Personal Strengths and Weaknesses

My most important emotional strength is my ability to adapt to new situations which are many times more challenging than expected. I am a very patient person with the ability to persist and tackle very unwelcoming situations.

My weakness is my inability to control my emotions. When I get angry or sad it shows on my face and in my behavior. I cannot pretend. Usually because of my patience I can handle and control my anger for a long time. However, when I get angry it comes out as an outburst which is difficult to control.

The stressor which literally challenges my existence is when someone senior than me rebukes me for any minor mistakes.  I cannot bear someone misbehaving with me or undervaluing me. However, it is a known fact that the managers have this strategy to motivate the employees to do better work by giving negative comments, in spite of that fact “disrespect” and “undervaluing” are two stressors which becomes big hurdle for me.

When I become stressed out at work mentally I feel drained and I cannot concentrate on the job I am doing. On the other hand, when I am satisfied and happy my concentration is much more and I can bring out innovations from my mind.

When I tend to stress out emotionally I show tendencies of irritation and losing patience faster than I would do otherwise. I feel depressed and exclude myself from my colleagues or friends. When I am not stressed, I engage with everyone, give better productivity and my cognitive abilities work better.

Physically there are signs like sweating, palpitation, and weakness in stressful situations.

As pointed out the behavioral signs include irritation, getting angry at small instances and not paying enough attention.

• One of the problem areas in my emotional intelligence is my inability to control the display of emotions. I have to practice the art of controlling emotional expressions by counselling from a proper psychiatrist.
• I tend to get angry easily, I will practice meditation which is very beneficial in anger management.
• I will be regularly engaging in physical exercises which will increase my physical fitness and refresh my mind in order to tackle any crisis that comes across.

Feedback was taken from a very close friend and colleague. The discussion is as follows:

Me- What is your opinion about my emotional stability?

Colleague- You are very patient and emotionally stable person, but sometimes you tend to become stressed out when someone criticizes u.

Me- What can I do to improve that?

Colleague- You need to take criticisms positively and find out ways to improve so that there is no more scope of criticism.

My brother is a person who knows me very well and understands my emotional intricacies. Feedback was taken from him.

Me- Do u think emotionally I am a stable person?

Brother- As far as I know u, you are very strong emotionally and do not react abruptly.

Effects of Stress on Work

Me- Dou think I lose my patience?

Brother- Yes you do when someone talks badly to you, you need to be better at tackling such situations and ignore such people who do not have any importance.

The above reflective assessment, and feedback from people who are close revealed that though I am emotionally strong and stable but I need to work on certain aspects like being emotionally weak and getting angry easily to improve my emotional intelligence.

Impact of the Increased Workland of Team

The team of customer service is comprised of members from different background with different levels of abilities and talents. The main 3 members of the team, Jose, Alan and Vaishnavi are of different age, background, experience and educational qualification. Therefore, it is natural that a particular event will have different levels of effect on each of them (Cabello 2016). Jose has been working in all of the departments of the company and has toiled hard to reach the position she is in. 15 years of experience is not something to be ignored. Therefore, she knows a lot more than any of the other team members about the particular job. On the other hand, Alan had been working in a different industry but because of his experience of providing homestay to the students of 8 countries he knows how to handle this particular job. Vaishnavi is new in this field as compared to the other team members and has experience of working for 2 years in the company.

The company BD Corporation mainly deals with international students and provides them with a range of services including accommodation, counseling, coaching, language and employment. Therefore, it is evident that the company has to be very responsible in its responsibilities, as any kind of irresponsible behavior can cause a lot of problems in the student’s lives, they depend on the company for their sustainability. The customer team is directly in contact with the students hence the teams needs to be knowledgeable enough about all the information which will cater to the students.

The primary impact of the workload on the team is mixed and in case of Jose because of her experience and hold on the industry she has managed to adapt with the increased responsibilities (Murphy 2014). However, as it is well known that human cognition is limited to concentrating on limited number of aspects (Serrat 2017), she is committing more mistakes because of too many concentration points. Alan on the other hand is having a calm approach to work and handles different works with expertise. Vaishnavi however has been drastically affected by the increased workload which has lowered her moral and she could not cope up with the sudden increase in workflow. This is mainly because of her inexperience in the field of work. The good performance of Allan instead of motivating her has worked in the opposite direction.

Personality-based Responses to Stress

The person who needs to be mainly counseled for a better emotional intelligence is Vaishnavi. She is highly demoralized and has broken down, which has affected her performance adversely. Me as a leader will counsel her about the situation and make her understand that if the work is done steadily and properly then the extra pressure can be handled without emotional drainage (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016).  Existing case studies and examples about similar situations where lesser number of employees had to handle increased responsibility will be presented to her for better understanding.

Jose on the other hand is herself experienced enough to understand what are the requirements in such a situation. Her problem is her diverted attention due to increased work load which is resulting in mistakes. I will be advising Jose to take up some mind exercised which increases concentration and allows the person to look into minute details with greater efficacy.

Alan is performing well keeping himself calm but often it is seen he is more passive than required in the workplace which often demotivates his team mates as well. He needs to get motivated and show more enthusiasm in the job. I will give him responsibilities which include more enthusiasm and physical movement, like locational services that include banking, shopping and food & beverages. Childcare is also a job role which he can perform that will make him enthusiastic and happy.

All the members of the team are having different emotional abilities and responses; therefore, they have reacted to the situation in different ways. The way their emotional intelligence management has to be done in personalized way according to the need of each member (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016).

Meeting Plan

• What is emotional intelligence?

The ability of an individual to control or display emotional behavior like anger, sadness, impulses and the traits which affect interpersonal relationship is known as emotional intelligence.

• Importance of recognizing and promoting positive emotional intelligence.

Human being is a cognizant emotional being with requirements that include emotional support. Therefore, to successfully perform their responsibilities human beings need to have a healthy and positive emotional intelligence.

• Expectations on how managers are to behave, promoting positive emotional intelligence.

Managers are to see their team members are emotional beings with complex intelligence that may not always be in a very good shape. In such times the managers must counsel and mentally support the employees to get over the bad phase (Mathew and Gupta 2015). Managers must give positive feedbacks about the employees and boost their moral.

• How managers can develop their own emotional intelligence levels?

Managers must engage in meditation, yoga and light exercises to keep their mind fresh and body healthy. They should be reading positive and motivating case studies about people who could successfully manage their emotional intelligence even in difficult times (Martina, Denisa and Mariana 2015). The managers must be patient with the employees and tackle tricky situations smartly enough and support the employees to positively boost their emotional intelligence (Naseem 2017).

• How to identify emotional issues with the staff?

In most of the cases where people are passing through bad phases in emotional intelligence there are prior symptoms which can be recognized and actions can be taken to handle and resolve such issues (Sánchez-Álvarez, Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal 2016).

Irritability at little issues, inability to concentrate on work, falling graph of performance, losing the desire to work are some of the very common symptoms of crisis in emotional intelligence. The managers must be careful about monitoring these symptoms in the employees so that such crisis can be resolved to the earliest.

References:

Cabello, R., Sorrel, M.A., Fernández-Pinto, I., Extremera, N. and Fernández-Berrocal, P., 2016. Age and gender differences in ability emotional intelligence in adults: A cross-sectional study. Developmental psychology, 52(9), p.1486.

Côté, S., 2014. Emotional intelligence in organizations. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 1(1), pp.459-488.

Higgs, M. and Dulewicz, V., 2016. Can Emotional Intelligence be Developed?. In Leading with Emotional Intelligence (pp. 51-73). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Martina, M., Denisa, M. and Mariana, S., 2015. Emotional Intelligence of Manageres. Procedia Economics and Finance, 26, pp.1119-1123.

Mathew, M. and Gupta, K.S., 2015. Transformational leadership: Emotional intelligence. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 12(2), p.75.

Murphy, K.R., 2014. A critique of emotional intelligence: what are the problems and how can they be fixed?. Psychology Press.

Naseem, K., 2017. Job Stress and Employee Creativity: The mediating role of Emotional Intelligence. International Journal of Management Excellence, 9(2), pp.1050-1058.

Sánchez-Álvarez, N., Extremera, N. and Fernández-Berrocal, P., 2016. The relation between emotional intelligence and subjective well-being: A meta-analytic investigation. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(3), pp.276-285.

Serrat, O., 2017. Understanding and developing emotional intelligence. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 329-339). Springer, Singapore.