Emotional Intelligence

Sample Answer

Management of Difficult Workplace Situations

Social and emotional intelligence refers to the ability to manage one’s emotions and understand those of others. Emotional intelligence enables individuals to observe, interpret, evaluate, and manage emotions during decision-making. The ability to utilize emotional intelligence in decision-making and interpersonal communication can be applied in workplaces. Workplaces often experience difficult situations such as employee conflicts, overwhelming responsivities, and struggles between stakeholders with opposing ideas, needs, beliefs, values, or goals.

In order to solve these difficult situations and implement joy in the workplace, one should be aware of the key elements of emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, social skills, empathy, motivation, and self-regulation. The present paper provides a detailed overview of how advanced professional nurses can utilize social and emotional intelligence power skills to manage difficult workplace situations and implement joy in the workforce.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness involves recognizing and understanding one’s emotions, strengths, and weaknesses (Rasheed et al., 2019). Advanced professional nurses’ level of self-awareness determines their ability to avoid being biased when resolving workplace conflicts. Nurses who are highly self-aware understand how they feel, why they feel so, and the impact of their feelings. Such nurses have the capacity to objectively examine themselves, manage their emotions, and overcome negative motives that have the potential to cause harm to the surrounding. White and Grason (2019) confirm that the ability to objectively examine one’s feelings and overcome negative emotions is essential in the workplace as it helps avoid biases when resolving conflicts between nurses with opposing ideas and needs.

Self-regulation

Self-regulation is the ability to manage emotions. Advanced professional nurses must be able to manage their emotions by respecting each other’s opinions and staying in control. Self-regulation skills can be used to overcome difficult workplace situations stemming from struggles between colleagues with opposing ideas and needs. In such situations, advanced professional nurses should practice being calm, staying true to their values, and embracing differences in thinking and abilities.

Self-management

Like self-regulation, self-management enables individuals to control and utilize their opinions, feelings, or motives consciously and positively. Advanced professional nurses who understand their purpose, prioritize their well-being, and hold themselves accountable for any mistake are more likely to avoid difficult workplace situations such as overwhelming responsibilities and task-based conflicts. For this reason, an advanced professional nurse can manage difficult workplace situations by increasing awareness of the need and importance of self-management skills among their colleagues.

Interpersonal Communication

Interpersonal communication is the basis of teamwork and care coordination among advanced professional nurses. Difficult workplace situations, such as overwhelming responsibilities and task-based conflicts among employees, are triggered mainly by poor interpersonal communication. Conversely, effective interpersonal communication skills are essential in addressing workplace issues such as task-based conflicts, inferiority complexes, misunderstanding, and inappropriate compliance with necessary policies. Hence, advanced professional nurses can manage difficult workplace situations by adopting various communication technologies that enhance interpersonal communication

Executive Function

Executive function is the capacity to set goals, plan, and implement while exercising self-control and avoiding unnecessary interruptions. Advanced professional nurses who possess executive function skills have the urge to enlighten others on the need and ways of setting goals, exercising self-control, staying focused, and avoiding distractions (Torabizadeh et al., 2019). Awareness of the need and ways of setting goals, exercising self-control, and avoiding distractions is an effective way of managing difficult workplace situations, such as struggles between nurses with opposing ideas and needs.

Social Awareness

Social awareness is the ability to understand social norms and embrace differences in ideas, beliefs, skills, gender, class, and race. Social awareness enables an individual to view things from other people’s perspectives. According to White and Grason (2019), perspective-taking enables an individual to empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds. The success of advanced professional nurses relies more on their ability to embrace diversity within their workplaces. Difficult workplace situations such as misunderstanding and inferiority complex are often caused by the inability to acknowledge the differences in skills, ideas, gender, race, and socioeconomic status. For this reason, an advanced professional nurse can help manage difficult workplace situations by educating other nurses on the need and importance of social awareness.

Achieving Results Using SEI Power Skills

Professional Presence

Professional presence is the ability to build a good impression of competence, authenticity, and trustworthiness in accordance with their area of specialization. To achieve professional presence, a nurse must understand how to apply social and emotional intelligence skills in the workplace. Self-awareness and social awareness are some of the basic skills I can apply at the workplace to claim an excellent professional presence. Self-awareness enables me to focus on my actions, thoughts, and emotions within the area of my profession. At the same time, social awareness promotes perspective-taking. Knowledge of the importance of considering other people’s opinions is necessary as it will help build my professional presence.

Enhanced Mindfulness in Healthcare

Besides professional presence, it is important to enhance mindfulness in healthcare. As an advanced professional nurse, I can apply self-awareness and social awareness skills to understand my feelings and acknowledge others’ perspectives and contexts in the workplace. Understanding my feelings and embracing other people’s perspectives will help minimize mistakes and enhance efficiency to achieve the desired goals.

Positive Social Presence

Professionalism requires a positive social presence that brings a sense of caring and belonging. A positive social presence involves being connected with other stakeholders, interacting, and having a healthy relationship. I can apply self-awareness and social awareness skills to encourage, share ideas, and interact positively to promote a sense of caring and belonging.

Culture of Joy to Solve Incivility

Through self and social awareness skills, I intend to create a good organizational culture that encourages conflict resolution in a peaceful manner. The use of unbiased conflict resolution methods to address workplace conflicts is an effective way of creating joy in the workforce. It also creates a conducive working environment that promotes sharing of new ideas and collective decision-making.

Improving Joy in Work

Step 1 What Matters to Staff

IHI frameworks for improving joy at work provide a comprehensive outline of how a nurse leader can pinpoint the impediments to joy and introduce measures and strategies to bring joy to the nursing workforce (Balik, 2018). The first strategy for finding joy is to identify the needs and preferences of the staff. As a nurse leader, I will interview nurses and other stakeholders on what matters to them at the workplace. Also, I intend to make them feel that their ideas matter to the organization and that they can make decisions when running their projects.

Step 2 Unique Impediments to Joy

There are numerous obstacles to joy in the workplace. As a nurse leader, I will conduct thorough research on common workplace conflicts and the root cause of these conflicts. The research findings will help implement an appropriate plan to address these challenges and solutions to improve joy in the workplace. One of the ways I can use to address common workplace differences is to increase awareness of the need to embrace diversity.

Step 3 Systems Approach with Shared Responsibility

After identifying various challenges that reduce joy at the workplace, I will apply my knowledge of systems thinking to address the challenges. Systems thinking involves recognizing the contribution of each component and sharing responsibility in the organization. Hence, I will delegate appropriate responsibilities to the leaders and other members to improve and sustain joy in the workforce.

Step 4 Improvement Science to Test Approaches

The primary objective of initiating joy in the workplace is to create a conducive working environment and improve nurses’ morale (Balik, 2018). For this reason, it is important to measure and determine the effectiveness of the strategies employed to initiate joy in the workplace. The most efficient approaches that can be used to measure joy at the workplace include employee happiness surveys and customer metrics. Conducting employee happiness surveys and reviewing customer metrics provide a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of the strategies used to initiate joy at the workplace.

Conclusion

Teamwork and effective coordination among advanced professional nurses result in evidence-based practice, quality service delivery, and reduced malpractices. However, difficult workplace situations such as task-based conflicts, struggles between nurses with opposing ideas, and overwhelming responsibilities are major hindrances to teamwork and coordination. Social and emotional intelligence power skills can be applied by advanced professional nurses to manage these difficult workplace situations. I intend to utilize the IHI framework to implement joy at my workplace by conducting a survey on the impediments to workforce happiness, addressing the impediments, and testing the strategy’s effectiveness.

References

• Balik, B. (2018). Joy in work The vital role of nursing leadership. Nurse Leader, 16(4), 220-223. doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2018.05.006
• Hess, J. D., & Bacigalupo, A. C. (2011). Enhancing decisions and decision‐making processes through the application of emotional intelligence skills. Management decision. doi.org/10.1108/00251741111130805
• Torabizadeh, C. A. M. E. L. L. I. A., Mahnazrakhshan, Z., & Njimehbeygi, B. (2019). Professional capability in nursing. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Research, 11(1), 556-566. https //doi.org/10.31838/ijpr/2019.11.01.075
• Rasheed, S. P., Younas, A., & Sundus, A. (2019). Self‐awareness in nursing A scoping review. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28(5-6), pp. 762–774.https //doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14708
• White, D. E., & Grason, S. (2019). The importance of emotional intelligence in nursing care. Journal of Comprehensive Nursing Research and Care, 4(152), 1–3. doi.org/10.33790/jcnrc1100152