How emotional intelligence; mindfulness and mindlessness techniques impact self-efficacy.

According to the research of Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, the definitions of the terms would be elucidated as follows:

Self-efficacy: represents one’s belief in one’s abilities to meet a goal set by himself/herself (2012). The perspective is precisely summarized in the sentence that “I think I can and I will”

Emotional intelligence refers one’s ability to deal with one’s emotions to “stay calm and clear-headed during the period of stress” or obstacles (2012). This is the important way to deal with the unfamiliar cultural situations since emotional intelligence plays an important role in knowing one’s emotions, managing them, adapting or adjusting them in addition to recognizing the emotions of others to ensure the proper developing the relationship (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012).

Throughout the definitions perceptively, it is obvious that self-efficacy is considered as the consequence of emotional intelligence which the high or low level of the latter could impacts someone’s self-efficacy.

Mindfulness techniques

Mindfulness is the capacity to be fully self-aware of all that one experiences inside the self—body in addition to the happenings around us (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012).

Mindfulness shows the creativity and innovation since mindfulness is not thinking in the terms of labeling the specific experiences but it observes whatever is happening, which helps someone to improve his cognition in the diverse perspectives of the objects in intercultural situations to step out comfort zone for higher level of self-efficacy.

Leaders with mindfulness techniques are more open to possibilities and diverse perspectives of not only objects but also people, places and ideas (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012), thereby helping them overcome obstacles in the process and focus on final goal and performance which are the outcomes of self-efficacy

Mindlessness techniques

In contrasting, mindlessness refers thinking in terms of limitation and labeling the specific experience based on the limited observation, thereby causing limited thinking and behaviors of someone to reach self-efficacy.

Mindlessness hinders the people, including leaders and employees from being innovative and creative since there is specific perspective is set permanently in their minds, negatively close the possibilities to solve problems and demotivate the team spirit due to decreasing self-efficacy. This is defined as learned helplessness as hindering factor to open the diverse possibility for the development of goal and performance.

Leaders with high EI could control the emotion to stay calm and lean-headed mind in any circumstance, which is very crucial to deliver the right decision at the right time. Further, as the benefit of emotional intelligence, leaders could cultivate a comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of their own self-worth, with an integrated understanding of their strengths and weaknesses (Makhluf, 2017). Therefore, leaders could establish the specific culture of the organization associated with their leadership style. Due to the sustain dependence of the organizational culture on the leadership, it is crucial for leaders to possess high level of emotional intelligence, otherwise the culture of conflicts and dissatisfaction would incur in the organization definitely.

When leaders master in EI, it would be easy for them to guess and empathy with the feelings of staffs and others, thereby resulting in the leaders’ compassion in order for the most appropriate solutions (Makhluf, 2017). This is the pivotal element for the long-term strategy set of the team.  

In order to develop an optimistic perspective of emotions benefit a leader, the methods could be followed as:

Understand your own emotions and balance them in the stability

Respect others and walk in shoes of another to empathy with them

Improve self-critical and learn from mistakes with the view that only learn from mistakes to get improved (Makhluf, 2017). Obviously, there is none perfect so that this perspective would help the leaders and employees in the organization make better outcomes from the mistakes or failures.

Appeal the constructive suggestions and insightful ideas of the employees to the significant strategies of the company as the prerequisite for the innovation and organizational solidarity (Makhluf, 2017).

Physically, mindfulness results in the deduction of depression and anxiety for leaders, helping them to balance the emotion and stay calm to be clean-headed for the proper decision (Hansen, 2012) and obviously, the appropriate decisions are the roots for the improving performance and achievement of the organization.

Further, mindfulness brings peace and focus of leaders to observe the objects, people, places in their diverse aspects to study the weaknesses and strengths of the situation so that the appropriate and comprehensive solution could be delivered.

Mindfulness helps the leader to understand himself and others, developing his emotional intelligence to cope with the different situation, leveraging the constructive performance of the team as a result.

It is the fact that mindless categorizes things in an aspect that blocks other alternative possibilities (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012), it limits the best solutions for the best outcomes. Consequently, mindless hinders leaders from the innovation and creations due to the limitation of the abilities and behaviors. Particularly, when the limitation of behaviors increase in life of leader, leading to the feeling of futility or depression after numerous time of failures that named as learned helplessness. This perspective is very harmful for leaders, especially it limits emotional intelligence skills to adapt and shift challenges into opportunities in the context of cultural interactions, causing negative emotions and leading to the decreasing productivity and performance.

References

Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012). Saylor Academy. Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0

Hansen, D. (2012). A guide to mindfulness at work. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2012/10/31/a-guide-to-mindfulness-at-work/#1b2583da25d2

Makhluf, J. (2017). The importance of emotional intelligence in business. The Business Journals. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/human-resources/2017/08/the-importance-of-emotional-intelligence-in.html