are required to do more with less faster, better, and cheaper. To complete their projects, they must work long, hard hours. They are challenged to work with many people from different functions, to create and innovate, and do tasks, in many cases, they would like to avoid. These situations can cause technical professionals to be agitated, resentful, anxious, frustrated, and stressed-out much of the day. These negative emotions cause what is known as "emotional hijacking" which is a physiological response in the brain that literally keeps people from thinking clearly. Creativity is blocked, communication is hampered, and more mistakes and errors are made.

Enhancing the Technical Professional's EI skills provides them with what they never were taught in school. They build interpersonal skills that allow them to get other technical colleagues to help them when they need it through learning how to manage their own emotional reactiveness to people and situations. Enhancing EI skills increases the likelihood that projects are completed on schedule, using the best, innovative thinking available.

Results:

Business professionals have achieved some impressive results as a result of attending EI training programs. Participants have reported a range of 20% to 35% increase in personal productivity, 15% to 35% increased teamwork, a 20% to 40% reduction in stress and worry, and similar improvements in management of emotional reactiveness, personal motivation, creativity, work/life balance and more. These increases can translate into positive return on investment for the organization.