Bringing emotions into the business process
How emotional intelligence can guide core business processes
I have always been a people-person. In both my social and professional life settings, what energize me the most are the opportunities to meet, connect, and learn from people. During my encounters with people, what I focus on primarily is to ensure that I connect on a sincere level; to me, this sincerity is achieved by bringing in emotion to share empathy and get a deeper understanding of the matter at hand.
In business world, such inclination towards harnessing the power of emotion to connect and build relationship with others is defined as ‘emotional intelligence(EI)’. This ability is considered as one of the essential components to become a leader in the business world.
Throughout my career journey, I have seen countless moments where my emotional intelligence has been put to work to create tangible value. What has surprised me is that the implications of EI in business are quite wide. While the most intuitive area of application is people or relationship management, it can also be applied in overall business process. By applying EI towards target groups or users of a certain product or service, one can better understand the people it has been created for - this enhanced understanding will impact the overall quality of the product and its story delivered to the users. EI holds an immense amount of power in making or breaking the product.
In an effort to showcase the diverse ways EI impacts business, I have simplified business process into three steps:
Ideation - refers to a process in which novel and useful ideas are generated to solve a business problem.
Production - refers to a process that translates ideas into forms of services or products.
Distribution - refers to a process that allows developed products or services to be distributed to intended users.
In each step of the way, emotional intelligence plays a key part. In the next series of posts, I will dive deeper into the intersection between EI and the noted step above by reflecting on my personal experiences or lessons from institutions or current business leaders.