Have you ever had a team that had great core skills and seemed perfect for the job, but they lacked soft skills? When your team lacks soft skills, any interaction they have with other team members or guests will be unproductive. Soft skills enable your team to evaluate situations and improve them. Emotional intelligence is one of the most important soft skills that your team can have. Through this blog post, we hope to impress upon you the importance of emotional intelligence and why your team needs it.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to manage not only your own emotions, but also the emotions of others. This allows your team to control their responses to stressful situations and enables your team to have positive interactions with guests. Emotional intelligence includes three separate skills: 1) identifying and naming emotions, 2) applying emotions to problem solving when necessary, and 3) regulating your own emotions & knowing when to help regulate the emotions of others.
These three skills can break down into two main categories: self and social. Emotional intelligence is meant for the individual to better themselves and their actions (self), but also for any relationship two or more people may have together (social).
Self-Awareness
Having self-awareness EQ allows you to fully appreciate your strengths and weaknesses. Acknowledging both of these will allow you to work better with a group and will let you play off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Self-awareness will also give you the ability to learn more about yourself. You will be able to learn more about how your emotions triggered certain reactions and how to change your emotion or overall stance on the situation for different results the next time. Your emotions can be a valuable source of information when making rational decisions. Whether it is staying away from doing something or going ahead and doing a task without further question can be decided from your emotions. Your body will tell you how the action makes you feel, and emotional intelligence will assist in interpreting why it makes you feel that way.
Social-Awareness
Empathy is crucial for social-awareness EQ. Having empathy will widen your view on others and will give you the opportunity to bond with colleagues or guests. In any social situation, there are many non-verbal factors that play into how the message should be received. Emotional intelligence gives you the understanding of what the other person is feeling. Their non-verbal cues and body language are something that will alter the conversation completely.
Without emotional intelligence, your team will still have the ability to function and perform basic tasks, but they will not be able to evaluate guest interactions well. Being able to evaluate guest interactions will give your team more empowerment to make each interaction positive and productive. Utilizing emotional intelligence in your team will also help your team identify any real underlying issues rather than what it may look like from first glance.
Hiring people that already have a strong sense of Emotional intelligence will only better your team. Emotionally intelligent people with average IQs outperform people with exceptional IQs 70% of the time because they have both self and social competence. A high performing staff will increase your productivity and the guest experience. With a better guest experience, your company will attract more business and will allow the company to thrive.
Emotional intelligence is all about learning how to recognize, process, and channel your emotions to benefit yourself and the team. Introducing and developing emotional intelligence in your team will only help them and make your guests more satisfied. Stay tuned for our next blog that will dive deeper into emotional intelligence.