Emotional Intelligence at Work

Emotional Intelligence at Work

A Personal Operating System
for Career Success

Richard M. Contino and Penelope J. Holt

Emotional Intelligence at Work:
A Personal Operating System for Career Success

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021.

Cover design by Charlene Kronstedt

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other
except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior
permission of the publisher.

First published in 2021 by

Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-018-8 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-019-5 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Business Career Development Collection

Collection ISSN: 2642-2123 (print)

Collection ISSN: 2642-2131 (electronic)

First edition: 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Matt, May, and Sue
 Description
Even though it is seldom acknowledged, the truth is that business runs
on emotion—yours and almost everyone else’s. And that emotion is often
negative, leading us into bewilderment, dysfunction, and failure.
This book explains how to face up to this reality and respond by
building street smarts and business emotional intelligence (BEQ). It sup-
ports your business success by developing your ability to recognize and
effectively manage the destructive emotional tendencies, hidden agendas,
and behaviors that exist all around you, and sometimes within you, that
block business progress.
Emotions don’t belong in the business process, we are told. And that’s
absolutely correct when destructive feelings disrupt the workplace. But
here is the dirty little secret: Irrational and runaway feelings nevertheless
dominate in many businesses and hold back professionals who are crippled
by emotional dynamics that often play out beyond conscious awareness and
their control.
Learn how and why emotions are a controlling factor in every career
or business success and failure, and how to work with them to achieve
your full potential by developing (BEQ). Expand and transform your
business thinking and approach, by learning to recognize common, hid-
den emotional issues in a simple and straightforward manner. Strengthen
your BEQ to achieve more accurate self-analysis, improved awareness,
and effective functioning that creates predictable and positive results
immediately.

Keywords
Emotional intelligence; career development; business success; career suc-
cess; corporate politics; building career confidence; business agendas;
business failure; business challenges; business strategies; business rela-
tionships; business mistakes; success strategies; business self improve-
ment; workplace dysfunction; overcoming career obstacles; manipulative
viii Description

people; unhealthy corporate culture; business agendas; overcoming ­failure;

difficult bosses; destructive coworkers; office p
­ olitics; work f­ailure and
success; career coaching
 Contents
Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi

Chapter 1 Business and Your Emotional Agenda�������������������������������1

Chapter 2 The Emotional Challenge in Business�������������������������������7
Chapter 3 Destructive Agendas: The Hidden Business Killer�����������11
Chapter 4 The Basics About Emotions in Business��������������������������19
Chapter 5 Society’s Indoctrination and Mistaken Beliefs�����������������27
Chapter 6 Handling Difficult People�����������������������������������������������33
Chapter 7 Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable�����������39
Chapter 8 Deceptive and Misguided Decision Making�������������������49
Chapter 9 Setting an Emotional Frame of Reference�����������������������57
Chapter 10 Uncovering Emotional Baggage��������������������������������������63
Chapter 11 Honing Business EQ by Spotting Tell-Tale Behaviors�����69
Chapter 12 Integrating the Basics������������������������������������������������������85
Chapter 13 Negotiating��������������������������������������������������������������������95
Chapter 14 Working Skillfully With Workplace Emotions��������������101
Chapter 15 Spotting Saboteurs��������������������������������������������������������111
Chapter 16 When Saboteurs Are In Charge������������������������������������119
Chapter 17 Pulling Together What You’ve Learned�������������������������125
Chapter 18 Business Battlefield Survival������������������������������������������135
Chapter 19 Building a Personal Emotional Brand For Success���������141
Chapter 20 The Wrap-Up���������������������������������������������������������������149

About the Authors�������������������������������������������������������������������������������157

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159
 Introduction
If you’re not where you want to be in business, this book has the answer.
It’s a guide to building street-smarts and Business Emotional Intelligence
(BEQ)—the ability, or operating system to recognize and manage effec-
tively the challenging or destructive emotional tendencies, hidden agendas,
and behaviors that emerge in the business environment.
Why is it critical that you apply yourself to building BEQ? Because,
contrary to what we are routinely advised, business runs on emotion—
yours and almost everyone else’s. And that emotion is often negative,
leading us into bewilderment, dysfunction, and failure.
We’ve all been told in countless ways that emotions—our feelings—
have no place in the business process. And that’s absolutely correct—at
least to the extent that emotions are destructive to business and the people
involved. But here is the dirty little secret, rarely if ever touched upon in
business schools, and never fully acknowledged or discussed by profession-
als: Business and its participants are held back, and sometimes totally crippled,
by irrational and destructive feelings. Feelings that are often not only completely
out of our conscious awareness, but at times completely out of our control.
It’s no wonder then that success and satisfaction are so elusive, when
all of us have a hand, by ignoring emotional dynamics, in unknowingly
dynamiting our progress, and the progress of the business we’re in—every
step of the way.
How did we get into this predicament? Simple—we were duped. By
our teachers. By our mentors. By our parents. By the business community.
Quite unintentionally, in most cases. They, along with society’s rheto-
ric about business in general, have virtually brainwashed us into believ-
ing that business is an unemotional endeavor whose sole objective is to
achieve profit and growth for the organizations and people involved. As a
result, we typically assume emotional issues, particularly destructive ones,
are not in play. A critical mistake. The truth is that emotions ­underlie and
control virtually every aspect of business success or failure.
xii Introduction

This book explains how and why emotions are a controlling factor
in every career or business success and failure, and how you must work
with them to achieve your full potential by building (BEQ). In fact, this
book will expand and transform your business thinking and approach.
It will guide you through common, hidden emotional issues in a simple
and straightforward manner. You’ll learn valuable concepts in develop-
ing BEQ, awareness, self-analysis, and effective functioning, so you can
achieve predictable and positive results immediately. You will gain a com-
petitive edge in business and will no longer be an unwitting victim of
office ­politics, manipulation, or self-destructive behaviors—your own and
other people’s.
 CHAPTER 1

Business and Your

Emotional Agenda
What Is Emotional Intelligence in Business?
The concept of IQ or intelligence quotient is well understood. A set of
standardized tests measure aspects of visual-spatial and auditory pro­
cessing, as well as short-term memory and processing speed, to define
a person’s ability to solve problems across a range of tasks. We think
of high-IQ individuals as smart problem solvers whose abilities we
can measure.
But what about emotional intelligence or EQ? In the last couple of
decades, thinkers and writers including, most famously, Daniel G ­ oleman,
the author of Emotional Intelligence, have explored why some people
are gifted at managing the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and
demonstrating emotional maturity, in their work and personal lives.
Goleman and others identify traits that might define an individual as
emotionally intelligent.
There is push-back, however, from the field of psychology. EQ, we are
advised, is not a psychometrically valid concept. Insofar as it is anything,
some psychologists suggest, it represents the Big Five trait agreeableness.
Agreeable people are compassionate and polite, but they can also be
pushovers. Disagreeable people, on average (if they aren’t too disagree-
able) make better managers, because they are straightforward, don’t avoid
­conflict, and cannot be easily manipulated.
It’s clear that clinical psychologists are staking out and protecting
their turf, from what they consider to be pseudo-science, to uphold the
integrity of psychometry, or the well-established science of measuring
human traits and personality. But regardless of whether social scientists
and psychologists approve of how EQ is conceptualized and measured
2 Emotional Intelligence at Work

as an aspect of human personality, it nevertheless continues to be a

popular concept in mainstream culture that most people understand
intuitively.
We all have friends, family, and colleagues who seem particularly
gifted at managing relationships, resolving conflicts, oozing diplomacy,
negotiating difficulties, inspiring confidence, promoting change, or who
are simply superb at connecting and getting along with others to ensure
successful outcomes.
The rest of us tend to speak of these types as being emotionally intel-
ligent. Or street-smart, if they are particularly good at seeing through
the games that people play in business, spotting the con artists, the trick-
sters, and the frauds. It’s just a shorthand way of saying that some for-
tunate types combine a winning set of attitudes, traits, and behaviors
that ensures them safer passage in the often stormy voyage of navigating
relationships and circumstances at work and in life.
What about you? Do you consider yourself emotionally intelligent?
Many of us do not. We struggle, which is why there are rafts of self-help
and personal development books. We understand that managing emo-
tions and getting along with others—what we unscientifically refer to as
EQ—is essential for success, and we need to get better at it.
So what is Business Emotional Intelligence or BEQ? It’s no more
than understanding how identifying and managing emotional agen-
das in business, and seeing through deception, is every bit as import-
ant as having the knowledge and intellectual capacity to be a rational
­problem solver.
Why is BEQ especially important? Because many people commence
their professional lives wrongfully assuming that rational thinking dom-
inates the business landscape, and that emotion is banished or margin-
alized. Business, we are all taught, is led by managers, lawyers, and bean
counters who run a tight ship, using clear objectives, rational and objec-
tive problem solving, and higher-order thinking. Wrong!
This could not be farther from the truth. Most of us have been priv-
ileged to work in healthy, constructive, and productive environments,
where emotional acting out is at a minimum. Too often, however, we find
ourselves in chaotic workplaces, run by dysfunctional bosses, who attract
toxic employees. Culture, they say, eats strategy for breakfast, and sadly
 Business and Your Emotional Agenda 3

we consistently find ourselves stuck in business cultures that progress

more along the lines of bad soap operas, than in functional organizations
run by talented and emotionally mature professionals.
Unhealthy culture and dysfunction are why corporations often invest
big dollars in organizational and leadership development, and personality
testing, as business leaders and HR professionals try to avoid hiring the
dysfunctional people who breed destructive environments.
It’s a perennial problem, as witnessed by the sheer number of column
inches and books that continue to mount, teaching us how to handle a
difficult boss, avoid backstabbing colleagues, and navigate a dysfunctional
workplace.

A Field Manual for Increasing Business

Emotional Intelligence
In this book, BEQ is not presented as a scientific theory or formal
approach to organizational development. It is simply a collection of use-
ful strategies, insights, and directions, gleaned from veteran, street-smart
business professionals, whose success has depended upon their ability to
manage workplace dynamics and avoid the emotional mine fields that
explode business progress.
This is a field guide of sorts on accepting that emotions are alive and
well and wreaking havoc in business, and what to do about them. It’s up
to you to figure out how you tick emotionally. It’s crucial that you learn
how to manage yourself and others at work, so that your business interests
are not undermined, and your professional goals are not sabotaged, by
you, or some character with the power to torpedo your success. This book
is here to help you.
We begin by looking inward. How many of us really understand how
we actually work emotionally, and to what extent we irrationally process
and react to what happens to us and around us? Most of us persist in
self-destructive habits that confound us, repeatedly stubbing our toe and
making the same avoidable mistakes over and over again.
We may take colleagues and friends at face value, believing we know
them and can predict their actions, only to be blindsided and betrayed
by behavior that we could not see coming. We enter into professional
4 Emotional Intelligence at Work

situations, investing in outcomes we feel sure of, only to watch them

disintegrate before our eyes.
Business Emotional Intelligence and street-smarts evolve as we learn
to be more discerning and perceptive in picking up on the emotional
drivers in the business landscape. This gives us clues about who the play-
ers really are, under the surface, what agendas are at play, and how any
situation is likely to evolve.
Business Emotional Intelligence often comes naturally with age and
experience. Neuroscientists observe that after thousands of human inter-
actions, a maturing brain becomes adept at a sort of pattern recognition.
With just a few clues, interactions, or data points, we are, as we age,
able to get what scientists call the “gist” of people or situations to predict
­outcomes more reliably.
But it’s not practical to wait until we’re long in the tooth to be able
to assess circumstances correctly. Career success demands that we become
as proficient at reading the tea leaves, so to speak, as accurately and as
early on as possible. Some people never seem to learn, however. They may
intelligently pile up information, but they continue to lack street-smarts
or EQ. Their amassed knowledge or credentials don’t necessarily make
them any more capable of detecting destructive emotional undercurrents,
which often sweep away the success that their analytical abilities predict
is guaranteed.
Back to those personality tests. They are no doubt helpful in getting a
handle on a professional’s orientation, attitudes, and behaviors; strengths and
weaknesses. But each of us is much more complicated than the results and
analysis that emerge from any test we take. It’s not so easy to pin us down.
We’re elusive. Each of us is a tricky and often unpredictable assortment of
innate qualities, shaped by complicated life circumstances and personal history.
Jeff, a Harvard Law School graduate and seasoned lawyer, confessed a
lifelong emotional struggle: “It’s hard being a truth-telling people pleaser,”
he jokes half-heartedly. Jeff explained how he has a natural inclination to
be forthright in presenting facts and well-timed insights, even if they are
brutal. At the same time, growing up in a punishing household has left
him irrationally afraid to deliver hard truths. His early experiences trained
him to opt for telling people what they want to hear. This puts him in a
troublesome bind: It is his job, and he is naturally predisposed, to speak
 Business and Your Emotional Agenda 5

truth forthrightly. At the same time, he harbors an irrational fear that

doing so might upset others and result in him being “punished,” as he
was when growing up.

Confidence and Locus of Trust

Veteran football quarterback Joe Namath once proclaimed that “kick-ass
confidence” is the key to success. But where does confidence, or faith in
oneself, come from? A key component of confidence is being able to trust
ourselves—our thinking, behavior, and decision making, even when we
get it wrong and set ourselves up to learn a painful lesson. Locus of trust is
just another way of saying “the place we put our trust.” That place should
be within ourselves whenever possible.
To be confident requires that we trust ourselves, but all too often in
business, we are taught to put our trust elsewhere, in so-called experts.
Our professional education, and preparation for life and career, often
directs us to listen to others instead of to ourselves. High on the list of
logical fallacies that undermine our thinking is what is known as “the
appeal to authority fallacy”—taking what so-called experts say at face
value, without using first principles to inquire for ourselves if a claim is
actually true for us in our current situation.
Success arises from self-confidence, which emerges when we trust our-
selves. This in turn develops when we learn how to challenge the ideas
and beliefs of others, no matter how brilliant they might be, which have
been handed down or passed to us, so that we can instead discover what is
uniquely true for us. In the real world, not the world of theory, we must
fall back on ourselves to make business and career decisions that dictate
our future and whether or not we thrive or fail.

Let’s Get Started: Learning to Deal With Hidden

Realities That Get in Your Way
We are going to offer approaches to removing emotional blind spots that
could be getting in your way, and to increasing your BEQ, in step-by-step
fashion. First, we will explore the basic emotional challenges you will
need to identify to overcome personal obstacles, some of which you may
6 Emotional Intelligence at Work

not be aware of. We will use real-world examples and case studies from
the authors’ personal experiences, as well as from interviews and encoun-
ters with other professionals. You will also be given exercises to hone your
awareness and help knock down or end-run challenges that are impeding
you, with the use of what we will refer to as a written development diary
of sorts, written notes we suggest that you take from time to time. This
will help you record and bring into clear focus any emotional blind spots,
conscious or unconscious.

A Final Point

It’s important when applying BEQ that you validate what does and does
not work. Don’t accept any idea or suggestion as true, until you have val-
idated it through your own experience. This way you develop a strategy
for success you can be sure works for you. Success comes from getting in
touch with the part of you that knows how to succeed, and then finding
techniques to validate this inner knowing. When results aren’t favorable,
you need to rethink what you’re doing or what you’ve been told.
 Index
Anxiety, 72–74 grip of compulsion, 46–47
Anxiety-driven decisions, 129–130 hidden bully, 42–43
Awareness development inability to listen, 19–20
situation, 60–61 sixth sense management, 33–34
task, 41 triggering worry, 138–139
troublesome personality types,
Back-stabbers, 89–90 92–93
Belief illusions, 69–70 confidence, 5
Business battlefield survival culture, 2–3
effective salespeople, 136 decision making, 55
emotionally challenging personality test, 4
individuals, 135 professional security blanket, 16–17
manipulative behavior, 135 Business game, 149–150
poor market conditions, 139–140 Business-related beliefs, 13–14
positive reinforcement, 136
using another’s anxiety, 138 Clues, 64, 66–67
Business/career negotiations Comfort zone challenge
contract negotiation, 97–98 awareness development task, 41
effective negotiator, 96 cheating, 41
good negotiator, 95 consequences, 40–41
manipulation, 100 discomfort, 47
opponent, 98 emotional blind spots, 42–44
realistic negotiator, 97 internal scripting, 40
reasoning, 99 positive thinking, 45–46
risks, 99 quick analysis, 41–42
successful negotiator, 96 uncomfortable success, 44–45
Business Emotional Intelligence unsolvable solvable problems, 39
(BEQ), 2 Complaints, 71–72
age and experience, 4 Complicated people, 85–86
awareness challenge, 21–23 Confidence, 5
awareness development task, 41 Contract negotiation, 97–98
awareness exercise, 17 Conventional thinking, 58
basic emotional challenges, 5–6 Counterproductive emotional needs,
career success, 4 13
case study, 7–10
complaining habit, 83–84 Deceptive and misguided decision
decision making, 52–53 making
emotional frame, 59–60 case studies, 50–51
emotional needs, 108–109 cover-up game, 49–50
fear of being honest, 22 fear, 55–56
feigning anger, 136–138 goal setting, 53–54
full-time job, 50–51 troubling unknowns, 53
160 Index

Depression, 78 family needs, 106–107

Destructive emotional agendas financial survival, 103–104
business misconceptions, 11 irrational anxieties, 105–106
business-related beliefs, 13–14 job security, 104
case study, 11–13, 16–17 levels of achievement, 102
comfort zone, 16 personal identity, 104–105
emotional reality, 11 subordinate/associate, 101–102
emotional temperature, 14–15 Emotional temperature, 14–15
hidden agenda spotting, 14 Emotions
uncomfortable feelings, 16 blind spots, 31
Destructive manager counterproductive behaviors, 19
bad management style, 121 destructive emotional issues, 23–25
classic, 119–120 fear of being honest, 22
destructive feeling, 120 frame of reference
destructive management blaming, 57
personal development, 122–123 conventional thinking, 58
positive management, 123–124 mental deck clearing, 60–62
techniques, 122 self-limiting behavior, 57
psychological trap, 121–122 theories, 57
Development Diary, 61 ground floor insight, 20–21
Difficult people handling hidden emotional motivations,
case study, 33–34 22–23
proper mindset, 35–36 inability to listen, 19–20
side stepping traps, 34–35 management, 21–22
Excessive drinking/drugs, 81
Effective negotiator, 96
Embarrassment, 75–76 Failure-prone employees, 111–113
Emotional awareness, 153–154 Family needs, 106–107
Emotional baggage Fear, 152
awareness development exercise, Fear and decision making, 55–56
66–77 Financial survival, 103–104
clues, 64, 66–67 Forward-thinking self-dealers, 49
discomfort, 64 Frustration, 77–78
multistep process, 63–64 Frustration-based decisions, 130–131
well-hidden, 63
Emotional blind spots, 42–44 Habitual procrastination, 81–82
Emotional challenge Harvard Business Review, 24
case study, 7–10 Hot-tempered employees, 116–117
failures, 7 Human personality, 2
men and women, 30–31
rational thinking, 30 Impostor syndrome, 126–127
Emotional intelligence Intelligence quotient (IQ), 1
agreeable people, 1
disagreeable people, 1 Job fantasies, 77
Emotional needs Job security, 104
case study, 108–109
and employment Leadership development, 146
acceptance, 107–108 Listening difficulty, 79
 Index 161

Manipulation, 100 Problem managers, low business EQ,

Mind reading, 126–128 119
Misread problem people Procrastination, 81–82
failure-prone employees, 111–113 Projection, 126–127
hot-tempered employees, 116–117
negative employees and naysayers, Quiet employees, 115–116
113–114
passive-aggressive employees, 117 Rational thinking, 30
quiet employees, 115–116 Real business goal, 125–126
“Yes Men” handling, 115 Realistic negotiator, 97
Reasoning, 99
Negative coworkers, 90–92
Negative employees and naysayers, Self-confidence, 5
113–114 Self-dealing, 50
Negative thinking, 74–75 Self-deception, 82
Negativity, 150 Self-destructive tendencies, 66
Neuroscientists, 4 Self-evaluation, 128, 152
Self-knowledge, 152
Optimistic revenue predictions, 70 Society’s indoctrination and mistaken
beliefs
case study, 29–30
Passion project, 131–132
emotional challenge, 30–31
Passive-aggressive employees, 117
entrepreneurs, 28–29
Passive-aggressive personality, 89–90
Staying present, 150–151
Personal development, 122–123
Stressful work situations, 104
Personal emotional brand
Successful negotiator, 96
case studies, 143–144
emotional makeup, 143 Tell-tale behaviors
emotional strengths and anxiety, 72–74
limitations, 147 belief illusions, 69–70
executives’ pride, 142 complaining, 71–72
growth and progress, 144–145 criticism, 76
high Business EQ, 142 depression, 78
leadership development, 146 embarrassment, 75–76
marketing, 141 excessive drinking/drugs, 81
reputation, 142 frantic activity, 80–81
span of control, 144 frustration and giving up, 77–78
Personal identity, 104–105 job fantasies, 77
Personality test, 4 listening difficulty, 79
Personality types loan request case study, 70
case study, 92–93 negative thinking, 74–75
classic business stereotype, 86–89 pressure avoiding, 80
negative coworkers, 90–92 procrastination, 81–82
passive-aggressive personality, self-deception, 82
89–90 worrying, 79
Positive thinking, 45–46
Problem listeners, 79 Unconscious emotions, 14