It’s a fact. A good organization displaying a high degree of emotional intelligence will tend to develop your skills and talent and help you to become a better and more productive individual.
In pursuit of your professional career, you may be looking for the right job, or you may in fact already be employed in a company but may not be too sure whether it’s worth your while to stay in it.
Here are three important questions experts say you need to ask yourself to rate a company’s emotional health:
- Would you want to be friends with your company? Friends, in general, make us happy. So if your organization were a person, would you be glad to see it and feel happy when you come to work. There’s usually some sort of a spark of energy and enthusiasm when we spend time with friends. Do you get this same “oomph” when you step into your office and begin to face that desktop computer? Like a friend, a great company will listen to what you have to say and value your opinions. Sure companies have their own way of listening to its people – face to face meetings, in-house surveys, and interviews – but top management’s doors should always be open to listening to your concerns like a friend does.Is your company open, frank and honest? Does it share with you its dreams and visions, its goals and challenges, and how it plans to face these? Of course, you shouldn’t expect your company to tell you everything, but it should have a level of openness that won’t alienate you and your peers. Friends don’t do that.
- Does your company see you the way you see yourself? There has got to be the right fit in there – between the company and you. In the context of race or sexual orientation, for instance, the environment should be completely open-minded and welcoming. If you’re gay, you should be encouraged to be as open as you’d want to be. If you value career and personal life balance, the company should have supportive policies towards achieving this. In other words, its value systems should run parallel to yours.
- Is the company set up to help you (and other employees) become a better person? Good companies have mentoring, coaching and various training programs to help develop your skills. They’ve got a set-up where new employees learn from the more senior ones. Too, there’s generally a feedback scheme from your immediate supervisor and other leaders from whom you’ll learn how to do things better. You’ll improve a lot more and faster if your managers constructively share their observations with you. It’s a good organization if they have a set of ideals including courtesy and respect for one another, the importance of teamwork, the need to listen and respond to others and the value of caring.
Should your answers to these questions be positive, rest easy, you’re in good company.
English (Australia)