Here are my takeaway points from the book No Hard Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie Duffy.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize and understand how we and how those around us feel. At the workplace EQ is a better predictor of success at the workplace than IQ. Apart from understanding and recognizing the emotions, emotional fluency is needed at the workplace, which means to productively sense the emotion and know when and how to translate what we feel into a healthy action.
Leaving the emotions at the door when entering the workplace is counterproductive and modern work requires the ability to harness the emotions effectively. We can express our emotions but not so much that we become unprofessional. We need to be our authentic selves, but enough to not appear overly emotional.
Humans are emotional creatures and ignoring our emotions and feelings at work increases the risk of making preventable mistakes, in addition to increasing anxiety and burnout.
There are two major changes over last few years at work:
- Firstly, Interaction with colleagues has increased. The team work, ability to communicate verbally with others and collaboration is highly valued.
- Secondly, people are working more than ever and they define themselves by what they do.
Working with people closely adds conflict, which gives birth to emotions. We are working so much that our lives have become work. That is the reason why we can’t check in feelings at the door and now it has become increasingly important that to be successful we learn how to let emotions into the workplace without letting it run wild and reframe our emotions and use them for our benefit. E.g. reframe envy as a driving force. Reframe anxiety as excitement.
Effectively processing our emotions is a major factor in bringing our best selves at work. Emotions affect multiple aspects of work. Some are as follows:
