Why is emotional intelligence important?

Emotion is a natural state of mind that derives from one’s circumstances, mood, and our association with others. The fundamentals of our reactions, responses, behavior, and actions are based on the emotional information that we found in our environment. Emotional intelligence is the skill and ability to recognize that emotional information and use it to help us make decisions, relate to others, and communicate with others. Emotional intelligence also helps us to be more aware of our surroundings, manage and avoid conflicts, manage stress, and understand others effectively. In leadership, emotional intelligence means stronger influence, successful teams, and building stronger coaching and mentoring abilities, while helping our constituents to adapt, have a positive outlook, be flexible, and have a stronger sense of responsibility to themselves, and their commitment to the organization.

Iberkis Faltas, PhD, (ABD)
Public Policy & Administration
Management & Leadership | Law & Policy
Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach

Self-Awareness: A Need To Know for Managers and Leaders

In the field of public service, justice advocacy, integrity, morale, and a well-balanced temperament are essentialism to manage and leading others. In current societies, where multiculturalism is the core of our civilization, every public administrator has the undeniable and indisputable responsibility to encourage, empower, and sustain a bias-free organizational environment.

In contemporary professionalism, management and leadership responsibilities seem to be used interchangeably in scope and frameworks. However, I must mention that there is an underlying difference between management and leadership. Leadership is the action of leading, motivating, empowering, engaging, guiding, directing, and influencing people. And while management could overlap with leadership from the framework of opportunity, choices, and applicability within the responsibilities of both, managers perhaps could be a tenth more focused on the operational processing of regulating, monitoring, and governing the organization as a whole.

Managers have the responsible of making decisions about the organization’s operational executions. They are responsible for the achievement of organizational excellence, and the accomplishment of short and long terms goals. Management has the responsibility to ensure that every decision is relevant to the organization’s well-being.

Leaders have the responsibility of ensuring that management decisions are not negatively affecting their team. Leaders are responsible for motivating and empowering their team working in coordination and collaboration toward the same short and long term goal. Management establishes operational procedures and the leader ensure the team works within the pathways and boundaries of it.   

I guess the question here is how important do you think the emotional balance of a person in a position of power—management or leadership—is for the well-being of the organization and its people? The answer is clear: It is fundamentally and primarily important.

It is correspondingly essential for managers and leaders to be self-aware of their emotional competencies and the way that those emotional competencies influences their decisions. Managers and leaders must know that self-awareness help them to recognize their own emotional responses to other. It is not the same to solve a conflict based on facts than solve a conflict based on facts that have been influenced by an unawareness of one’s and others’ emotions. Managers and must understand that their lack of emotional awareness has an effect not only on themselves but also in the way that they perceive and process the information in their surroundings.  The lack of self-awareness affect their decisions, and it has an overpowering impact in the way that they process thoughts and behave.

For managers and leaders, it is not only essentially important to be aware of their emotional intelligence competencies. They also need to learn how to recognize the “what’s” and “why’s” of the problems, because of the impact that emotional intelligence competencies have in the way they communicate and interact with others.

Emotional self-awareness in the workplace influences the way that managers and leadership process policies, build relationships in the workplace, perform, and communicate with their team. It is that emotional awareness that allows individuals to step back when they recognize that they are about to make a decision based on an Amygdala-highjack (the Amygdala is the part of the brain limbic system responsible for survival instincts, emotions, and memory).

With that being said, I would like to share some of the skills and abilities that have been proven to be indispensably important skills for managers and leaders across the board. Leaders and managers must have a constantly and consistently well-balanced emotionally intelligent personality. The ability to make bias-free judgments, and the skills to positively influence the organization and its people.

Here are some recommendations: Perception, decision-making, and transformational abilities.

Perception: Manager and leaders must have the bias-free ability to sense, see, hear, recognize, and grasp the understanding and comprehension of their environment without being judgmental of first impression or actions. Everyone in an organization has the right and justice of a due process, a fair and impartial treatment that can be applicable not only to the judicial system but also to our organizational settings. In emotional intelligence theories, perception influences the manager ability to solve problems and to be realistic about their environment. It also influences managers’ emotional expressions, their stress tolerance, the way they regard themselves, and their optimism. All of which may also influence the manger’s actions and decisions. 

Decision-making: Managers and leaders must understand that making the wrong decision can impair a person’s professional career, hence, their personal life and the life of others. While managers are not in a position that requires being influenced by an individual’s personal problems, the reality is that personal problems can influence the individual’s performance in the workplace. Therefore, while it might not be important, in contemporary society and professionalism, the way a person manage with their personal problems should be taken into consideration when making a decision, in the workplace.  Managers must be able to make decisions based only on the truth, certainty, actuality, and veracity of the facts. It has been scientifically proven that decision-making in the workplace could be influenced by the individual state of being and their emotional balance. The truth is that managers’ emotions in the workplace could influence their skills and abilities to be flexible, solve problems, manage conflicts, and be assertive about the reality of their environment.

Transformational abilities:

In leadership, transformational leadership is the ability to influence positive social changes in their followers, while influencing them to change strategies and frameworks, redirecting their motivations to achieve their professional goals. Well, a transformational manager should be one who identifies and influences positive organizational changes in an organization. Transformational managers must promote organizational justice, equal development opportunities, equal respect for everyone one working within the organization regardless of their title, and a well-balanced organizational policy framework.

To archive organizational excellence, managers and leaders must be equally influenced and equally sensitive to their commitment to the organization and their commitment to their constituents.

Iberkis Faltas, PhD., (ABD)

Reference:

Bar On, R. (2012). The impact of emotional intelligence on health and wellbeing. Emotional intelligence – New perspectives and applications, pp 30-50. Accessed from http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/27238.pdf

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership. Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.

CEIPD Solutions: The Effect of Gender Wage Inequality on Women’s Em...

The Effect of Gender Wage Inequality on Women’s Em...: In the United States and around the world, gender wage inequality (GWI) is a timeless issue untouched by modernism, contemporary governanc...

The Effect of Gender Wage Inequality on Women’s Empowerment in the Workplace

In the United States and around the world, gender wage inequality (GWI) is a timeless issue untouched by modernism, contemporary governance, policymakers or social equality affairs. In fact, some companies still require their employees to sign a contract agreements agreeing not to disclose salaries to prevent legal confrontations, internal hurdles or despotism against unhappy employees. However, those contracts might be hiding a more significant pressing social problem.
Analysis of academic research, professional reviews and official state agencies reporting confirmed that GWI is a problem as congruent now as it was decades ago.
In January 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the median weekly earning between men and women was 83 percent, with males earning an average of $871 a week while women earn $719.

In the U.S. the BLS reported that 38 percent of women are college graduate versus 34.6 percent of men, and 57 percent of the workforce population is women. According to Meghan Casserly, a member of the Forbes Entrepreneurs Team, women are making $377 less each week than their male counterparts. That is an average salary difference of $19, 604 a year.
In her article, “The Real Origins of the Gender Pay Gap—And How We Can Turn It Around,” Casserly noted that yearly, women’s first paychecks will be roughly $7,000 less than their male classmates. She further explains that in the private sector, the average male’s pay scale was $1,328 per week while women with the same professional, educational, experience and capacity earn only $951.

An analysis of the latest BLS report on gender wage based on professional fields offers additional insight. For example, in the financial sector, women are paid as low as a 54.2 percent of men’s salaries. In the legal sector, women are paid 56.7 percent of men’s salary.
While academic programs in the U.S. do not separate groundworks and achievements by gender, unfortunately, statistics shows the median earnings between men and women have a considerable difference furiously relinquishing on social equality and opportunities.

Cause and Effect of Gender Wage Inequality

The GWI issue is not only affecting women financially but also their leadership empowerment opportunities. In the financial sector, only 18.3 percent of women hold board directors or relevant positions at their workplace. Heather Landy, the editor-in-chief of American Banker Magazine, wrote that 100 U.S. banks hold assets calculated in more than $10 billion. However, only five of those banking organizations have females in positions of chief executive officers (CEO). Also, in the field of technology, only 9 percent of women hold senior manager positions, while in politics only 10 percent of women hold governorships.
Landy also explained how a recent strategic study conducted on CEOs from 2,500 of the world’s largest companies found that in the past decade, 38 percent of personnel fired from their positions were women versus 27 percent of men.

Timeless social problem

In 1999, the BLS published a report based on ethnic demographic earnings indicating. This report showed the weekly earning wage of white men was $615 while white women earned $468. Black men earned $468 while Black women earned $400. Hispanic men earned $390 while Hispanic women earned $337. The report also showed the GWI, men versus women ratio, was an astonishing 76 percent regardless of ethnicities, race, nationality, origin or culture.

The GWI and pay inequality is a problem affecting societies since the Paleolithic era. The problem surpassed the development of the Old World diving into the 21st century without significant changes.
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was one of the first documents to acknowledge GWI officially around the world. The UDHR advocates equal pledge of dignity and human’s rights as common standards of achievements. The UDHR also pledged equal autonomy for developments and favorable remunerations regardless of the gender. In fact, the UDHR states, “Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.”
Still, in 2016 social advancements, academic development and contemporary modernism do not seem to influence GWI changes. The GWI is a social problem intimately associated with a lack of democratic governance, diminishing social equality and promoting social imbalance.

Cognitive of a Social Problem

The literature suggested the GWI problem is obstructing organizations from empowering leadership strategies and guidance toward women development at the workplace. The literature also indicated that issues such as gender-discrimination, gender bullying and the lack of recognition of women’s performance are significantly reducing equal opportunities governances for women at their workplace. Studies showed that women and men are equally capable of performance and responsibility; therefore, organizations must treat and respect them equally.
The United Nations and the organization Women’s Empowerment Principles recommended several areas of development essential to empower women equality at the workplace:

• Leadership that promotes gender equality, equal opportunity and nondiscriminatory programs.
• Safety, health, violence freedom, training and education.
• Marketing practices, enterprise women development and community and leadership engagement.
• Transparency measurement reporting evaluation strategies toward women development.

Iberkis Faltas, Ph>D., (ABD)

http://patimes.org/effect-gender-wage-inequality-womens-empowerment-workplace/

Leadership is not about winning the pack

It seems to be a highly shaming misunderstanding on what, who, where, when, and why leaders must be responsible, thoughtful, considerate, and an accountable for their actions. Simple, leaders must be accountable, considerable, unselfish, caring, and bias free, who makes decisions in facts, and not opinions. They know how to speak and express themselves because they speak from the heart.

What might be a magnanimous confusion on the characteristics of leaders or what leaders should be, the basic literature indicates that leaders should never lead by fear, or enhance disappointments, or give their backs to the one’s in needs, or misuse their power and glory to feed their own narcissistic, egocentric, conceited-ego, overlooking the much-needed help offer by highly scholarly intellectual others surrounding them. That is a threat to a democratic environment and people’s rights.

Leaders who are conscious, thoughtful, cautious, and vigilant, who care for everyone, and not just the group surrounding them takes responsibility for their actions. No one has to explain, justify, or rationalize their behavior. Leaders do not seek someone else to blame for their actions; they take responsibility. Leaders are born to help others and those around them. They protect others and lead finding solutions. Great leaders are humble, think about others, are responsible for their actions, and are emotionally intelligent.

Being a leader to for the purpose of feeding one’s ego is as toxic and addictive as consuming the worst of the drugs. Being a leader “just because” some sort of mighty territorial power is as dangerous as any type of addiction and lack of control. Leaders must be truthful. They must understand the difference between opinions, perceptions, and evidence-based facts.

Leadership is not about winning the pack. Leadership is about leading the pack without fear, distress, or anxiety, providing reliance and security. A leader does not always have to come ahead first. Sometimes, great leaders have to step back so they could be prepared for the greater jump.

Iberkis Faltas, PhD, (ABD)
Public Policy and Administration
Management and Leadership | Law and Policy
Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach