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Discussion post:
Emotional intelligence would be an aspect that has impacted my communication in the past. Although I feel as though I have a very high level of emotional intelligence at this time, there was a time when I would not totally listen to the depth of the conversation and fully extract what the underlying issue was creating a conflict.
I recall having my frontline managers meet every morning in a stand up to discuss the good, bad and ugly of the prior day and how we would work to keep doing what was working and stop doing what was not working. One time after the meeting, one of my managers was very frustrated and upset because their month to date production was substantially lower than the other teams and also lower than what they had done in the past. The manager was focused on the team and the players, and I kept offering advice as to how to course correct without much success, they kept getting more frustrated. After a lengthy talk, it surfaced that the manager was having some personal issues outside of the office and as a result, had not been as attentive to the team as they normally would be. This is when I realized that I was only focused on the production and not the person. They were showing signs of personal issues however, I was only focused on the results. This was a lesson that I could not take a surface situation and develop a plan without truly understanding the depth or inner issues one may face. As Barrett (2014) described, emotional intelligence demonstrates social problem solving capabilities that benefits the overall operation of a team. My experience that I still remember today, re-enforces my effort to always be at the top of my game around emotional intelligence – both in my career and personal life.
