Fountain of Justice, Frankfurt, Germany

Let's start by defining intelligence and emotion. The intelligence is understood as the ability to think, understand, reason, assimilate, develop information and use the use of logic, which allows the person to choose the best option among the possibilities that are available to solve a problem. The emotions are psychophysiological reactions that are generated in our body and mind before certain situations or thoughts and that predispose us to behave in a concrete way.

So being emotionally intelligent is having a set of psychological skills that allow us, in a balanced way, to understand and express our emotions and those of others, taking the best solution in front of us.

Someone emotionally intelligent is characterized by being able to self motivate, is tenacious, controls impulses, regulate their moods to be able to coexist with other people either in the family or work environment. Aristotle will call it the ability to "get angry with the right person, in the exact degree, at the right time, with the right purpose and in the right way."

What do you need to be emotionally intelligent at work? Know yourself, learn to manage your emotions, stimulate yourself and do the same with others:

  1. Know yourself. Self-awareness that is the ability of people to know and manage their emotions and recognize their own weaknesses and strengths. It is important to identify what things are causing you stress, joy, anger, etc.
  2. Learn to manage your emotions at work. Self-regulation is the ability to respond in a productive way to what happened, analyze one's own actions and results in order to think of a different and better response for the next time it occurs.
  3. Stimulate yourself. Someone emotionally intelligent motivates him/herself, sees opportunities for growth and is patient and realistic with him/herself.
  4. Do it with others. However, this ability not only has to do with the recognition of our own emotions, but also requires the identification of the emotions of third parties: basically the people with whom we interact on a day-to-day basis and whose relationship depends to a large extent the success of our work. At a more complex level, emotional intelligence can be used to analyze, understand and interpret the emotionality of a market or business segment.

So, some tips to apply emotional intelligence at work:

  1. Learn to understand your emotions at work. Rationality should guide emotions.
  2. If you cannot correct your wrong attitudes towards work, go to the professional help of a psychotherapist.
  3. Remember that achieving a good management of emotions is not easily achieved but involves constant work.
  4. Practice an activity that takes away your stress, whether it's meditation, physical exercise or whatever you like.

Pablo Munoz