Communication Skills of a Person With a High EQ

EQ = Emotional Intelligence

Four Main Factors of EQ: Self-management, empathy, relationship management and self-awareness.

My current boss has high emotional intelligence. I will use the name “Mary” for anonymity. Mary demonstrates empathy on a daily basis. She is patient, understanding, listens and helps her employees whenever they need it. Mary is the assistant director for the entire hospital and is in charge of many employees, is on-call basically seven-days a week and constantly has meetings. I have never once witnessed her “losing it”, or not allowing time for one of her employees or any patients. She can sense when someone else is stressed out and always offers to help with a solution. She is also interested in helping her employees (such as myself), learn and train as much as possible to be able to add to our resumes and move-up within the organization. Mary also demonstrates relationship-management on a daily basis. She knows how to communicate well with her peers and is able to use a flexible approach depending on their communication style. She is able to reflect on each individual to ensure the best work environment possible.

One example of a challenging interpersonal situation that Mary had to deal with was when two other employees sharing an office next to hers, started arguing. The argument was built up tension between the two which I believe is because they have extremely different communication styles. These two do the same job and need to work together on projects. The argument was because Employee One had asked for help, figured out how to solve the problem on her own, and then advised Employee Two to “forget it”. Employee Two did not like the “forget it” response and took it as being disrespectful due to their past history of not getting along. Employee Two then responded with a passive-aggressive come-back and it went back and forth from there. The two continued to get louder and louder until Employee One walked away from her desk.

Mary was advised of the situation and immediately stepped in to help resolve the issue as much as possible. She spoke with both employees individually and understands that Employee Two is a very “nervous” person. She gets defensive very quickly and works better on her own and not in a group. In the past, before Employee One started working, she was in the office by herself. With that being said, it was agreed that Employee One would move for now to a separate office space. Mary spoke with their direct boss in the department and they are going to continue to work with each other and have weekly meetings with their direct supervisor to help with communication.