The hot new buzz word in the business, management, and executive world is “emotional intelligence,” but the question is, what exactly is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence, as Ashley Zahabian describes, is applied best when you are feeling a certain way, but act differently to obtain a better outcome. In essence, she claims we become more logical as become more emotionally intelligent.
Ashley shared a few words with us below on the topic:
“It’s one of those “it” factors, you know? When you meet someone, you’ve got a few seconds to connect or disconnect, and that connections happens subconsciously. It’s brain to brain, and unless you’ve got that “it” factor, there’s not much you can do to connect otherwise. This is why so many more companies are moving towards behavioral interviews; they want to see how you behave because your behavior tells much quicker whether you’re credible and fitting for whatever position or connection you’re trying to obtain. Now, to be fair, there is a connective ability for everybody in this world. However, majority of those who are seeking to do well in business need not only high business acumen, but high emotional intelligence too. Most leaders, both in the startup world and in large corporations focus much of their time backing future strategies up with data and logical reasoning, and the rest of their time figuring out how they can convince others to see this problem and solution through reasoning, and through emotional persuasion.”
Leaders think logically, but understand that most people don’t. They find logical reasons to pursue a decision, and then carry on persuading others emotionally to buy-in, while backing their emotional reasons up with logical ones.
This combination of thinking logically, and understanding emotion is what emotional intelligence is. It’s understanding the emotional mind enough to combat it when needed, but use it when needed, too. It’s solving problems from a bird’s eye view rather than being in the picture and being blind to the frame.
Logical thinkers even use emotions as data, and make sure they use all of the data when making a decision. This is what makes it easier, specifically in business, to run successfully. When you use every data point possible, you have a more accurate picture of where to head next. When you make emotional decisions, however, you miss out on important data and make decisions based on anxiety; this usually fails quickly.
When we think anxiously rather than logically, we also struggle to innovate. This is because we are constantly looking at our competition, anxious to fail against them. In these cases, we simply follow the steps of competitors and fail to think outside of the box to beat the competition. These are common traits of businesses that are not first to market new ideas and contributions.
If you are trying to start a business, or manage an existing one, becoming more logical and improving your emotional intelligence can really help you make better strategic decisions.