Role Of Emotional Intelligence In Administration In Times Of Adversity & Social Unrest

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to assess and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.

• Emotional Intelligence comes to play for the ability to accurately perceive one’s own and others' emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage one’s own and others' emotions.

Key Elements of Emotional Intelligence

According to Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist who helped to popularize emotional intelligence, there are five key elements to emotional intelligence. Out of these, three are intra-personal and two are interpersonal.

Intra-personal

• Self-Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand one’s moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others.
• Self-Regulation: The ability to control or re-direct disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and think before acting.
• Motivation: A passion to work for reasons and a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence.

Inter-personal

• Social Skills: A proficiency in managing relationships and building networks to move people in the desired direction.
• Empathy: The ability to understand the emotional make up of other people and considering other’s feelings especially when making decisions.

Emotional Intelligence in Administration in Times of Adversity and Social Unrest

The awareness and the application of emotional intelligence help a person to develop better inter-personal skills, increase their capacity to handle changes in work, pressures, stress, and conflict.

• With emotional intelligence, an administrator will have the ability to see the long-term effects of their actions and attitudes. It will also lead to increased levels of commitment, trustworthiness and conscientiousness.
• During times of conflict, the ability to see things in a holistic manner and being able to bounce back from setbacks and maintain optimism are desired. With emotional intelligence, the administrator is able to find healthy ways to handle negative and extreme feelings.
• It gives an individual the ability to motivation themselves, be persistent and motivate others as well.
• Better ability to communicate results in enhanced group dynamics in terms of cooperation, collaboration and building bonds.
• It leads to development of leadership traits, including the knowledge about when and how to lead, when to follow and the ability to use win-win model for negotiations.
• An emotionally intelligent individual has the ability to appreciate diversity and value for others, ability to become a catalyst of change, without being prone to aggression. He/she has greater focus on the task at hand with the ability to perform multiple tasks due to better time and information management.

As a result of these qualities, an emotionally intelligent administrator can handle the situation of adversity and social unrest in an effective way. This is because these traits are crucial for citizen centric administration whereby difficult situations can be handled peacefully.

Emotional intelligence will help the administrator to -

• Perceive, recognizeand understand emotions of others
• Handle conflicts constructively
• De-personalize from the angers of others
• Deal with uncertainty and change
• Identify and abide by core values and beliefs that shape the choices of the administrator in times of conflict
• Understand and empathize with positions different from others
• Enroll people into one’s vision
• Manage difficult and unreasonable persons in conflict situations
• Communicate effectively with the parties engaged in conflict or in adverse situations
• Keeping calm and control under difficult circumstances

With emotional intelligence, an administrator is able to acknowledge a conflict which opens the doors to create a solution. He/she is able to find out exactly the root of the problem and find solutions that are acceptable to everyone and also creates a functional plan of action and maintains the accountability of each stakeholder in putting the plan to effect.