Toward a More Contextual, Psychological, and Dynamic Model of Emotional Intelligence

Our world is a quantifiable one, and so are people. Assigning numbers to behavioral and cognitive phenomena allows for relationships to be tested, categorizations to be made, and predictions about what people are likely to do. However, scores about people can be misapplied. Imagine an organization that is interested in revamping its culture by emphasizing communication and cooperation across boundaries and in general making the tenor of the interactions among personnel more positive. One key to helping with this may be to focus on employee emotional intelligence (EI), provide assessments of these capacities, and educate where gaps seem apparent. Maybe some employees are having difficulty recognizing their emotions or those of others, which can create problems in social interaction, while others’ difficulties stem from challenges to controlling frustrations at work. Depending on the size of the organization, this could be a very involved and