Emotional Intelligence For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Creating an Emotionally Intelligent Workplace

In This Chapter

• Figuring out what makes a workplace emotionally intelligent

• Determining your workplace's emotional intelligence

• Balancing your work and your life

• Making sure that your work team is emotionally intelligent

• Giving your workplace an emotional-intelligence makeover

CEOs frequently ask me, "How do I motivate my staff?" If only they could find the magic carrot that takes care of everything. Unfortunately, life isn't quite that easy.

Having an emotionally intelligent workplace takes a lot of thought, planning, and attention. It also requires constant monitoring and adjustment. Workplaces today are places of change. Emotionally intelligent organizations have an advantage when it comes to managing change.

One of the benefits of a winning organization is that it attracts the best people. I'm sometimes amazed when a CEO tells me how difficult he finds recruiting good people, whether in sales, marketing, programming, financial management, or operations. Then, another CEO in the same geographic region tells me that she can't believe how many great applicants she has to turn away — in sales, marketing, programming, financial management, and operations. These two companies aren't that far away from each other geographically — but they're hundreds of miles apart in organizational culture and effectiveness.

In this chapter, I define and describe what makes an emotionally intelligent organization. Regardless of whether you're in a position ...