For Essays Guru - Week 10 bus

BUS520

Strayer University

November 9, 2018

Executive Summary

Professional Development Proposal Program

The need for organizational efficiency is driving the need for understanding the competency of individuals that generate effectiveness. The emotional intelligence capabilities help explain considerable as well as significant variances in accepting and predicting performance in capability studies. Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor personal feelings and emotions visa vie other people’s feelings and emotions and use the information to guide personal thinking and actions. Management can rely on employees’ emotional building blocks to not only enhance their performance, but also their job satisfaction levels. The most important emotional intelligence building blocks that enhance employee performance and job satisfaction are social skills, self-awareness, self regulation, self motivation and empathy. Managers will use emotional intelligence to identify the positive and negative reinforcement of motivation to enhance employee morale within the organization. Positive reinforcement motivation tools are the rewards given to employees for exemplary performance while negative reinforcement is the penalty or punishment for poor performance.

Leaders can use the concept of emotional intelligence to enhance their social skills and decision-making skills in management. Emotional intelligence plays a critical role in helping persons requiring social skills to help them deal with social situations. Given that building strong relationship is one aspect of effective leadership, there is need for organizational leaders to build capacity in social skills for better organizational performance. Leaders can also utilize the concept of emotional intelligence to enhance their decision-making skills. Emotionally intelligent decision makers rely on self-awareness and self-management to determine their appropriate duties in decision making process. Decision makers use these skills to determine whether they have the necessary orientation to a problem.

Emotionally intelligent leaders strive for the establishment of effective teams to help realize organizational and team goals. Effective teams have clear purpose and goals, engage in consensus decision making, shared leadership and embrace open communication. To develop effective teams, departmental managers must define the team’s purpose and goals, define the roles for each group member and quickly identify and resolve conflicts. Finally, there is need to develop both extrinsic and intrinsic reward systems for employee motivation and improved performance.

Professional Development Proposal Program

Introduction

The need for organizational efficiency is driving the need for understanding the competency of individuals that generate effectiveness. The emotional intelligence capabilities help explain considerable as well as significant variance in accepting and predicting performance in capability studies. Emotional intelligence is a major subject of numerous volumes of literatures over the last two decades. Researchers from different backgrounds demonstrate the significance of emotional intelligence in organization. The emotional intelligence concept explains possible outcomes in an organization that can be mental as well as physical wellbeing. It is an understanding of emotions as well as how emotions lead to thoughts plus outcomes (Atiq et al., 2015). This paper is a professional development program proposal for departmental managers anchored on the importance of emotional intelligence management technique.

Emotional Intelligence and Motivation

Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor personal feelings and emotions visa vie other people’s feelings and emotions and use the information to guide personal thinking and actions. Management can rely on employees’ emotional building blocks to not only enhance their performance, but also their job satisfaction levels. The most important emotional intelligence building blocks that enhance employee performance and job satisfaction are social skills, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation and empathy. Individuals with high self-awareness have the ability to recognize and understand their moods, needs plus emotions. They perceive and understand the impact of their actions on other people and know when to seek for help. Self-regulation is the ability to control emotional outbursts and think through the impacts of a given behavior instead of acting on impulse. Self-motivation is the ability to direct emotions toward personal goals and stay optimistic when objectives are not achieved. Empathy is the ability to understand as well as remain sensitive to other people’s situations, feelings and thoughts. Social skills are the ability to build relationship networks, find common interests and build rapport with others.

Leaders and managers will use emotional intelligence to identify the positive and negative reinforcement of motivation to enhance employee morale within the organization. Hess and Bacigalupo (2013) assert that positive reinforcement motivation tools are the rewards given to employees for exemplary performance. The management can use this motivational tool when employees perform beyond expectations. The management can also use positive reinforcement tools of motivation when the organization seeks to promote healthy competition among different teams. For instance, the management may give bonuses to the best team. Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, is the penalty or punishment for poor performance. The management can use negative reinforcements when workers break the organization’s policies and procedures.

Emotional Intelligence and Social Skills and Decision Making

Atiq et al. (2015) refer to social skills as the skills required for building rapport with other people and finding common interests. It requires self-regulation as well as empathy to develop social skills. It is the skills needed to effectively handle as well as influence other people’s emotions. As such leaders can use the concept of emotional intelligence to enhance their social skills in management. Al Tamimi and Al-Khawaldeh (2016) assert that emotional intelligence plays a critical role in helping persons requiring social skills to help them deal with social situations. Social skills are mainly impacted by the other four building blocks of emotional intelligence which include empathy, self-regulation, self-awareness and self-motivation. The stronger an individual is stronger in these building blocks, the greater the ability to develop as well as strong networks and relationships. Given that building strong relationship is one aspect of effective leadership, there is need for organizational leaders to build capacity in social skills for better organizational performance. A good leader must have the ability to build strong relationships.

Leaders can also utilize the concept of emotional intelligence to enhance their decision-making skills. Emotionally intelligent decision makers rely on self-awareness and self-management to determine their appropriate duties in decision making process. Hess and Bacigalupo (2013) posit that decision makers use these skills to determine whether they have the necessary orientation to a particular problem. Also, they require these skills to determine if they have the self-confidence to assess their decision-making skills visa vie those of other leaders. Accordingly, self-awareness and self-management skills create decision paths that can be used in determining the most appropriate group or individual to make decision in a given circumstance. Without emotional intelligence, the management can fail the most important decision of determining the best decision maker for a given circumstance.

Features of Effective Teams

Emotionally intelligent leaders strive for the establishment of effective teams to help realize organizational and team goals. The first feature of effective teams is that they have clear purpose, which is a condition where team members have shared goals. The shared goals can spark a team’s effort by providing members with clear direction as well as buy in. Effective teams also engage in consensus decision making. This arises when teams allow members to not only express their views and opinions, but also to discuss any existing differences openly. There is also the element of shared leadership, which happens when group members instead of the group leader carry out such leadership roles like the collaborator, facilitator, contributor, controller as well as challenger. Effective teams also embrace open communication, where all group members can utilize communication opportunities, provide timely as well as relevant feedback, freely share their feelings and share important information with other team members (Belbin, 2010).

There are various strategies that will be used to develop effective teams in the organization. The first strategy is the definition of team’s purpose and goals. Newlands (2015) asserts that team members can visualize their roles and responsibility in attaining a group’s goals and objectives if they understand the purpose plus goals associated with their group. Apart from purpose and goals, it is important to define the roles for each group member. Several group members may have similar skills which may cause confusion about the members supposed to handle a aspect of a given goal. It is the leader’s responsibility to determine the role played by each member toward realization of the team’s objectives. The third strategy is quick identification and resolution of conflicts. Beyond allowing conflict to occur in a controlled environment in order to generate constructive work, will look out for times that conflicts can hurt members’ feelings if left unattended to bread conflict as well as interference in the team’s ability to operate together.

Organization’s Reward System

The organization will establish extrinsic and intrinsic reward system for employee motivation and improved performance. Extrinsic rewards, which are normally financial, refer to the tangible rewards given to the employees such as pay rises, benefits plus bonuses for exemplary performance. Ozutk (2012) indicates that they are extrinsic in that external to the work and that other persons control their sizes as well as whether they should be granted or not. Extrinsic rewards played a major role in the past when work was more routine and routine. They are still important in the current era because salary is a significant consideration for most people in accepting a job. Unfair pay is also a strong de-motivator.

Intrinsic reward is, on the other hand, a motivation based on having pleasure in a particular activity instead of focusing on external reward. It is the stimulation that drives a person to adopt a particular behavior for internal satisfaction and fulfillment (Ozutku, 2012). The management will create a work environment that supports sense of meaningfulness, sense of choice, sense of competence and sense of progress. Sense of meaningfulness involves the meaningfulness of purpose an individual is trying to achieve. Sense of choice occurs when employees have the freedom on how they can accomplish their work and use their judgment to select the work activities that make sense to them. Sense of competence happens when workers feel sense of pride and satisfaction on how they are handling activities. Sense of progress arises when employees feel that their efforts are accomplishing something.

References

Al-Tamimi, E. M. R., & Al-Khawaldeh, N. A. (2016). Emotional intelligence and its relation with the social skills and religious behaviour of female students at Dammam University in the light of some variables. International Education Studies, 9(3), 131-147

Atiq, M. M., Farooq, A., Ahmad, H. M., & Humayoun, A. A. (2015). The impact of emotional intelligence on motivation, empowerment and organizational structures: A case of universities in Islamabad. Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 5(6), 22-31

Belbin, R. M. (2010). Management teams. Abington Thames, UK: Routledge.

Hess, J. D., & Bacigalupo, A. C. (2013). Applying emotional intelligence skills to leadership and decision making in non-profit organizations. Administrative Sciences, 3, 202-220