Emotional Intelligence: Nature or Nurture?
EI can also be self-assessed through a variety of different tools (and this is something we do at Accelerator for some of our customer service development programmes), but we always need to be conscious that other people may see us very differently!
How can you best use emotional intelligence to benefit your bottom line?
Integrate an understanding of the emotional domain into the DNA of your organisation. Through this you are more likely to retain existing customers by delivering what they want in the way they want it; and if you are better tuned-in to your customers the organisation is better able to anticipate changing needs and deliver these through new innovations and product/service developments.
What departments, in a business, most benefit from emotional intelligence?
In addition to customer facing roles (internal as well as external) any department where there is a great deal of emphasis on working in teams to deliver an effective end result. Every team is unique and creates its own climate that may encourage or discourage EI – emotionally intelligent people can often be frustrated and less effective if the team climate does not encourage or reward appropriate behaviour. Ideally EI development would be applied from the top down in an organisation – and there are many forward thinking organisations who are investing in the EI development of leaders as well as customer-facing employees.
Can emotional intelligence help with employee retention?
I think the link here is that organisations that take employee engagement seriously are more likely to retain their employees, and engagement implies that employees are emotionally connected to the organisation and its customers.
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Emotional intelligence in employees – nature or nurture?
I think it is clear that some people naturally display more emotionally intelligent behaviours than others, and so it makes sense to recruit and retain people who can do this “naturally”. However, emotionally intelligent customer service behaviours can be developed and trained – I see EI as the way you manage your personality rather than as a fixed part of your personality that you either have or don’t have. For example, Emotional Intelligence tends to increase with age: and although some people would say this is a “natural” process, I would say that through reflective learning and feedback we can choose to develop our EI consciously….and the conscious development of EI is more akin to nurture than nature!
"Managers need to be aware of the emotional domain that may be engaging or disengaging their employees."