Emotional Intelligence

You may think you're a good listener, but how often do you really listen before reacting? How long does it take until you jump in with a quick solution or retort?

When people are hit with a tragic loss, don't believe for a moment that they're leaving their personal lives at the door. Debilitating diseases, divorce or the death of a loved-one are among the most stressful events anyone can experience.

Workplaces are like the weather. They have emotional temperatures. There can be a positive high energy current circulating or a misty gloom. So for bosses, it is particularly important to be a beacon of positive emotions.

The challenge for many of us at work is simply this: how to be a business person and a human being at the same time. How to compete yet cooperate, be hard-nosed yet ethical, be professional yet personal, make a profit yet not be greedy. You get the picture.

Male managers who are perceived as unkind and insensitive are not considered to be worse bosses as a result. But woe betide a woman who displays the same behaviour.

Emotional, rather than cognitive intelligence could well be the key to a successful career. But new research suggests that stress can seriously damage emotional intelligence and with it, workplace effectiveness.

Let's be blunt here. When your employer encourages you to formulate a personal development plan, they're not doing so out of some new-found concern for your welfare. So why not spend a half-hour really thinking about your future?

Every office has one. But does every office need one? Egos aren't intrinsically bad. Used appropriately, they can be highly productive. But when they reside in individuals or organisations that lack awareness of their impact they can wreak personal and corporate havoc.

People who are emotionally ambivalent – simultaneously feeling positive and negative emotions – tend to be more creative in the workplace than those who feel just happy or sad, or lack emotion at all.

Chronic complainers can be a drain on workplace morale and productivity. It's perfectly reasonable to have a complaint, but how you choose to handle it determines whether you're a workplace professional, or a professional complainer.

Have you noticed that people who believe that they can do something tend to succeed, and those who believe they can't, tend to fail? Whether you realize it or not, you hold many beliefs about your working life. Some of these will have served you well. But others have been holding you back.

Unlike their thin-skinned CEOs, middle managers are the toughest-minded group in the workforce and most able to handle criticism, a new U.S. study has suggested.

By itself, instinct can be incredible. It's what sparks our imagination, enables our creativity, and takes us to new heights. But although instinct can be a powerful ally (just ask Yoda), sometimes it can be dangerously deceptive (just ask Anakin Skywalker).

Focusing only on your rights doesn't make you assertive, just selfish and aggressive. Assertiveness is a balance of standing up for our your desires along with a genuine understanding of the other person's point of view.

What's most important for business leaders: traditional leadership skills or emotional intelligence? The answer, acording to new research, may be both.

When you find yourself in hot water, what kind of effect do you have on the environment? Do you become bitter and turn your surroundings bitter as well? Or are you soothing, with a corresponding ripple effect on those around you?

Until we redefine empathy as a skill rather than a personality trait, we will not succeed in engaging managers in the vital task of treating employees with care and respect.

You may be an outstanding manager, but that doesn't guarantee you can make it at the top. Making the move to an executive position needs careful preparation and an honest look at your skills and leadership style.

In the second part of his interview with The Courage Expert Sandra Ford Walston, René Da Costa discusses wheree to find our courage supplies, whether courage be taught and the impact of courage by today's women on the next generation.

In the first of a two-part interview, we talk to Sandra Ford Walston, author of Courage: The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman. She is currently writing her second book, Courage goes to Work which provides insights on the merit of courage at work.

It's sad, really. After so much research on the benefits of Emotional Intelligence, too many managers and leaders continue to ignore the facts. They're stuck in their old patterns of intimidation and coercion, demoralizing employees and creating attitudes of grudging compliance.

After three decades of work I've observed a serious disease that affects the workplace. I have termed this condition Adult Syndrome, because it affects almost every person who reaches adulthood.

Self-confidence can make or break a job or career search. With it, you trust your own abilities and have a general sense of control in your life. Without it, you're frustrated and stuck – until you learn that having – and keeping it – is really within your own control.

Too often, people who think they're acting assertively are really acting aggressively. The mistake is often accidental, but but a huge gap differentiates the two behaviors and a mix-up can bring unintended consequences.

Professional transitions come in many flavours – downsizing, promotion, career change – but underneath it all, the same dynamics are at work.

Getting laid off is becoming a more painful for many American executives as employers ease back on the amount of severance pay they award departing employees.

As we learn communication during our school years we experience many speech classes and writing classes. But how many have ever taken a class on listening?

Here in London we have had a lot of shocks over the last few weeks and we don't know if it is over. Many of us are trying to return to normal, but how can we start to concentrate on work and living again?

Food for thought from Harvard Business School professor D. Quinn Mills as he explains that the American and Asian leadership styles, while very different, also share important similarities.

The liberalisation of thought and the equality of culture has led to a greater appreciation of the potential which lies within us all. So why is it that both expression and choice are still so poorly represented in the business arena by the bulk of those who work there?

How many assumptions do you think you make in an average day? One, twenty, a hundred? How many do you think are useful? How many do you think might have prevented you from achieving better things?

ABC Australia's 'Catalyst' programme carried an item last week looking at corporate psychopaths and the damge they can inflict on colleagues and their companies.

Leadership skills are not necessarily things we are born with. Indeed according to research carried out over a 25 year period, individuals can transform their leadership capabilities as adults.

Kowtowing to bullies is both morally and pragmatically wrong, as the pitiful decisions made by "kiss up, kick down" managers keep proving again, and again, and again.

Australian psychotherapist Glyn Brokensha has come up with the term "power-pathic" to describe manipulating managers who are bent on attaining power for its own sake.

Some people are never taught how to make good choices. Either they are directed to make choices that others want them to make, or they are forced to make instinctive choices in the face of weak or absent significant relationships.

Managers who try to regulate what kinds of emotions employees are allowed to express at work are pushing their workers to the edge, according to a new study.

They come in all shapes and size, all age ranges and professions. They often hold positions of authority, and more often than not they’re not liked much by others. Who are they? They’re the know-it-alls.

We often see people getting mad at work, and the ripple-effects are never very good. Anger as a reaction to bad news is a common scene, and anger as an intimidator is often used to get results.

The colleague who bounced up to your desk today with an annoyingly cheery ‘good morning’ may in fact be miserable inside, a report has suggested.

Employers need not fear office politics as something wholly destructive - and clever managers may even be able to turn it around to their advantage.

Self-awareness is vital to good leadership, and as we should all know by now, good leadership is critical to successfully guiding a company though the seas of change.

What a fabulous idea. ImproveNow.com is an online service that anonymously lets employees carry out a performance review of their boss.

Isn’t a shame that everyone covers their behind as soon as something goes wrong? Even worse, isn’t it bizarre how some people just feel better if someone else gets the axe?

Kissing a client rather than shaking their hand or giving them a bear hug in a misplaced display of enthusiasm are just some of the greeting mistakes, highlighted by new research, that can seriously undermine business relationships.

Our society has become obsessed with assigning a numerical value to everything. But in the business realm, effectiveness can often be the result of factors beyond that which can be measured.

Since most people would rather have fulfillment than frustration, consider your work. Are you working in the area of your calling? Are you doing what brings fulfillment? If not, you can consider your options and make a change.

An ability to take your job seriously and yourself lightly goes a long way in the battle against stress.

Despite soaring levels of work-related stress, the UK's managers would rather talk to anyone other than their families and friends about that their problems at work.

More than eight out of ten women in senior management positions believe that men are uncomfortable working with them and that too little is invested in training men how to work more effectively with female colleagues.

At AstraZeneca U.S., the North American arm of London-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca plc, leaders are getting together to listen to poetry, write personal journals and engage in quiet reflection.

When fun and work are successfully integrated, case studies show that both the process and the resultant product are improved. workindex.com | The Case for Integrating Fun with Work

Researchers have found the secret of "power couples". Our choice of partners is partly determined by an assessment of how economically successful they are likely to be, they say.

Employees in North America have intense emotions about their work, says new research. And at the moment, these emotions are ones of alienation, anger and disconnection.

Communicating is one of the leadership skills for the 21st century and how well you do it will affect your success. Communicating well brings clarity, builds confidence, and develops trust and commitment. Done poorly, or not at all, it confuses, demotivates and disillusions.

The enormous capacity women have for chatter is one of the most difficult concepts for most men to understand, according to human relations and body language guru, Allan Pease.

The next time you go for a job interview or have a performance appraisal with your boss, it would pay to be aware of the non-verbal signals you’re sending out.