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7 Benefits Of Developing Social Intelligence In The Workplace
There’s been a great deal of talk about emotional intelligence and social intelligence and just how important it is in our daily lives and how we interact with others. Now businesses are really taking a hard look at how to develop social intelligence among its workforce as study after study indicates that organizations made up of people with high EI and SI tend to perform better. The obvious question is why do they perform better and how does their performance affect the organization.
Well here are 7 ways that a developed social intelligence can benefit a workplace environment.
1. More effective leadership
Persons with a high SI are empathetic and can identify the emotions and needs in others. Leaders can use this skill to communicate in a fashion that will be better received. Good leaders with strong SI will also be able to see what subordinates need and what their concerns are. Filling those needs and concerns makes for a more productive team.
2. Better customer service operations
CS representatives with strong emotional intelligence understand their own emotions and can control them so their responses to customers are based on logic and not a reaction to emotion. Additionally, being able to empathize with the customer puts the representative in a better position to create a solution that is good for the customer and the company as well.
3. Stronger management teams
Management teams composed of individuals with strong social intelligence are more likely to be able to amplify the synergies that occur when bringing a talented group together to work as a team. Personal egos are subservient to the goals of the group making corporate objectives easily reached with a minimum amount of friction.
4. Better stress management
Because they can identify the emotions of others and their own emotions, and because they recognize how to control those emotions, people with a high social intelligence have a much higher threshold for stress. Controlling stress is the key to making sound decisions under pressure and is a key element in optimizing any operation.
5. Better placement of human resources
Studies have shown that if jobs and functions are surveyed to determine what social intelligence skills are required, and then match up employees with like skills, performance skyrockets. One study showed an organization that had to lay off 30% of its workforce but then reorganized the remaining 70% according to SI skills and discovered that they could increase the productivity that they generated when they were fully staffed.
6. Reduction in risk management threats
While there is no scientific evidence proving it, organizations who are staffed with people of higher SI tend to have fewer work comp claims and experience a lower incidence of theft and malicious damage on the work site.
Open to change
Today the only constant in business operations is change and it can be the downfall of those who can’t handle it. If the bulk of a workforce resists or is uncomfortable with change, then the company is in serious danger. Workforces who have high EI and SI are far more adaptive and have more self confidence. As a result, change can be seen as a welcomed event because it means an influx of new information.
So how does a company get a workforce with high EI and SI. The easiest way is to hire it. New assessments are now being used to measure these characteristics and those assessments carry as much weight as the skill level. The other way is to start offering training to the workforce and gradually develop the skills across the board.