Developing Emotional Intelligence In The Workplace: A Case Study Analysis

SWOT analysis of personal emotional strengths and weakness

Table 1: SWOT analysis

(Source: Created by author)

From the analysis it can be seen that my strength lies in the fact that I possess a stable mindset which helps me to maintain a positive attitude. This helps me to remain stubborn within the workplace and motivate myself to continue to work on a particular task if not achieved. At the same time I possess leadership skills that can help in encouraging the employees and guide them to understand the working environment in the organisation.

However, there are weaknesses of my skills as well. As seen from the analysis I can be disturbed easily. The disturbance may be caused due to failure of task which in turn distracts me from working on a continuous basis. My inability to focus on a long term basis can be considered as a huge weakness as it often leads to slowing down of the process of work. At the same time, I am impatient as I tend to get my work done quickly without regarding any circumstance.

Keeping in mind my strengths I can say that I have the opportunity to develop into an efficient leader. This can help me to encourage other people within the market to work hard so that organisational objectives can be achieved. I can even gain experience in the field at which I work for success in the future. Therefore, opportunities for improvement can be gained based on my emotional intelligence.

However, the threat that I may encounter is from competitive employees. My weakness can be exposed and my fellow employees can use it to gain success in the business. Frequent changes within the company can be a cause for concern as a rhythm of work can be disrupted due to it. I also have adaptability issues that can be a cause for threat in my professional career. Therefore, I cannot adjust to other departments or other countries.

Table 2: Instances of stress and negative emotional stress

(Source: Created by author)

The first instance of stress occurred during the time of changes in the technical equipments. With advanced system being used all around the world, our organisation had undergone changes in the form of installing updated versions of computers and machines. Hence, I was nervous and my response to it was a state of negative emotional outburst as I had not been trained well about the use and implementations of the equipments. Therefore, this caused problems within the company and I had to take a few days off work to bring back my emotional state into normal.

The second instance occurred during the time of employee turnover. Due to poor financial condition and lack of profitability for the organisation decision was made to cut off a few employees. Therefore, I had feared for my job as competition within the organisation was fierce. This drove me to be emotionally stressed and dissatisfied with the workplace. However, I respondent positively by being present to work each day on time and working hard so that I get to keep my place within the organisation. This particular emotion can be aligned to the strength described earlier.

Identifying instances of stress and negative emotional state at work

The third instance occurred after my team failed to complete a project on time. Due to factors such as sudden changes and lack of profitability, delay in conducting a particular project was made. Therefore, client had asked for refund and this provided a cause for negative emotion as I had previously committed to provide the client with a perfect project. In this regard, I responded by providing my team members with motivational speeches so that they can work hard and continue to work effectively despite failure to meet the deadline set.

After analysing the incidents that led to the state of emotional breakdown and stress, identification of the causes of triggers that led to such stress can be done. One of the causes of the stress is that of fear. As seen from all the three instances, the fear of failure or inability to continue within the workplace led me to react in the situations. The fear of losing my job in all the three instances was the main cause for being stressed within the workplace. At the same time, fear of being a failure at work in terms of limited knowledge and lack of ability to motivate people to perform the work assigned also led to me to being stressed.

The second cause of trigger is that of the inability of my team as well as my ability to lead the members. Another common factor that can be seen from the instances is that I had not been doing my work on time. This had led to the failure of meeting deadlines as well as loss of profit for the company. At the same time, change in technological equipments was inspired due to the lack of profitability and advancement at the workplaces.

Therefore, in order to mitigate the causes I had developed a positive attitude within myself by using my strengths. It has been seen that I can provide motivation to the employees so that they can be emotionally fit and at the same time ensure that any changes that take place are respondent in a positive manner. This can help in the development of my future prospect and react naturally to the work done.

According to Gilbert et al. (2017), work place behaviours need to be ethical as well as comply with the norms set out by the managers. However, emotional management is another aspect that needs to be considered while trying to maintain a successful profession. This can help in maintaining a motivation factor within other employees at work. In my case, my ability to think positively even at tough situations can be used to provide guidance to the employees. This can help to become emotionally stable and at the same time ensure that I can motivate the employees to gain my expertise of work.

For example, I can model my work behaviour by remaining calm in tough situations. Usually I would panic and take in excess stress for dealing with the situation. However, in front of my juniors it is necessary that I show a sense of calm and plan ways to develop my emotional state in a more positive manner. I can address a situation, for example, the situation in which project deadline was missed, by ensuring that I motivate the employees while pointing out the reasons for the failure of the project. Therefore, actions can be taken to improve my emotional intelligence at the work place.

In order to improve my emotional intelligence I need to take actions that can help in addressing the situation and at the same time recommend ways to improve on the abilities of the employees at the workplace. Thereby an action plan can be developed that can help in identifying the situations that require proper planning for improving the emotional intelligence.

Table 3: Action plan

(Source: Created by author)

References

Gilbert, D., McKee, A., Spreitzer, G. and Amabile, T., 2017. Happiness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series). Harvard Business Press.

Joseph, D.L., Jin, J., Newman, D.A. and O’boyle, E.H., 2015. Why does self-reported emotional intelligence predict job performance? A meta-analytic investigation of mixed EI. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(2), p.298.

Nikolaou, I. and Tsaousis, I., 2015. Emotional Intelligence in the work place: Exploring its effects on occupational stress and organizational commitment, the international of organizational analysis Vol. 10.

van der Linden,

D., Pekaar, K.A., Bakker, A.B., Schermer, J.A., Vernon, P.A., Dunkel, C.S. and Petrides, K.V., 2017. Overlap between the general factor of personality and emotional intelligence: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 143(1), p.36.

Van Deursen, A.J., Bolle, C.L., Hegner, S.M. and Kommers, P.A., 2015. Modeling habitual and addictive workplace: The role of emotional intelligence, social stress, self-regulation, age, and gender. Computers in human behavior, 45, pp.411-420.