Emotions at Work | Liz Cunningham | 041

Emotions at Work

  • How do emotions show up in the work place?
  • How do they affect performance?
  • How we can create awareness around them in order to make them work for us?

Evolution of Emotions in the Workplace

  • Historically corporate culture involved leaving one’s emotions at home.
  • Employees were required to show up, hands and feet with a skill set, as ‘human capital’.
  • The human doing instead of the human being.
  • The human being: heart, soul, passion, self-motivation, was considered a potential distraction.
  • Females were labelled as too emotional.

How EQ works for us – it enables our IQ

Companies should be raising awareness around the fact that our intellectual intelligence (IQ) works best in service to our emotional intelligence (EQ).

When we align EQ and IQ we have more efficient access to knowledge, skill and experience because we have the capacity to choose our reactions to a situation as it is unfolding, rather than being at the mercy of a story guided by our subconscious/learned belief system, which activates a reflex type reaction.

We can operate outside of the ‘fight or flight’ survival mode which obscures rational thought and doesn’t allow space for engaging in collaborative thought processes among team mates.