BSBLDR511 Develop Emotional Intelligence Online Tutoring

Develop and use Emotional Intelligence

1. Identify and elaborate on your own emotional strengths and weaknesses, minimum of 3 each. Please explain why it is important for leaders to have an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses.

Emotional Strengths

⦁ Spirituality: I am connected with spirituality in a way that I find peace in it. I perform meditation which attaches me to my inner self which we don’t do usually all day as we are in our work routine and I reconnect to my inner self by doing meditation. It strengthens me by making me believe in my inner self and release the negative energies that we gain from the external environment.

⦁ Positivism: I take all situations and challenges positively. I use positive words while communicating with my friends, family and with myself too to avoid depression and any sorts of negativity. Of-course it’s not possible to be positive all the time but positive thinking is a strength gained by regular positive thinking approach. A positive approach towards my goals gives me power to deal with challenges.

⦁ Enthusiasm: it’s my strength in a way that I adopt my work with interest and attempt to make it better and not just for the sake of completion. I try to put my creativity and effort to resolve a task and take it with passion (Cianci et al., 2010).

[hbupro_banner id=”6299″]

Emotional Weaknesses

⦁ Diversified focus: I have a habit of trying to focus on different things at a time. For some people it may be good but for me it’s not as the overall progress of tasks diminishes by doing so. I should be handling one task/challenge at a time and then move to next one to deliver qualitative work.
⦁ Soft heartedness: Being a manager or leader of a group in a college or organization needs to have different behaviour with different people but my nature is of softheartedness. I look forward to deal people with a friendly or family like approach which is not suitable for everyone and people take advantage of it and due to this the work deadlines/quality aren’t met accurately.
⦁ Straight forward: I am a person who likes to be straight forward with situations and I don’t like to go the other way around. It’s my weakness in a way that people don’t like this behaviour as sometimes it becomes offensive to be too blunt and telling someone their fault on their face. I believe I should deal people in a strategic way and deal with every person as per his/her nature predicting that how the person would react and whether my behaviour is suitable or not (Rust et al., 2009).
It’s important for leaders to realize their own strengths and weaknesses to better understand that what sorts of challenges will intervene in their way and how they need to mould their behaviour to face those challenges e.g. A manager who has a habit of working in details might face a challenge in a workplace where he/she needs to take decisions quickly without spending too much time on a single task.

2. Briefly describe some common workplace stress and stressors. Explain at least 5 examples.

⦁ Organizational Workload: Too much work disturbs employees physical and mental health, hence there needs to be a balance. E.g. working in an MNC has many perks but at the same time heavy lead of decisions and involved risks stresses and deteriorates employee health
⦁ Very unrealistic demands: Unrealistic demands where employees are expected to go beyond their capacity acts as a major stressor for employees. E.g. An employee who is expected to give his project report within office time, ignoring the fact that project report is very important report and unrealistic deadlines will build pressure on employee.
⦁ Frequent changes: A workplace with frequent changes in procedures, processes, Policies, etc. builds stress for employees. E.g. working in a Digital portal firm is tough as digital trends change every day and employees find it difficult to cope with day to day changes in the organization’s business approach.
⦁ Job ambiguity: Employees working for the firm but don’t know where their career is leading to creates stress for them. E.g. An employee who is assisting multiple departments in making their multiple tasks of reporting but he/she is confused that where is the career path leading as he/she has been assigned designation of Junior Marketing Manager which doesn’t relate to this work at all (Harzer & Ruch, 2012).
⦁ Absence of recognition: Humans by nature find it good to be appreciated for their work and so how workplace employees but if they are not appreciated for their work this lowers their work efficiency & morale. E.g. A sales manager who achieved all the assigned monetary targets but isn’t appreciated by the senior management, this factor will create stress upon him and he might also look to switch to a firm where employees are more appreciated.

3. Why is it important to develop awareness of your own emotional triggers in the workplace?

It’s important to know about oneself as a manager and as a human being both. Managers/Employees have an edge if they are aware that what situations make them frustrated, Angry, Happy or Insecure. Being aware of theses triggers can allow people to avoid the bad situations which can spoil their relationships with colleagues and lead to office politics (Buschor, 2013).

4. As a leader, why do you need to model workplace behaviours that demonstrate management of emotions?

Model behaviours are required to convey the approach of upper management to employees. As these are the behaviours which employees observe and imitate from each other’s also called observational learning as to how to behave in an organization. Hence managers need these behaviours to set benchmarks and standards which can be followed by the other team members. E.g. A manager deals with a project crisis in a calm manner and leads the team to develop a solution to the problem efficiently, so this model behaviour will set standard for the other managers for future situations (Kong & Violet, 2016).
Similarly, in another organization a manager may set a different model for such a situation where he might have put pressure on employees for not managing the project properly and getting it into a crisis so this set of behaviour denotes aggressive management of emotions in connection to the organizational situation.

5. By using self-reflection and feedback from others to improve development of your own emotional intelligence, makes you a more effective leader. Explain how this is the case.

Self-reflections make one a better manager in a way where he/she becomes more capable to understand one’s own limitations. The manager gets an idea that what are the different strengths that he/she has to include in the current portfolio which will assist further in people’s management. Managers become good leaders as they measure all of their emotional capabilities and judge that how their behaviour has an impact on the work environment e.g. A manager who is unable to build relationships and he has also received the same cue from his team members, after his working he has planned to engage with more and more people, become friendly, socialize etc. so in this way the weakness will be covered.
Feedback from others leads managers to understand that what others perceive about their emotional capacity, and what are the areas of improvement. Taking a feedback from others also gives an impression that managers are eager & humble enough to learn more about them and connects them with their team emotionally as a leader. A feedback shall also strengthen the confidence of the manager in a way that he may also get to know that how well he leads the team and how important is the aspect of self-awareness which is the leader to a successful leader’s path (Dubreuil et al., 2014).

6. Respond to the emotional states of co-workers and assess emotional cues is the part of building workplace relationships. What are some of the things you need to consider?

⦁ As human being we understand a lot about each other’s behaviour by the emotional cues. Similarly, in an organisation we understand each other’s behaviour as people are with each other over a period of time and well realize that how a particular person will react in a particular situation.
⦁ Emotional cues shall be utilized to reframe a particular message seeing at the reaction of the co-worker, a manager must modify his tone accordingly keeping in mind that the work has to be taken from people but strategically with the balanced use of emotional intelligence. Making both ends meet will make a co-worker accept the task being assigned and also glue the relationship with the manager/co-worker.
⦁ One should engage regularly with co-workers to understand their strengths and weaknesses which denote their next reaction to a situation.
⦁ The regular engagement will allow one to build relationship with co-worker and also allow them to understand that what are the co-worker/manager’s expectations and behaviour towards them (Cervone et al., 2001).
⦁ A work relationship will strengthen if people respect each other’s values, understand triggers and respect each other’s space.

7. Identify the range of cultural expressions of emotions and respond appropriately.

There is huge range of cultural expressions used around the world to express emotions. The basic common emotions include happiness, disgust, anger, sadness, fear & surprise. Face perception is very complex science; different people consider different meanings from various expressions in relation to their exposure. People perceive faces which belong to their own culture differently as compared to those belonging to other cultures.
My response to a particular cultural expression within my own society would be based on the past experiences and observed learning of expressions. E.g. if a person is having hands on his head and his face is stressed while having a lot of files in front of him so this might make me think that he is facing work overload and too much accumulated work has burdened him.
E.g. if I am standing with some colleague and discussing something important and all of a sudden some other colleague jumps in for a handshake with me so my expression would be of a bit disturbing communicating the other person that I didn’t like his interruption, in response to this the other person’s expression would be apologetic and embarrassing (Fleeson, 2007).
Different situations make us behave differently there is not a unique set of behaviour for every situation so my response would be to fall in cultural limits. The organizational environment these days is becoming more and more international as we are in regular touch with people from different cultures E.g. the way to receive contact card from a Chinese business person is with a smile and bow expressions, while using both our hands otherwise they might get offended. Instead of Handshake they like to nod or bow so if we have such business connections in our organization so we have to deal accordingly.

[hbupro_banner id=”6296″]

8. Describe at least 2 ways of demonstrating flexibility and adaptability in dealing with others during a time of organisational change and ensure you identify at least 5 benefits.

The two ways are:

⦁ Embracing Ambiguity
Managers need to mould their behaviour for the people around them as a stiff behaviour won’t lead to a good team, there are projects assigned to all employees but it is to be seen that with the shift in market dynamics pressure will be built upon them and that’s the point where they need to be flexible. It’s all about the mindset there are organizations which avoid accepting the change in external/internal environments and show rigidity, but successful are those which embrace the challenge of ambiguity. Ambiguity related to socio-economic conditions, technology, competitor plans etc are present in front of managers but they need to flexibly deal with all these situations and need to look forward towards things with a positive mindset. Especially in organizations in the field of technology where trends change rapidly and they are not aware of what is the next shift in technology or consumer need coming. Pressure builds up for employees as a sudden shift in market trend increases their deadlines, Effects productivity, Effects budgets etc so it’s the point where the dynamism is to be dealt and ambiguity is to be embraced patiently as a team (Buschor, 2013).

⦁ Shifting of Focus
Another way to demonstrate flexibility and adaptability is to shift the focus as per the change in an organization’s priorities. Employees located at any level of organizational hierarchy they need to be constantly informed about the plans of the organization so that they can plan their individual priorities accordingly. As a team the organization needs to keep all the employees posted about the regular changes in the internal eco environment and external environment as well so that all the people can cope up with the pace of change and adapt accordingly. As a team lead a manager needs to tilt the focus of his team to lead them in the right direction as in the present era trends change rapidly hence all in-depth knowledge and constant up gradation of knowledge will be required for a team to adapt the changes in the echo-environment (Harzer & Ruch, 2012).

5 benefits:
⦁ Conflictd will be avoided in the teams as all the individuals will be on same page by applying the strategies to deal with flexibility and adaptability.
⦁ Improved relationships at all levels of organizational hierarchy as all the people are working in same direction with motive to serve the organization.
⦁ An organization will be keeping up with the pace of market changes and consumer need.
⦁ Organizations having adaptability and flexibility would be able to timely change the direction of ongoing projects and save the budgets as well.
⦁ Energy of better leadership will flow in the employees and glue them to meet future challenges (Cervone, 2004).

9. It is important to take the emotions of others into account when making decisions. Explain why.

All individuals in a workplace have different personalities and associated emotions. They belong to different cultural backgrounds and mindsets. It is important to take their emotions into consideration as it leads to:
⦁ It is important because it increases trust level between employees and decision makers
⦁ Creativity levels of employees in a workplace rises when they are emotionally considered
⦁ People are glued as a team with decision makers
⦁ People whose emotions are considered they feel valued in the organisation (Rust et al., 2009)
⦁ Emotional consideration reduces employee turnover in an organisation as the level of Job dissatisfaction goes down

 [citationic]