3 Easy Ways to Improve Emotional Intelligence and Boost Motivation at Work

Emotions guide the decisions we make in life and in business. It’s part of what it means to be human. This universal truth offers us the key to helping teams work better together: emotional intelligence.

Given the tools for emotional intelligence, your team becomes empowered to effectively channel their emotions, communicate with clarity, and achieve their goals. When your employees grow in their interpersonal abilities, it positively impacts the entire team and organization’s performance, workplace culture, and client satisfaction. Because of these benefits, emotional intelligence has become an increasingly important focus for many forward-thinking workplaces.

What happened to IQ?

A person’s reasoning ability, or intelligence quotient (IQ), was once claimed to be the biggest predictor of success. While it’s still a critical piece that contributes to one’s ability to do a job, studies have shown that emotional intelligence (EQ) is actually more important.

One UC of Berkeley study spanning four decades found that individuals with high EQ were 400% more likely to succeed in their field of work than those with high IQ.

There is no field where you can rise to the top riding solely on your IQ, so how you interact with colleagues and customers will always impact your career. With the right education and resources, it’s possible to help your team members significantly boost their social-emotional skills and boost your team’s collective EQ.

What is EQ?

EQ reflects a person’s interpersonal skills; their ability to recognize and manage emotions, and actively empathize and communicate with others. There are five main components of EQ to focus on:

• Social skills: How effectively you manage relationships.
• Self-awareness: Understanding the impact of your emotions on others.
• Self-regulation: Monitoring your feelings and controlling impulses.
• Motivation: Enjoying what you do and being goal oriented.
• Empathy: Understanding other people’s emotions.

3 Ways to Improve Your Team’s EQ

Growing a high-EQ workforce starts by equipping your team members with the skills they need to effectively communicate, solve problems, defuse conflict, relieve stress, and unite in a common goal. There are several ways to address EQ in your everyday practice.

Focusing on these three will have the greatest impact on your team and a positive ripple effect on the trajectory of your organization:

• Recruitment: Screening candidates during the hiring process for emotional intelligence will allow you to grow your team in a more meaningful way. There are many ways to do this including self-assessments and using interview questions that provide emotional reference.
• Management Style: Change happens from the top down. You can foster EQ by maintaining a positive attitude, identifying non-financial goals to work toward, balancing workloads to help manage stress, and keeping an open line of communication with your team.
• Team-building Activities: Attending interpersonal workshops or partnering with an EQ facilitator will help engage your employees even more.

Resources for Maximizing Impact

Real Colors offers a full suite of research-based tools that are highly effective and easy to implement in your organization. Our professional-centered products are designed to give your team full support in their emotional and interpersonal development.

Our advanced personality instruments and personal color profiles give you and your team powerful insight into each other’s motivations and needs in the workplace. Understanding how your color profiles work together paves the path for collaborating efficiently and effectively.

To fully activate and engage your team, we offer Interpersonal Communication Workshops in a live, interactive format, along with certified facilitator training for anyone interested. Becoming certified gives you unlimited access to a supportive community of fellow facilitators along with exclusive facilitator content to help you bring the full power of Real Colors to your organization with lasting success.

Interested in how Real Colors can help your team? Or are you a facilitator and you want more information on the three-part Real Colors and Emotional Intelligence activities you are already certified to facilitate? Complete our Get Started form to connect with a Real Colors expert.