Bethel College Emotional Intelligence Creativity vs Conscientiousness Discussion

“Emotional intelligence is more important than cognitive intelligence in influencing an individual’s success.”

• Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Support your perspective.
• Provide an example where emotional intelligence may have led to your success in your position.

Please read both discussion responses to the above question and reply with at least 100 words. Label your responses Discussion 1 & 2.

Discussion 1. (W.A.)

Each day a person goes through several emotions. Emotions are short mental or behavioral periods of a person’s daily life aimed at or stemming from a person or thing (McShane, 2018). These emotions should not run the course of the entire day, a longer period of state of being not really aimed at a certain thing is a mood (McShane, 2018). These emotions could trigger parts of our autonomic nervous system which tell our bodies how to function automatically daily without triggers to do things such as breathing, maintain our heart rate and body temperature. Emotional changes trigger our bodies to change with our autonomic system to the things that stimulate us, like anger or fear trigger faster heart rates and heavier breathing (Levenson, 1992). Cognition which is how we create a mental plan to act or react to situations is the way we make decisions (McShane, 2018). In management, emotional intelligence is an ability to guide emotional waves of you and your team (McShane, 2018). Cognitive thinking and trying to out think your team and not care about their emotions may give you power in your mind but you may have more turnover because everyone wants to be heard and feel as though they are a part of the team and not just on it. As a manager, you should be able to use emotional intelligence that will help more to become a person to the team and not just a non-caring manager. I used emotional intelligence to create a family environment to make people feel good about working with me and not for me. I could ask for more and get more from people.

McShane, S. (2018). M: Organizational Behavior. [Savant Learning Systems]. Retrieved from https://savantlearningsystems.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781260157666/

Levenson, R. W. (1992). Autonomic Nervous Systems Differences among Emotions. Psychological Science (0956-7976), 3(1), 23–27. https://doi-org.bethelu.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00251.x

Discussion 2 (C.R.)

I would have to say that emotional intelligence is more important than cognitive intelligence. In my opinion, with emotional intelligence, as bad as it may sound, you’re able to “manipulate” individuals; once you’ve mastered the process, that is. A person with high emotional intelligence is able to understand, influence and persuade others. For individual success I think it’s best that someone is able to be aware and manage their own emotions, having self-control is very essential to success in the workplace. Awareness and management of others’ emotions are skills that usually a manager/ executive should obtain; so, if one wants to be successful and “move up” in their job then they should practice EI and its benefits for them and other employees. If one wants to be successful in the workplace it is best to be able to “understand the emotions they are experiencing and manage your emotions” (McShane, 2018, p. 86).

Sure, cognitive intelligence is important, but someone who practices this a lot may have an unattractive attitude which reflects from their emotional intelligence. By this I mean that certain individuals are not able to express empathy to certain situations, making them seem cold and heartless. These types of individuals probably have a high cognitive intelligence, which wouldn’t be best for someone in a management position. For an organization to be effective, emotional intelligence is analyzed in the hiring process, especially for employees being hired for leadership positions (“Emotional Intelligence is the ability”, 2020). These companies prefer higher emotionally intelligent managers so that their employees can feel understood and related to.

In a position that I had previously I spoke with customers over the phone, every emotion you could think of, I experienced. For example, when I spoke to an angry customer, I learned that I had to be aware of my own emotions and manage them. If they said something that offended me, I had to realize that they were upset about the situation and not personally at me. I would then of course be aware of the customer’s emotions, letting them know that “I understand your frustration” and show empathy towards them. Because I could do this, I was able to manage the customer’s emotions and change their angry emotion to something else: satisfied, happy, etc. This helped me because I was able to diffuse a lot of situations that could have turned out horribly.

References:

Emotional Intelligence is the ability of a person to understand and respond to one’s own and others’ emotions. (2020). Pulse International, 21(16), 1–23.

McShane, S. (2018). M: Organizational Behavior. [Savant Learning Systems]. Retrieved from https://savantlearningsystems.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781260157666/