Emotional Intelligence For Dummies®

Chapter 10. Succeeding Through Emotional Intelligence

In This Chapter

• Matching your emotional skills to the right job

• Improving your work life with emotional intelligence

• Working more effectively with other people

• Performing well when you work alone

• Exercising influence at work

• Creating a strong team by being a team player

One time, I was about to speak to a large group of human-resource specialists in London, England. Before I began, an older gentleman approached me and asked, "What exactly is it you're going to speak about?"

"Emotions at work," I happily replied.

"Well, you can go right back to America," he stated flatly. "We British don't have emotions at work. We leave them at home. Some of us don't have them at home, either."

Fortunately, times have changed since the mid-1990s, and both workplaces and schools throughout England have widely accepted and implemented emotional intelligence. In the U.K., management consultants and psychologists have carried out a great deal of pioneering research on the importance of emotional intelligence on workplace productivity, sales performance, and management.

Some psychologists and management consultants working in this area in the early years of emotional intelligence being studied at work, including myself, realized that jobs in which you have to deal with other people, such as sales and customer service, require emotional intelligence. But, in those early years, most of us didn't yet appreciate the role of emotional intelligence in technical jobs, ...