If you’ve already positioned yourself in a San Diego premium coworking space, you’ve taken care of an important step. Having a good working environment is critical to success. But once you’ve addressed your tangible, external business needs, it’s time to look at the internal. If you haven’t already, it’s time to consider your emotional intelligence and how this can impact your business.

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a measure of your ability to memorize, process information and deduce, arriving at effective conclusions. In other words, it’s a measure of how “school smart” you are in efficiently doing things with the data that’s given to you. Emotional Quotient, or EQ, or emotional intelligence, is the measure of your ability to understand and interact with your feelings and those of others effectively.

This translates in business terms to an ability to effectively interact and deal with people. But why should this matter to you? It matters because you can’t run a business alone. Whether you have other employees, or you deal with customers and clients, at some point, you will have to interact with someone else, and the ability to do this well can translate to employee/customer loyalty, or even increased business.

How It Works

Emotional intelligence is critical for smoother interactions. With cultivated emotional intelligence, you can quietly resolve disputes, or even defuse them before they get serious. You can address employee or customer concerns in a positive way, rather than alienating, and you can build loyalty.

For example, someone with poor emotional intelligence would be unable to see their own emotions or how they affect their business. They may belittle and humiliate an employee, never realizing the reason this is being done is because of envy for that employee’s skill. Rather than retaining an employee that can bring in business, the business owner’s poor EQ has lost a skilled employee. High emotional intelligence would recognize envy and deal with it in favor of making more profits by encouraging that valuable employee.