The Highs and Lows of Emotional Intelligence: How does Emotional Labour and Workplace Training Affect Emotional Intelligence?

Abstract

The emotional intelligence construct continues to attract significant attention, research and investment from industrial and organisational psychologists, practitioners and organisations worldwide. This symposium presents some of the most recent academic and practitioner work being conducted in the area of emotional intelligence in Australia. Specifically, this symposium examines how these differing areas of research interrelate to increase our understanding of the affects emotional intelligence has on individuals in organisations. In total, three papers will be presented. The first presentation provides an overview of emotional intelligence from a practitioner perspective. In particular, this presentation focuses on some misconceptions that are currently impeding organisations from fully exploring the benefits of emotional intelligence. The second presentation then moves to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional labour during the workplace interactions of managers, peers and subordinates. The researchers found that specific emotional intelligence abilities directly relate to the experienced emotional labour of individuals in organisations. Finally, the third presentation provides the results of recent research showing how training individuals in relational and behavioural skills in organisations can contribute to increases in individual emotional intelligence. Clearly, if individuals in organisations can increase their emotional intelligence though training interventions, their ability to reduce negative emotional labour and to deal with other stressful events within the workplace may also be enhanced. This symposium provides a unique blend of practitioner and academic perspectives and outlines significant implications for future research and practice in the area of emotional intelligence.