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O P I N I O N
Emotions in business It’s not about what emotions we experience, but how we harness and direct our emotions that will impact our success or failure.
I n the AEC industry, each constituent group has a stereotypical emotional profile. Engineers are characterized as emotionless number crunchers, architects as artistic prima donnas, and contractors as argumentative hard cases. We all probably know people who fit those generic descriptions, but if you focus on the most successful members of each group the public emotional profiles become much more homogeneous.
Stephen Lucy
In the relationship-driven work environment, valuing your emotional intelligence – how you recognize and use emotional information to guide your behavior and thinking – can be one of the best predictors of your success and the success of your firm. According to TalentSmart, an EQ testing organization serving Fortune 500 companies, of the 34 important workplace skills, including such skills as time management, decision-making, teamwork, and communication, EQ is the strongest predictor of performance and forms the foundation for the other business skills critical to success. So, as we are all emotional beings, it is not about what emotions we experience, but how we
harness and direct our emotions that will impact our success or failure. ❚ ❚ Harnessing negative emotions. We have all expe- rienced the manager with the explosive personality who is continually railing about everything that happens. Similarly, we have seen the business owner who was akin to an apocalyptic preacher during the economic downturn. In both cases, no one wants to be around them, each fails to achieve success and, in some cases, their firms are now gone. They focused on their negative emotions at the expense of all else. Aggression, anger, fear, and grief – all of which have negative connotations – can actually turn into posi- tive events provided they are managed and focused
See STEPHEN LUCY, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER November 27, 2017, ISSUE 1225
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