Question

1. While emotional intelligence is considered an important and desirable quality in employees, discuss the ways in which emotional intelligence may be used in unscrupulous or unethical ways. For example, imagine you are running a Ponzi scheme similar to the one Bernie Madoff created and ran. How would social awareness, relationship management, self-awareness, and self-management benefit your efforts to swindle people and foundations? Rank the usefulness of each of the four dimensions of IE.

2. To what extent can organizational commitment and employee engagement contribute to a successful organization? Do situations exist where organizational commitment and employee engagement are counterproductive to organizational success?

3. what factors contribute to your own level of stress. Under what circumstances are you most likely to experience eustress? Under what circumstances are you most likely to experience distress? Do individual personalities play a role in how people experience stress?  

Answer 1

1. Like any skill learnt, emotional intelligence which inherently encompasses understanding humans can have an upside as well as a downside to it as well. If one can use the ability to analyse and understand emotions to help one's surrounding, one can also use the same to one's advantage.

Here's how it's possible. People who are good at people skills can also be great manipulators and can please their way out with higher ups to get their work done. Being good at controlling your own feelings gives you a leeway and helps you hide the truest of your feelings. Moreover, when you know how and what others feel, you can use that information to power your vested interest and make them act accordingly.

A phenomenon called the Awestruck Effect talks about how individuals can manipulate others by saying something so inspiring that actually people get mesmerized by how the person spoke rather than what the person spoke. This leads to glorification of that person and hence people start liking such individuals. A very strong example is that of the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi. His charisma reaches out to people in a way that people like him because of the way he speaks. He strategically expresses his emotions and reaches out to the masses. So much so that people stop thinking critically and base their arguments only on the basis of emotions. Sometimes it is for good, and well, sometimes it can be for bad.

People with self serving motives can use the gift of emotional intelligence to their advantage. They can intentionally disguise one emotion and express another to gain point on their vested interests. They can fabricate the behaviours they showcase so people can like them and eventually get used by them. Knowing is power which emotionally intelligent people understand and it can be used in any possible way. One's conscience is what sets a samaritan and a manipulator apart.

How can the dimensions of EI be used to swindle others:

a. Social awareness - Knowing what others think and feel gives you an edge over them by knowing what to say as well as how to say it to make people feel understood and accepted. This skills can be used to make people happy and this is something that all humans want. This works on the premise that if you make people happy by being aware of what they feel, they will eventually give in to what you want from them.

b. Relationship management- as mentioned above, people good at this dimension can disguise an emotion and show another just to make the other person like you. In any relationship, this is all that matters.

c. Self awareness and self management- knowing what one is feeling is the first step to understand and analyse what to show and what to keep hidden. This can be used an edge over others who are as transparent as glass, a virtue we have all been taught to embibe. However, people with high EI and an ability to use it to their advantage know that transparency is overrated and that emotions are not meant to be shown but only to be utilized.

2. Organizational commitment and employee engagement are two important pillars of organizational success. However, excess of both of the former can be detrimental to latter. Here's how its possible. Both, Employee engagement and organizational commitment is very important for any organization to survive however too much of it can be detrimental as it can infuse the tendency of polarisation as well as groupthink into the way groups make decisions in the organization. Because of it, there will be a tendency to take extreme decisions. Cohesiveness is a coveted aspect in a workplace but loads of it can cloud people's judgement and lead the decision makers to make emotional decisions rather than practical ones. This always backfires in the longer run.

It can also lead to a strong definition of one's group as in-group and other outside this group are termed as the out-group. In such a setup inter group conflict is evident and can lead to the downfall of the company.

Another way to look at employee engagement is that employee who are engaged too much within the organization can lead themselves to exhaustion and finally burnout. Which company has ever shined given it's shining emploees have brought themselves to absolute exhaustion? Giving one's all is a celebrated behaviour in the organizational setup. However, taking breaks to prevent fatigue and saving oneself from a breakdown is required to put that well need oil in the machinery.

3. The factors that lead to stress for me are work deadlines, family needs, the financial needs of the house as well that of the people dependent on me.

I experience eustress when I take the stressor as a challenge and see it as an opportunity to better myself. Some amount of stress is required for a performance that outsmarts your own self. Interpreting every stressor this way, strikes down the difficult part and helps in my betterment. This philosophy of mine is resounded in the lyric "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger".

Yes, individual personalities do play a role in how people experience stress. For instance People with Type A personality are proness to stress as they feel that they have to complete all given task well before time and that they need to solve all possible problems that come their way. People with Type B personalities on the other hand take life as it comes and have a very happy-go-lucky outlook towards life. As it's already evident Type As are more prone to stress rather than type Bs.