Emotional Intelligence is Important

Over the last few years, I have learned the importance of professional competencies and how they play a part of being a leader and making decisions. It is important that as a leader one is able to exhibit many of these different competencies as they all play important roles in the decision-making process. A few that I have found to be important are emotional intelligence, time management, and ethical behavior.

     Emotional Intelligence is being able to understand your emotions and how your emotions affect people around you. If someone has strong emotional intelligence they are able to accept criticism and able to use that to improve themselves. Emotional Intelligence means one has self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills Emotional Intelligence, 2018). In my professional career I have started to be more aware of each of these characteristics to improve myself so when I do get a leadership position I am able to have strong emotional intelligence. As a human being criticism is always hard to accept but being able to take it and use it to improve yourself is what can set one apart in being a good leader. For this group project I have used emotional intelligence to be able to take criticism from those I asked to assist me in reviewing my powerpoint and tell me where I needed to make adjustments. It is never easy to hear when people do not like something you have worked very hard on, but when your grade reflects that hard work and those changes it is definitely worth it and shows that it is important.

    

     Time management is being able to organize and plan your time among different activities. Being able to manage one’s time presents a lot of benefits such as increased productivity an less stress which can lead to better career opportunities. If one is not able to manage their time they could run into issues such as poor quality of work, missed deadlines, and higher stress levels. I worked on the group project on my own this term and because of this I had to make some adjustments to my time management skills. I completed this class during my wedding and honey moon while also preparing to apply for a new position at work and working 40+ hours a week. It is crucial to be able to manage your time when taking classes while working full time. This also brings in my personal life and professional life because I am also going to school I try to stay as close to 40 hours a week at work as I can although I am a salaried employee. In order to do so I make sure to manage the 8 hours of my day accordingly.

     Ethical behavior is an important part of being a leader in all parts of one’s life. Ethical behavior is determined by what is right and what is wrong and as a leader you need to display behavior that aligns with those ideas. By a leader having positive ethical behavior it can lead to positive employees and organizational growth (Huddleston, 2017). As a senior member of my team at work newer employees look to me for guidance on a day to day basis; because of this it is important that I am displaying ethical behavior. In our work environment our managers are in meetings most of the day, so we do a lot of collaboration between peers and it is important for us to remember that our teammates are looking to us for direction.

References:

Emotional Intelligence (2018) Emotional Intelligence: Developing Strong “People Skills”. Retrieved from: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_59.htm

Huddleston, K. (2017) How to define ethical behavior & why it’s important in the workplace. Retreived from: https://workinstitute.com/resources/workplace-wisdom-blog/articleid/2248/how%20to%20define%20ethical%20behavior%20&%20why%20it's%20important%20in%20the%20workplace

Time Management (2018). What is time management? Working smarter to enhance productivity. Retrieved from: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_00.htm