Future Proof
How emotionally
intelligent is
your business?
Understanding the minds and emotions of your people is the advantage
of an emotionally intelligent organisation, says Alain de Botton.
B
usiness leaders – who are still
extremely focused on hard skills –
do not appreciate that the emotional
side of life costs a lot of money when
it goes wrong. We’re strange robots that misfire
in particular emotional areas and not enough
allowance is made for this.
As low-level tasks are taken over by machines,
most work is now dependent on a sound
emotional frame of mind which wasn’t the case
in the days of hard physical labour. Nowadays,
the emotional and temperamental mood is of
high economic importance.
If you want to make money, you’re going
to have to be interested in making people
feel better.
Connecting business
with human need
An emotionally intelligent (EQ) organisation
has a richer sense of what human beings are. EQ
means nothing more than intelligence around
our emotional functioning.
Our anxiety levels and capacity for empathy
are present within our emotional functioning. To
be intelligent about these things simply means
being on top of them. An EQ organisation doesn’t
just think a human being is a machine that
arrives at the office at 9am and leaves at 6pm.
It realises people have tricky emotional needs;
they need to feel rewarded, to have a sense of
importance among those around them. If
you’re taking up 15 years of someone’s life, that’s
a major commitment.
When you’re managing someone else’s career,
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remember it’s the most important thing in their life.
Treat it with the seriousness it demands. Don’t
assume you know everything about their career,
take time to listen. And never underestimate what
you can do to unleash new energy.
Pay attention to people
Alain de
Botton
Author and
Philosopher
Alain is an author
of essayistic books
that have been
described as
“philosophy
of everyday life”,
covering love,
travel,
architecture
and literature.
alaindebotton.com
Lavish attention on your talent. We all want to be
heard, to have our anxieties unpicked – it’s a kind
of corporate love.
Examine your organisation’s weak points and put
in place cultural and practical measures; some will
be micro, such as what happens in a review meeting.
Leadership is hugely psychological; we need trained
psychologists to deal with the trickier material in
the workplace.
Attracting top talent is offering purpose,
the sense that you are giving up your life for
something important. If you’re in a sector that can
communicate that, pump it out to the maximum.
Salary is important, but time is more important.
It’s about sensitivity to the cost of putting
pressure on someone. It’s like driving a machine in
the wrong gear, it may not break immediately, but
it’s not a good idea. We still think people cannot get
the best out of others unless they are terrified.
Acknowledge imperfection
A great interview question to ask is “in what ways
are you hard to work with?”. It’s so informative
because we want recruits who have a handle on
the way in which they are emotionally imperfect.
Someone who is able to identify and work on an
issue they have suggests they are able to learn and
grow, both professionally and emotionally.