Lets remember that emotional intelligence, according to what was proposed by Howard Gardner, refers to the understanding of emotions and the capacity to manage them in a healthy way. This is divided in two: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. The last one refers to the capacity that let us understand ourselves with a self-analysis. If you want more information about it we recommend you to read the first part of this series: Emotional Intelligence and businesses (Part 1).
For the second part of this series of articles about Emotional Intelligence and its relation with businesses, I am going to talk about Interpersonal Intelligence. This intelligence is very important when we want to start a company because it let us understand the feelings and emotions of other people and relate with them in a better way. To understand what this intelligence means and what it implies I will refer to two subjects that should be developed:
– Empathy: this term refers to the ability that the human being must have in order to understand the emotions, feelings and needs of other people in order to respond accurately to their reactions and emotional expressions.
– Social Skills: these capabilities help to induce in others desirable responses. In other words they are a set of socially accepted behaviors that the human being learns throughout his life and that are manifested when he relates with other humans in order to achieve the objectives he desires.
An entrepreneur must develop empathy and social skills in order to be successful in businesses. Intrapersonal intelligence, which I wrote about in the first part of these series of articles, is very important but it is not enough because we must also develop interpersonal intelligence. When we have a company we are going to have to relate with many groups of people (employees, investors, clients, suppliers) and that is the reason why we must have interpersonal intelligence in order to obtain what we need. The better we know and understand our interlocutor the easier it will be to obtain our goals.
The invitation with these two articles is that even though it seems this subjects relates only with psychology, we must understand they are fundamental if we want to be successful in our businesses. Lets remember that the entrepreneurial path is not easy and that the success of it will depend on many factors. In this way it wont be enough having an excellent product or service, so we must try to enhance the range of factors that we can manage, and one of them is to work in our emotional intelligence to obtain our goals.
Image taken from Flickr.com