Emotional intelligence is a great tool that assists a person to be perceptive of his or her emotions and other people in his or her environment emotions. It helps in handling situations depending on how well tuned you are to your own emotions, which will help you to understand other people’s emotions and deal with the situation accordingly. Emotional intelligence also referred to as the (EL) focusses on the ability to discern, comprehend and respond correctly to other people’s feelings and emotions(Birks & Watts, 2007). This paper will focus on how emotional intelligence is vital in the healthcare sector. It will concentrate on showing how healthcare leaders and professions emotions and feelings affect the organization and examine emotional intelligence as a powerful tool for leading a team. It will offer remedies and solutions that can help overcome difficulties and overwhelming situations in healthcare through careful evaluations of the roles, effects, and impacts of emotional intelligence to healthcare leaders, the teams they lead, patients and organization.
Background
Emotional intelligence enhances effective leadership in the healthcare sector and forms an important part of the practice. It helps in honing the skills of medical practice by tuning the leaders to meet the expectations of the team. This is based on the understanding that in health care outcomes are achieved when people work together with each other and through each other (Birks & Watts, 2007). Health care leaders use emotional intelligence in the coordination and supervision of direct care services of their teams which has a direct impact on the patient and staff relationship. A leader who is able to understand the needs expectations and wants of the team members is able to coordinate the environment in a way that meets all of the requirements. The satisfaction from the team will positively impact on their relationship with the patients and colleagues. On the other hand, leaders who lack EI becomes ineffective in gauging and meeting the needs of the staff assigned to him or her. These type of leaders are prone to personal outbursts of emotions in whereby they end up hurting their teams either verbally or through unthoughtful actions (Fernandez, 2009). This impact trickles down to the patient staff relationship which further complicates the work environment.
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Emotional intelligence is important in team building since it helps to create effective teams by enhancing trust and achieving a group identity with shared objectives and common goals. A united and focused team is organized by a team leader who understands the role of emotional intelligence (Fernandez, 2009). The development of trust among teams members increases productivity because they recognize effectiveness and efficiency achieved from working as a team compared to working as individuals. The trust among members helps to develop healthy relationships with the patients which provides a suitable working condition (Birks & Watts, 2007). Similarly, if a leader lacks emotional intelligence is likely to react emotionally and create mistrust among the time which ruins the working relationship. The failure of the leader to meet the needs of the staff becomes detrimental and jeopardies the work environment including the culture, attitudes, objectives mission and goals of the organization. In healthcare, this can be costly as it will affect commitment, medical quality, creativity, teamwork, and safety. The greater result is patient mistrust and lack of confidence which can lead to them seeking services somewhere they can trust people with their lives which is the major concern in health care (Birks & Watts, 2007).
An EI- associated leadership is founded by leaders who are development minded and possess the ability to improve employee’s performance and connect them to work in teams. In healthcare, the type of leadership leads to healthcare workforce satisfaction, increase in recruitment and retention levels (Fernandez, 2009). On the other hand, leadership that as task focused in orientation and have leaders poor emotional health are associated with exhaustion of workers, poor patient care, increase in staff turnover and significant harm to the organization reputation.
Solution
Emotional intelligence was found to be the lowest skill demonstrated by healthcare leaders in a study conducted by Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) in 2010. It is a clear indication that organizations are called to invest in training of healthcare professional. The concept of emotional intelligence should be a compulsory requirement for health care workforce including nurses, physicians, public health officers and institutions that teach public health and all health administrators. The healthcare industry is filled with pressures and demands that deems emotional intelligence crucial.(CCL 2010) Despite emotional intelligence not being an inborn or gene related quality, there exist resources for developing learning and teaching the skills and should, therefore, be incorporated in leadership training both in theory and practical leadership workshops for healthcare workers.
Results of the EI quiz .
The emotional intelligence test sought to examine personal understanding of other people’s emotions such as shame, embarrassment contempt, guilt, sadness, happiness flirts, love, excitement surprise, politeness, and compassion. The presentation of facial expressions requires a choice of the emotion that the person is experiencing. It seeks to evaluate capability to recognize understand and interpret emotions of others. It offers results in a sale of 1- 20, demonstrating inability, average, and ability to recognize emotions. This test is important as it brings to attention personal ability and raises a personal concern about the relationships a person has. Having sore 12/20 I feel that the test has made me more conscious, considerate and observant of other people emotions and feelings that will help me improve my relationships. It has provided insights on areas of ignorance or assumptions that I usually make and need to work on.
References
Center for Creative Leadership (2010). Addressing the leadership gap in healthcare. What's needed when it comes to leader talent? A white paper. Greensboro, NC: CCL; July
Birks, Y. F., & Watt, I. S. (2007). Emotional intelligence and patient-centered care. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 100(8), 368–374.
Fernandez Claudia S. P., Peterson Herbert B., &Holmstrőm Shelly W. (2009). Developing emotional intelligence for healthcare leaders. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
