Why Emotional Intelligence is essential in the age of Artificial Intelligence
As we move towards the age of Artificial Intelligence, the need to develop our emotional competencies becomes stronger. Most of our challenges, personal or professional, are a result of our inability to recognise and manage our emotions, causing internal and external conflicts, eventually taking our focus and productivity away.
Emotional Intelligence is this umbrella term that encompasses the larger cognitive abilities of self- awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social awareness, and relationship management. Our ability to be aware of our emotions, to regulate them and use them to motivate ourselves, along with our awareness of others’ emotions and emotional needs, helps us in better relationship management. This key skill is what distinguishes good leaders and has become an extremely important employability skill in today’s complex work environment.
Emotional Intelligence helps us navigate through our personal limitations, helping us focus better, and lead to more productive outcomes in our professional lives. Working with people requires these higher emotional competencies so that we are able to build strong relationships in our personal as well as professional lives. And our ability to form this strong relationship with our self, through self-awareness and self-regulation, translates effectively in our social relationships as well as enhances our cultural awareness and sensibilities.
As human beings, we are hard-wired for emotions and emotional expressions, and this is what differentiates us from technology. In this fast-growing technology-driven world, we need to motivate ourselves and others to develop our emotional competencies to be able to stay relevant in the job market. We have seen throughout our history that self-aware and empathetic leaders are the ones who have made the real difference globally. So let us utilise this essential ability to manage emotions and power through the global business world, using emotions!
Click Here, to read more articles on Emotional Intelligence.
About the author: Bijal Oza 
Ms. Bijal Oza is the Director (Cross-Campus) of the Counseling & Coaching Centre at SP Jain School of Global Management. A Clinical Psychologist and Counselor, Bijal has completed her Masters in Clinical Psychology with Counseling Specialization from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology- Chicago, Illinois. She has also acquired a Diplome de Langue Francaise from Alliance Francaise de Bombay, and has also worked as a French Language Instructor for Basic and Intermediate French at a Professional Foreign Language Center in Mumbai, India. She has had an enriching and diverse experience as a therapist/ counselor for 8 years in the United States, India, and in Dubai. Bijal has been a certified Domestic Violence Trainer/ Counselor in the state of Illinois, USA. Her research interests lie in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Counseling, International & Social Psychology, Emotional Intelligence, Personality Development, and Coaching for overall personal effectiveness of students and professionals.
