Civility and Emotional Intelligence in Action

March 14th, 2011 |

With the lost in Illinois politicians from Indiana and Wisconsin, the article by Time magazine on Gov. Walker, the students who walked out out high school class protesting having to make up snow days and the list goes on, civility appears to be a lost behavior. The reasons for this lack of civility are probably many.

Courtesy www.businesspundit.com

In business, we experience this all the time from unsolicited, automated marketing calls that do no allow you to remove your number from this annoying marketing action to other rude and uncivil behaviors. How many times do we call a potential customer who asked us to call him or her and never receive a returned call? If we do hear from that person, we might hear the excuse “I have been so busy, I just do not have the time to return your call.”

Civility comes from the word civil meaning citizen in Latin. The word is defined as being “courteous” or “considerate.” Many of us in our business and personal lives experience the lack of civility each and every day.

To regain civility begins within each person. Recently I had the opportunity to read the book by Jon M. Hartman Sr. Winners Never Cheat. I was so impressed with this fairly quick read that I penned a thank you note to Mr. Hartman. And guess, what? Mr. Hartman responded with a written letter. Now this is a very busy man and yet he found the time to be civil and to demonstrate a high degree of emotional intelligence.

As a child, my parents insisted I write thank you notes for every present received. I truly remember groaning inside as to this mandatory behavior. However, now I realize the importance of taking the time to say thank you. For this behavior beyond demonstrating gratitude was the first steps in expanding my own emotional intelligence by being civil.

Emotional intelligence as defined by Daniel Goleman in his book Working with Emotional Intelligence is about our capacity for recognizing the feelings of others as well as our own and then managing those feelings in our relationships. The early childhood habit of writing thanks you notes aptly demonstrates emotional intelligence.

We as individuals can only change what we control and possibly what we can influence. This is why civility begins with each of us. Yes we may disagree as to this business strategy or even have different personal opinions, however we can still be civil while demonstrating high emotional intelligence through our personal and business ethics.