The importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

An older client of mine requested a session with me again this week, this time not because she was struggling with her personal emotional wellbeing, but because there was a major crisis happening in her company.

The client in question is a woman in her mid 40’s, that has her own Marketing agency. Over the last couple of months, the business had been going South due to factors she couldn’t immediately understand. Some of her employees weren’t meeting deadlines, clients were unhappy with results, and the atmosphere with her employees was so bad that she cried almost everyday on her way home, feeling alone, unsupported and on top of that stressed about losing her clients and important business. After talking to her it quickly became clear to me that there must have been something happening on her end that she wasn’t aware of to push her employees away from her, no longer being motivated to provide good work and commit to the company culture.

When I asked her what she thought the problem was, she said ‘it’s just this day and age, people don’t want to work hard anymore and I just can’t stand it. It makes me angry and feel alone.’

We started the session off as I usually do with all my clients, listing out the beliefs that were causing the distress. For her it was:

“I’m not supported”
“I’m alone”
“Nobody likes me”
“I have terrible employees”
“I will lose all my clients”

After writing the beliefs out and looking at them together, critically questioning if they were actually true or just a reflection of how she had been feeling, there was a first glimpse of calm and relief. She understood very quickly that her own feelings of anger and rejection of past experiences were being projected onto her team and her employees. When taking a closer look at how she had been treating her employees from this belief system, she could see that she hadn’t been the most compassionate, motivating and understanding boss. From the point of view of her employees, she could start to slowly see why they had been feeling less motivated, seen or excited to come to work. It opened a first door of transformation and getting back to a place of flow in the team.

We all have subconscious belief systems, things we believe about reality, that are based on past conditioning and past experiences. When we are unaware of our own beliefs and the emotions that come from those beliefs, we end up creating false narratives in the present moment that affect our team, our partners, and our performance.

Having a belief that ‘I’m not capable of fitting in’, coming from a childhood experience of being left out, can create an automatic stress response for a person joining a team and receiving constructive feedback, making the individual act out of stress and create conflict, withdraw, or show up at work unhappy.

Having a belief that ‘I’m not appreciated by my boss’, coming from always having experienced verbal praise by your parents, might influence a person to interpret a lack of communication and praise as ‘noncaring’ or ‘unappreciative’, when the boss potentially has expressed appreciation by having given the person more quiet responsibility.

We all walk around with unconscious belief systems that influence our way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Every company consists of people, and every person consists of beliefs. Making people aware of their own belief systems, but sometimes also of eachothers’ belief systems, can create a major transformation in understanding, compassion, communication, motivation and therefore performance.

Yet still a lot of companies fail to see this reality, continuing to see wellbeing as a fruitbasket or a raise. There’s SO MUCH MORE to working on wellbeing and job satisfaction, to ensure people feeling happy, motivated and fulfilled at work.

Are you a company ready to invest in the emotional wellbeing of your company culture? Contact us for a free intake session (contact info bellow).