Emotional intelligence and job performance

Emotional Intelligence and the Important Role it Plays in Job Performance

Emotions significantly affect an organization or individuals intelligence, and work culture has been substantially impacted. The concept of emotional intelligence gathered a lot of popularity, though it remains one of the ignorant topics. Emotional intelligence plays a critical role in new affective revolution perspectives in organizational and social psychology. According to Goleman 1998, emotional intelligence can evaluate ones emotional status and regulate them appropriately. Multiple researchers have severally tried to define the nature of the relationship between work performance and emotional intelligence. According to Semadar et al. (2006), the performance of employees is best predicted by emotional intelligence as it can preempt their productivity by managing and understanding their emotions in the best manner accordingly. Emotional intelligence can empower a person to motivate oneself, regulate ones mood, control impulses, boost persistence level, and thus, manage an individuals ability to empathize, hope, and think (ekmecelio?lu et al. 2012). Also, an emotionally intelligent person can be proficient in two critical areas: social competence, which is the ability to manage relationships, and personal competence, which is the ability to manage self.

Similarly, Emotional intelligence has been an essential predictor of multiple organizational outcomes like job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior (Allen & Meyer, 1990). Emotional intelligence includes regulating feelings to express rightfully, allowing the employees to work together to realize shared goals in a transparent and constructive environment. Whenever the management prioritizes feelings, so will be the workforce. Therefore, the workforce will copy such feelings if the manager feels creative, respectful, optimistic, confident, compassionate, tolerant, and flexible. Organizational commitment is considered a critical influencer of an organizations effectiveness (Kassim et al., 2016). Multiple studies have indicated that organizational commitment can project various organizational outcomes, like reduced turnover, lower absenteeism, improved organizational citizenship behavior, withdrawal cognitions, and increased job performance.

Moreover, a highly motivated workforce committed to contributing their energy and time to pursue its goals is increasingly acknowledged as the fundamental asset available to an organization. Management researchers argued that emotional intelligence influences productivity and performance (Kassim et al., 2016). High emotional intelligence impacts all aspects of management as well.

Currently, a lot of attention is given to emotional intelligence on job functions by the workforce. Activities determine employee performance to realize a goal founded on a particular standard (Allen & Meyer, 1990). They may include behavior or actions of all mental processing that are non-observable such as decision making, problem-solving, reasoning, and program planning. Emotion is a firm psychological action that can impact performance and behavior in a critical manner. Besides, performance is a function of skills, knowledge, motivations, and capabilities. Therefore, any organization searching for performance enhancement and desire to conduct economic activities with high efficiency opt to enhance their employees performance as the first step (Baksh Baloch et al. 2014). Emotional intelligence is a strong potential in the current organizational structures with changing motivations and behaviors (ekmecelio?lu et al., 2012). While research has demonstrated a substantial relationship between organizational commitment, employee performance, and emotional intelligence, literature has failed to guide how parameters of emotional intelligence directly impact the relationship between employee performance and organizational commitment.

Besides, emotions can be considered one of the strong competencies besides knowledge, beliefs, routines; agility is used to show inner feelings of hate, love, aversion, desire, sadness, and expressive communication. Subsequently, Cote and Miners (2006) argue that a persons intelligence is linked to ones emotions (Allen & Meyer, 1990). The concept of emotional intelligence has its origin from the late 1930s, during which the processes of non-intellective intelligence came to be known. The roots of emotional intelligence are traced from the concept of social intelligence that was defined as the ability to manage, comprehend, and behave prudently in human relations (Kassim et al. 2016). According to Goleman (1998, 2001), emotional intelligence is ones ability to realize their feelings and manage them accordingly. Goleman (1998, 2001) also argues that dynamic intelligence assists in managing and understanding other peoples emotions to accomplish the organizations needs appropriately.

Moreover, with emotional intelligence, one can determine and understand oneself and others emotions, thus, taking favorable measures accordingly (Baksh Baloch et al., 2014). Within the current dynamic and uncertain work environment, the employees emotional health significantly contributes to job satisfaction, employee performance, organizational commitment, and leadership. Emotiooodligence is also elaborated as the proficiency of understanding others and oneself emotions then adopting favorable measures accordingly. As a result, emotional intelligence acts as the major tool for managing employees social skills and emotions. Through self-consciousness, that inbuilt strength to perceive emotions, strengths, capabilities, and good is made...

…result of emotional intelligence in every aspect of employees work life, the workforce considered to possess high-level emotional intelligence is always star performers (Dulewicz & Higgs, 2002). Therefore, there exists a positive relationship between work performance and emotional intelligence.

On the other hand, while psychology once assumed emotions of the human being as disorganized, characteristic of poor adjustment, and disruptive, upcoming theories indicate that emotions play a critical role in motivating, organizing, and directing human activity. This is according to a tested correlation of appraisal to emotional intelligence outcomes and coping of workplace demands (Baksh Baloch et al. 2014). Emotional intelligence was determined to compose three factors: understanding other peoples emotions, using emotions while making decisions, and emotional self-management.

Furthermore, achieving the most feasible performance is believed to be the most substantial target of every organization. Companies are expected to focus on emotional intelligence as a challenging parameter for attaining high development and performance of the competitive advantage. Based on the earlier findings, emotional intelligence plays a critical role in enhancing performance (Allen & Meyer, 1990). Different research studies have demonstrated that employees with a high level of emotional intelligence have excellent work performance (Naderi Anari, 2012). At the same time, individuals who advance emotional intelligence have career success because there is a correlation between emotional intelligence and success, influencing each other (Baksh Baloch et al., 2014). Attaining emotional intelligence skills by the managers is critical in augmentation of work performance and efficiency, especially of most need for the bank managers (Boon et al. 2012). This is because there is a correlation between the bank managers nature of work and attitude, personnel knowledge level, motivations, and knowledge of clients views; efficiency is closely linked with emotional intelligence.

In conclusion, from the review of multiple pieces of literature, it is established that emotional intelligence has a positive effect on work performance. According to Lopes et al. (2006), Kumar and Rooprai (2009), Rahim (2010), emotional intelligence is an influential personality trait for practical work, attaining organizational commitment, and achieving work satisfaction. With increased burden, the turnover intention gets minimized substantially. Equally, high emotional intelligent outcomes in building teams by an emotionally efficient leader, hence, refining the culture of work to improve work performance successfully. As indicated by Abraham (1999), research studies conducted so far suggested that high is the level of…