Role of Emotional Intelligence in Managing Interpersonal Relations at Workplace in the IT Sector

Introduction

Over the years an individual’s smartness or success has always been attributed to his or her Intelligence Quotient (IQ). It is almost immediately assumed that experts and professionals who have a high IQ succeed in their lives. However, IQ serves only as an index of numerical or analytical ability. “Studies have shown that people who are intellectually the brightest are not often most successful, either in business or in their personal lives” Daniel Goleman (1997). Steven Covey said that when we consider the typical IQ approach; we tend to explore only a very small spectrum of human intelligence (The competitive paradox, 1996).

Hence there has to be something more to success than just having a high IQ. It has been suggested by experts like Goleman that it is not IQ but Emotional Intelligence (EI) that makes these individuals pioneer in their respective fields. Emotional intelligence is measured as Emotional Quotient or EQ. Goleman (1997) and Cooper & Sawaf (1997) suggest that emotional intelligence improves our ability to understand our own emotions and that of others, and also enhances our social radar.

Every employee shares a variety of social relations in his or her organization. Co-workers, supervisors, subordinates, suppliers, customers, clients and other stakeholders constitute the social relation spectrum of an organization. Hence it calls upon the employees to increase their emotional self-awareness, emotional expression, increase tolerance, increase trust and integrity, improve relations within and across the organization and thereby increase the performance of each employee and the organization as a whole.