Technical skills may get you the job but emotional intelligence will dictate how high you get up the career ladder. Studies continue to reveal that the more emotionally intelligent a professional is, the more he or she earns, the faster the professional rises in rank and the better the professional relationships that are formed.
Emotional intelligence is a concept that is concerned with how you identify, comprehend, and deal with your feelings and those of other people. This set of skills is increasingly becoming significant because employers are paying increased attention to collaboration, flexibility and cultural compatibility along with technical qualifications. The practitioners who have mastered emotional intelligence do not only do good jobs, they become the leaders that people would like to follow.
The knowledge of the influence of emotional intelligence on career development can change your career path. These are very important skills that you will acquire and in the process better your current job performance as well as be in a position to take up leadership and have a successful career in the long run.
What Emotional Intelligence Really Means in Professional Settings
EI at work is not pleasant or understanding. It entails four fundamental competencies that directly influence the professional performance, these are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, as well as relationship management.
Self awareness will allow you to know your hot buttons, strengths and weaknesses. Individuals who are self-aware know how their emotions can be used in making decisions and working. They are able to know when stress is affecting their judgment or when they get excited and over commit.
Self management refers to the capability to control your feelings and to adjust to different circumstances. It means being cool under pressure, being able to deal with stress and to be professional even when faced with a difficult situation or a difficult workmate.
Social awareness will cover your skills in reading people, understanding their feelings at the workplace, and the organization culture. Emotionally intelligent professionals can read between the lines and understand when there is tension in a meeting, know when a colleague is in need of support and adjust their communication style to various audiences.
Relationship management is what binds it all together in terms of good communication, conflict resolution and influence. This competency will allow you to establish trust, motivate people and work with various personality types and working styles.
How Emotional Intelligence Accelerates Career Advancement

Emotional intelligence is becoming more appreciated in organizations as it has a direct relationship with leadership performance and team performance. Studies show that 90 percent of the high performances possess high emotional intelligence and only 20 percent of the low performers possess such skills.
Professionals who are emotionally intelligent are also very successful in developing the strategic relationships that are needed to advance their careers. They know that success is seldom an individual thing and they take the time to build real relationships with peers, mentors and industry people. Such relationships can result in new opportunities, interesting insights and promotion advocacy.
Such professionals are also very adaptable to changes in the organization or unforeseen problems. They do not resist change or they are unable to move on because they do not know what is ahead of them. They facilitate an easy transition to their teams. Leaders identify those employees who are able to keep the team morale and productivity even in hard times.
Emotional intelligence is linked to communication skills that can help a professional to communicate effectively, give constructive feedback and solve conflicts without being confrontational. The skills are more relevant as you grow in your career and have more responsibility to team dynamics and organizational culture.
Emotionally intelligent professionals are naturally placed in a position to become leaders because of their ability to inspire and motivate others. They know what motivates the various members of their teams and can adjust their styles to get the best out of each of them. The skill is invaluable because organizations are now in need of leaders who are capable of creating high-performance and engaged teams.
Developing Self-Awareness for Professional Growth
The basis of emotional intelligence is self-awareness and involves taking an honest look at your emotional patterns, triggers and the effects you have on others. The first step would be to be mindful of how your feelings react to the working day and note the patterns that can influence your professional relations or decisions.
Write a short journal of events that cause you to have intense emotional reactions (both bad and good). Put down the experience and how you felt, what you did and the result. With time you will learn to recognize patterns that will enable you to predict and better control your reactions.
Seek the opinion of senior trusted workmates, mentors or supervisor on your professional presence and communication style. Specific questions to ask include how others view your input in meetings, how you react to stress and how you work with others. This outside perspective will assist in figuring out the blind spots of your self-knowledge.
Learn mindfulness strategies that would prevent you from being lost in the past or the future and aware of your emotional condition. Taking a few seconds to think before an important meeting or conversation can make a difference in how you go about things with more emotional clarity and purposefulness.
Self-reflection should also be done regularly and this should involve recognition of your emotional strengths and how they help you in your professional life. Being aware of what you are good at emotionally, enables you to capitalize more on these strengths in your career building.
Building Stronger Professional Relationships Through Emotional Intelligence
Professionals with emotional intelligence know that workplace relationships must be nurtured and that they have to care about the success of others. They take time to learn the working styles of their colleagues, their preferred way of communication and professional objectives.
Be taught to be an active listener during conversation and meetings. This implies giving all the attention to what other people are saying instead of preparing what to say or what to judge. Ask meaningful questions that will show your interest and allow you to learn more about other people views.
Learn to read and react to the emotional status of other human beings. In the case of a stressed or frustrated colleague, emotionally intelligent professionals may provide support, change their communication style, or just allow the individual to take time to deal with their feelings.
Find out how to flatter. Emotionally intelligent professionals also present feedback in a manner that is behavior- and result-oriented as opposed to personality-oriented. They also take criticism without getting defensive since they consider it as a source of information in their professional development.
Be really appreciative of what others are doing and be a team player. Appreciation and acknowledgment will help build professional relationships and establish favorable working environments that leaders will recognize and appreciate.
Managing Workplace Stress and Pressure Effectively
Emotional intelligence also helps professionals to perform optimally even when subjected to considerable pressure. This ability is more valuable the more you progress in your career and have more responsibility and higher stakes decisions.
Before work-related stress impacts you in terms of performance or relationship, learn to manage the stress by coming up with healthy coping mechanisms. This may include very brief meditations, exercise, or even procedural ways of solving problems that may help you break down seemingly impossible problems into small manageable tasks.
Study to be able to identify the early warning signs of emotional overwhelm in yourself and others. The ability to recognize when to step aside, seek assistance, or change the course of action before stresses affect their performance is a trait that emotionally intelligent professionals can recognize.
Learn emotional regulation strategies that allow you to react to difficult circumstances in a thoughtful way as opposed to reactive one. Making a short break prior to replying to challenging emails, deep breathing before a stressful meeting, or re-thinking a negative situation can help you a lot in your professional relationships.
Establish a support network of peers, mentors and friends to help give perspective in difficult times. Professionals with emotional intelligence know that asking for help is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength and a factor that can keep them resilient in the long-term in terms of their careers.
Leading with Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is even more important to leadership as you progress in your career. Leaders who are emotionally intelligent establish a psychological safety that helps members of a team to do their best, make wise risks, and offer creative solutions.
Learn how to inspire and motivate others by understanding what motivates the various team members. There are those who are driven by recognition, others by growth opportunities and others by the opportunity to do something worthwhile. EI leaders personalize their style in a manner that will help maximize the potential of every person.
Communicate freely and build trusts and reduce anxiety at the workplace. This involves communicating the right information concerning the changes in the organization, being truthful regarding the difficulties, and giving clear expectations regarding the roles and duties.
Find out how to manage tough conversations in an amiable and precise manner. Emotionally intelligent leaders are able to command respect and reach the required results in case they have to deal with performance problems, mediate disputes, or deliver bad news.
Set an example of emotional behavior that you want to be implemented by your team. Leadership and emotional intelligence is usually more of what you do rather than what you say. The way you handle stress, how you solve conflict and how you communicate with other people will be in your team.
Your Emotional Intelligence Action Plan
Emotional intelligence is something that has to be developed through regular practice and sincere desire to self-improvement. First of all, specialize in one area to work on and not everything at the same time.
Start by becoming self-aware through a regular reflection process and by talking to colleagues whose opinion you trust. The next month you will be monitoring your emotional tendencies and the impact it has on your work relations.
Learn to listen and empathise on a daily basis at the workplace. Push yourself to learn more about the reasoning of others and be more emotionally aware of how to react.
It could be a good idea to find a coach or a mentor that would be able to guide you and be accountable to you in the development of emotional intelligence. Most successful professionals attribute their emotional and professional development to mentorship that has fast tracked their development.
You should remember that the process of emotional intelligence development is a process and not a goal. The best practitioners continue to hone these skills as they advance in their careers and adjust their practice as they are given new tasks and duties.