High Emotional Intelligence Makes Better Employees

Emotional intelligence plays a very important role in coping with a company's politics, says a new study from the University of Haifa.

Researchers found that employees with higher level of emotional intelligence are more dedicated and satisfied at work, compared with other employees.

The researchers focused on 809 employees and managers in four organizations: two from the public sector and two private companies.

The study analyzed the effects of emotional intelligence on aspects of organizational politics, on formal and informal behavior, on employees' work attitudes, on feelings of justice, etc, and found that the employees with a high level of emotional intelligence perceived organizational justice as higher than the others.

Also, they seemed to be more satisfied with their jobs and more committed to their companies, and had fewer undesirable work attitudes like burnout, intention to leave and negligent behavior.

Galit Meisler, the leader of this research said that “this study has shown that employees with a higher level of emotional intelligence are assets to their organization.

I believe it will not be long before emotional intelligence is incorporated in employee screening and training processes and in employee assessment and promotion decisions,” he added.

The effects of emotional intelligence are not limited to employees' work attitudes alone, says Dr Meisler, because they also have a strong impact over bseveral aspects of organizational politics.

For example, employees with a higher emotional intelligence level believe their working environment to be less severe that the others do, and they also proved to have better political skills.

"We also found that employees with a higher emotional intelligence level were less likely to use forceful and aggressive forms of persuasion while attempting to persuade their supervisors.

Those employees tended to use much softer influence tactics", concluded Meisler.

The study, was carried out by Dr. Galit Meisler, under the supervision of Prof. Eran Vigoda-Gadot, and won the Outstanding Doctorate Award from the Israeli Political Science Association.