Isn't emotional development a key to "team-work"?
The other evening I was speaking with a friend who is at a senior manager position in a large corporate company. He asked me a very interesting question and the conversation that followed was really enriching hence I thought I would share it with all. That evening his mind was occupied with something that was bothering him, He said that they really work hard in finding the best of the talent and hiring them to work for the company, individually each person passes through quite a few rounds of interview before they decide if they want that person to work with the company, however while working for the company it is very difficult to get them to work as a team. His biggest challenge was to get all the people working for the company to work as one unit and he said “how amazing would it be if all of them work as one team, that way the company would grow leaps and bounds”
On these thoughts came his question - Why do people find it difficult to get along and there is always a small amount of friction and it is a struggle to keep it small and not let it grow big or we end up losing valuable employees? Why is it so difficult to get work done by people even after motivating them with money, facilities and sessions from several motivational speakers? When almost all people applying for a job write ‘team player’ on their CV why is it that it is only on papers and not in reality? Why is it that people even after being told that it is an important trait to get promoted in the organisation fail to understand the importance of people management skills?
I had to stop him mid way or the questions would have been too many to comprehend and answer, so I put my people management skills on display and started with an apology to interrupt him. What followed was a lengthy discussion lasting more than a couple of hours, documenting that would take several blogs, so I am going to attempt to write here only the crux of it.
In a company there are several people working, each with a different economic background, with a different parenting and upbringing and each has their own personality traits. Their emotional intelligence and level of self awareness is different. They all have the potential in them but in reality potential to do something is quite different from what is actually accomplished. The company wants their skills and their dedication to use those skills to accomplish the task that the company has assigned to them. However each employee comes with their own baggage of emotional development along with the skills that they have acquired. For example a software engineer has excellent coding skills but has a superiority complex and is always critical of other people’s work, when in a team he will be extremely critical of the work by others and this can lead to hostile work environment and an employee with a personality of easily taking an offence might end up having constant friction. In this example both the employees are a great valuable asset to the company however together they cannot work and there is very little that the motivational speakers can do as both are motivated individually to work and achieve the goals set however they would never be able to work as a team.
Emotional intelligence is never taught in the schools or colleges as it is yet not considered as a skill for survival. Companies pay very little attention to emotional development and the only process they rely on is motivation (motivation is also a form of positively impacting emotions or in other words called positive psychology) yes motivation does help for a while but the impact fades away too quickly and what the companies should be aiming at is for emotional development of employees (this is a topic for another blog). As individuals, very few people invest in getting a coach or a counsellor as they are not aware that it is a tool to help with their growth and success. In the coming days I would like to write in detail how a mental/emotional health counsellor can change the game for career success.
Hope this did open a chain of thoughts for you and made you think differently. Stay tuned for more on the topic of emotional health and how it impacts one’s success.
