There is an adage — After first two levels of the hierarchy, almost every job is a people’s job. In other words, as one climbs the career ladder, the profiles become a lot more about understanding, persuading, helping or leading people. But in today’s era dominated by service industry, even the first two levels would generally qualify as people’s job.
Yes! It is all about people — partners, investors, colleagues, associates, vendors, and of course the all-important customers. So, irrespective of the industry, sector or functional area, the fact remains that the relationships and associations are at the heart of one’s career goals of success, repute and significance.
Coming to brass tacks, all relationships are based on that all-important connect. To establish a connect, two persons need to connect by observing nonverbal behaviour and understanding emotions for greater interpersonal effectiveness and self-management. That is the realm of social intelligence.
Thus, it is a skill backed by conceptual depth. It helps you observe a person’s gestures, postures and expressions in the light of the emotional counterparts. And if you can connect emotionally then you can synchronise behaviorally and thus excel interpersonally.
What makes this skill even more important is its applicability in each area of enterprise. let’s take the domain of Sales and Marketing. Selling is more of a social activity than a commercial one. And it all comes down to establishing connect — that intangible bond that brings people close to any person or idea.
How does anyone establish that connectIJ It is all about connecting at emotional level — the level at which all important choices are made. And to connect at emotional level, it is important to understand people’s emotions and how they are manifested. That’s where social intelligence comes into play.
There are buyers who find it difficult to express their emotions through words, some others who don’t even like to do so, and then some who aren’t even aware of how they are really feeling. This is what puts even greater responsibility on the sales professionals. They need to prepare people’s emotional profiles and that too real-time and in their own minds. Many researchers have begun to term it emotion analytics.
All it needs is a set of eyes that can participate in that communication. These subtle and nonverbal signals have the potential to make or break a lead or a deal. And a socially intelligent sales professional can go a long way in positively affecting all the key-measures, ranging from organisation’s top-line to Customer Relationship Management outcomes. Such customer-centricity makes all the difference.
In the HR domain, it is a fact that the quality of people, rightness of their attitude and their fit with the culture are the most important aspects of organisation building. It is the HR person that recruits, refines and retains talent. And for all these HR pursuits, social intelligence paves the way most effectively.
An HR person trained in the skill of social intelligence can understand candidates’ unadulterated emotional-states, complexes or insecurities by observing and correctly interpreting their expressions, gestures and postures. While words can be manipulative, these non-verbal cues represent a person’s real-self to the fullest. Moreover, it is a valuable tool even for appraisal or exit interviews.
Similar points can be made regarding other functional areas like finance, operations or systems, and what will remain evident is that social intelligence is an important ingredient for one’s career success.
With technology exerting increasing influence on the way humans work, relate and live, one of the biggest challenges is and would be to restore human element in humans. People will interact at thought level but would be deprived of the emotional connect that underlies all meaningful human pursuits.
The breakneck speed of nearly everything would pressurise all sorts of human interactions to become superficial. This would lead to symptomatic resolution of way-deeper human issues. For instance, people would begin to take statements, opinions and questions at face value, without paying attention to emotional undertones that characterise almost every human communication.
This would make social intelligence an indispensable skill to have in future society and profession.
(The writer is Sandeep Atre, founder-director, Socialigence).