Using Emotional Intelligence and Managing Aggressive People

Feelings – which include both emotions and mood – directly affect your outlook, thoughts, and relationships. These, in turn, can dramatically impact your productivity.

Emotions are transient and can be intense. For example, you may dread the thought of giving a presentation, but the emotion dissipates quickly once you get into your stride.

Moods are less intense but longer lasting. For instance, if you enjoy your work, a happy mood colors your days – even if there are some difficult moments.

Contrary to what some may think, emotions and moods are anything but trivial in the workplace. Being aware of feelings and understanding their impact can help you identify their role so you can take action to mitigate or enhance their effects on performance.

Being able to recognize the impact of feelings in the workplace gives you the ability to read people to understand how productivity is affected, leverage the emotions in a situation, and shape feelings positively rather than allowing the negativity to continue.

Understanding the impact of feelings in the workplace, is important and because of this understanding, you will be able to to diffuse the conflicts and improve your performance in your team.

It's in your best interest to be aware of the emotional landscape around you. This enables you to read people accurately and understand the forces that affect their performance and decisions.

For instance, by recognizing and attending to our colleagues' feelings, we are going to be able to defuse tension and anxiety to increase productivity.

The characteristics of empathetic colleagues are:

• they listen without interruption or giving advice
• they read nonverbal cues such as tone of voice and body language
• they see things from other perspectives, understanding why people feel the way they do, and
• they act with sensitivity, being careful not to hurt, judge, or cut others off when they're speaking

The four areas of competency associated with emotional intelligence can be categorized in a simple matrix, based on whether they're personal or social, and focused on awareness or management.

Because empathy is so important in relationships, it's vital for social effectiveness at work. When you're sensitive to emotional currents around you, you're more likely to say and do the right things. So others enjoy your company and like working with you.

To use empathy when communicating with others, you can follow this procedure: suspend judgment and access the other person's perspective; identify feelings by paying attention; and communicate your understanding. This doesn't have to be in sequence – each activity may happen simultaneously.

Don't simply jump to conclusions about what someone else is doing or why. Other people have their own values and ways of doing things. Bear in mind that everybody's actions make sense from their point of view.

For example, you may be taken aback that a colleague never brings problems to your attention. But perhaps this person is reluctant to approach you and feels this would be presumptuous.

To accurately identify what other people are feeling, you need to pay attention to the emotional messages they're sending. So when others are speaking, listen to their words, watch their body language and facial expressions, and notice their tone of voice.

To communicate empathy, you need to acknowledge others' feelings and show you understand these feelings. You also need to demonstrate you're available and supportive, and be nonjudgmental.

To do this, you

Managing relationships requires and incorporates all other areas of competency that make up your emotional intelligence quotient – or EQ. To be competent within the relationship management area, you need to be aware of and able to manage your emotions, and able to recognize and empathize with emotions in others. You then need to use these interpersonal skills to build and maintain successful relationships.

To manage relationships effectively, it's important to encourage emotional intelligence in those around you. One way to do this is to model EQ competencies yourself. By behaving with emotional intelligence, you provide an example for others to follow.

This course details the characteristics of the six most common types of aggressive people and provides effective ways you can cope with their behaviors.

Aggressive behavior in the workplace is difficult for supervisors and co-workers to deal with calmly and rationally. An effective approach is to understand the types of behavior you can expect to encounter, as well as ways to cope with each type of aggressive co-worker.

In this course, you'll learn traits of the three types of hostile-aggressive people and the three types of passive- aggressive people. You'll also explore ways to deal with these types of aggressive co-workers and supervisors on the job.

Responding to aggressors. Use this job aid to assess how well you cope with hostile or passive-aggressive people in the workplace. How effective are your coping skills in these situations? Rate yourself using the scale 1=never, 2=seldom, 3=sometimes, 4=frequently, 5=always. Compare your score to the rating key that follows.

Verbal assailants want to get you emotionally involved in the no-win situations they set up. Then they feel superior to you when their verbal attacks succeed.

If you get hooked and try to play their game by their rules, you'll always lose. That's because verbal assailants create the game and its rules to their advantage.

Verbal assailants exist in practically every work environment. These are individuals with low self-esteem who use derision, patronizing attitudes, or judgmental behavior to knock down others while they build themselves up. If they can, they will draw you emotionally into their no-win situations.

To avoid these no-win situations, and to create a more positive work environment, you can use three effective strategies to handle verbal assailants in the workplace.

Hostile-aggressive dirty diggers can be found in just about every workplace, and they are difficult to be around. At their best or at their worst – depending on your view – they can offend just about everyone.

Their insensitive behavior seems to come naturally to them. Any contact you have with a dirty digger will most likely be unpleasant.

If there is a dirty digger in your workplace displaying hostile-aggressive behavior, you can use a number of strategies to cope with this individual.

Typically, dirty diggers are insecure individuals who use jokes, sarcasm, and offensive, insensitive, or disrespectful behavior when dealing with others.

But you may have to work with someone who treats you and co-workers this poorly – someone who is condescending, domineering, and easily enraged. People who display these hostile-aggressive characteristics are known as "hotheads." It's in your best interest to be able to identify traits of a hothead.

Hotheads exist in just about every work environment. These hostile-aggressive individuals can be condescending, domineering, irascible, and disruptive, and can have a negative effect on your workplace or team. Your goal is to cope with the hothead when you encounter him in the workplace.

You may even gain the hothead's respect if you deal with him appropriately. At a minimum, you'll maintain your self-respect. Three strategies, each of which are explained here, can help you defuse explosive situations with the hothead by dealing with him appropriately.

Brief description of the benefits drawn from applying the techniques presented in this course

Some of the values of knowing how to cope with passive-aggressive people in the workplace are that you are going to:

• feel in control of your work environment
• maintain your professional integrity
• deflect the behavior of your assailant.

Knowledge wardens exhibit a classic passive-aggressive type of behavior. You've heard the saying "Knowledge is power." Knowledge wardens have embraced that saying wholeheartedly.

They desire both power and control as a means to gain acknowledgment of their status or position. In their minds, if they have control and hold power, then others will have to acknowledge them as having great worth.

People can get frustrated and angry when information or materials they need are withheld from them. When this happens at work, your question becomes how to cope with the person withholding the information – a person known as a knowledge warden.

Your goal is to get the information you need to do your job effectively, no matter who is the keeper of that information.

Talking to someone who never responds to you can be frustrating. Unfortunately, this is probably a common experience for you if there is an unresponsive aggressor in your workplace.

The unresponsive aggressor is someone who fails to give a reasonable response – typical passive-aggressor behavior for this type of person. Before you can cope effectively with the unresponsive aggressor, you must be able to recognize this person in your workplace.

Unresponsive aggressors are present in most workplaces. These are individuals who fail to give responses to even your direct queries, which is typical of their passive-aggressive behavior.

They use avoidance and silence to manipulate others and to protect their own dignity and integrity. Since unresponsive aggressors can be disruptive to your workplace, you need to identify and cope with them effectively.

The waffler will support the strongest person in the room or go with the majority, the second waffler characteristic. If you observe her in a meeting, the waffler will wait to voice an opinion until the majority emerges.

She will vote with the majority. If the opinion shifts direction, you can be assured that the waffler's opinion will shift with it. It's amazing how fast a waffler can alter his support for someone or something.

Individuals known as wafflers exist in just about every work environment. These passive-aggressive individuals want to be liked, so they try to please everyone.

But instead, they aggravate everyone around them with their indecision. In addition, wafflers tend to avoid confrontation, have a habit of agreeing with everyone, usually side with the majority, and have an inordinate need for approval.

This type of behavior can cause frustration to build in the workplace, and result in a negative attitude throughout the work environment.

A brief list of strategies to use when dealing with aggressive people.

Course wrap-up and conclusions. Thank you for your interest!

You think knowing stuff changes the game? You think sitting in a library, stacking up facts like you’re building a Jenga tower, is gonna make you a winner? Man, that’s cute. But life ain't a trivia night. Information alone? It’s worthless. It’s like having a Lamborghini in your garage but you never learned how to drive. You just sit in it, making engine noises. Vroom vroom. People walk by, they see the car, but they also see you ain't going nowhere. You got all this knowledge, all these textbooks, but when life throws a punch, you’re still looking up the definition of "duck." It’s what you *do* with that information that actually matters. Don't be the person with the shiny car and no keys.