What is your emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is sometimes referred to EQ, as opposed to IQ which stands for intelligence quotient or intellectual intelligence. In a contest between people with book smarts versus people with street smarts, people with high street smarts or EQ are more likely to be successful, more productive, more profitable, less likely to be fired, are better at selling and make better leaders.

In your own practice, you have likely observed individuals who have great technical skills but poor people skills. Ultimately it is hard to work with employees with low emotional intelligence because the dental practice is a customer service and team-oriented environment.

Organizations, just like people can be emotionally intelligent...or not!  For a dental practice to be emotionally intelligent there must be a connection between the stated values or philosophy of the practice and the behavior of all of the employees including the leader. Sometimes organizations really operate under a different set of values than the ones they present to the public. When the unstated values do not mesh with the stated values, then the organization is disconnected with itself. This results in an emotionally unintelligent company that is unable to learn or to be truly self-aware.

In this article you will take a short assessment to discern how emotionally intelligent you think your practice is. Distribute this assessment to your team members and use it as a conversational tool. The goal is to increase your self-awareness which is the foundation of emotional intelligence.

The Emotional Intelligence Worksheet:

Agree

Disagree

Emotional Intelligence Competency

We provide on-going training about communication skills for employees.

Directing & coaching others

We understand how each employee contributes to the practice’s vision.

Collaboration and Self awareness

When things go wrong, we don’t try to find someone to blame for the screw-up.

Managing our own and others’ emotions

Our vision /philosophy includes the understanding that we strive for a better future for our patients as well as for employees.

Optimism, building bonds

We have official meetings where we honestly share our opinions. We don’t have “unofficial” meetings after the meetings where we share what we really think and feel.

Collaboration and Communication

We’re always interested in learning new techniques or expanding technology to help us to improve.

Adaptability

We have ground rules for meetings.  We respect and act in accordance with these norms for behavior.

Conscientiousness

and Managing emotions

There is usually a low level of tension here or tolerable levels of stress.

Self awareness, Adaptability, Managing emotions

Employees (including the Dr) are willing to admit when they’ve made mistakes or have had failures.

Self awareness and Conscientiousness

We intentionally treat our patients with respect and compassion so that they feel safe, valued and well treated.

Service orientation