Last night I had the pleasure of reading “Recognizing the emotional side of business,” an article on Charles Jacobs’ new book, Management Rewired.
Here’s the opening statement:
“If you think that logic leads to better decisions in business than emotions, think again. If you think management’s feedback to staff improves performance, again you’re wrong.”
I was hooked, and boy did it feel great. The rest of the article more than delivered.
(By the way, after reading I instantly added it to the Emotional Intelligence Twine, so join if you haven’t already!)
Why business adopts the emotional intelligence mindset
And it got me thinking… why is business so much onto this new paradigm of developing emotional intelligence (or emotional intelligence quotients/EQ in corporate language) the right way… to enhance thought?
The reason the business world can so readily adopt the EQ mindset is because business represents the pure practicality, functionality, mutual reward-system, and productivity of human relationships. It’s about transactions, and energy and time expenditures — the bits and bolts of sturdy and transparent relationships.
You can tell when business is good, and when it’s flailing. You can tell when the money’s there, and when it’s not. You can identify problems objectively. You know that you have to be smart with your resources.
EQ is about resourcefulness, which business needs in order to succeed
In The Emotion Machine, MIT professor and AI expert Marvin Minsky says that emotions are simply resources, that turn on certain types of thinking and turn off others. Emotions thus lead to a rich palette of various types of resourcefulness, applicable to specific situations.
The business world knows this, because its livelihood depends upon it.
Business professionals can’t afford to not be smart with their emotions — especially if they are in the creative industries. They can’t afford to let their emotions go to waste. Or to be ignored. Or dumbed down in the false favor of dry logic.
If the infrastructure of your business, the relationships, lack, then your business bleeds — the lack of funds shows for it.
Business is ahead of the curve with EQ
The business world is learning fast that emotions are intelligent, and that we need to do our part to keep them that way. I would say the business world is pushing through even faster than the helping professions, which makes absolutely no sense, unless you look deeper into the complexity of the helping professions, which seem to have more (cultural) baggage.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of lovely cognitive-affective research being done. But I get the impression that a lot of it’s being sit on, or not marketed enough to the masses, the way it should be. And that it’s instead being shared with those who have the spiritual or New Age or even self-help dispositions to readily accept concepts like mindfulness (which is mostly being linked to meditation) and positive reframing (which is often distorted).
(Cognitive-behavioral therapy and company do make a big exception though.)
EQ takes hard work
Much of the helping professions are still too concerned with finding the quick fixes, to turn emotions off with a “switch,” banish them into thin air, or make them easy to reprogram (read: evade and stuff until it gets worse) so as to avoid really feeling them. Much of the helping professions are still hesitant about these things called emotions, and would rather not deal with the ugly ones. It’s understandable. It’s a big undertaking to overhaul decades of practice and decades of viewing emotion as the opposite to reason.
Business is about working hard
Business doesn’t have these pitfalls. It’s not as complicated, has less (cultural) baggage. It has one objective, money. And one standard, productivity. Working your emotions right is all about productivity. Hang around here enough, and you’ll see.
Are you ready to work hard too?
So rock on with the grok, business professionals. Get the message out!
Maybe people will listen when there’s money involved.
I’m all ears.
How about you?
