As a nursery manager
In life, most of the careers people find themselves in may not auger well with individual personality and for that case demanding an extra effort to be able to fit in. This is not always the case because there are other people who find themselves doing what they like most as their career. However, any career has its own demands which must be adopted in order for any employee to be comfortable. This is because different careers have different audience which exhibit different behaviors. Failure to coup with certain career demands has made some people to have very miserable career lives. As a nursery manager I once went through such frustrations before I came to learn it the hard way.
After my college level, I ventured into the teaching career as an untrained teacher in one of the high schools around my area of residence. Life was smooth as I was interacting with grown-ups who I could correct once and for all when found them in mistakes. My relationship with students was always awesome since whatever I could tell them to do was final without questioning (Dulewicz &Higgs 2013, p.193). Well, my relationship with the students was that of a “boss to servants”. For that case, I did not require much of interpersonal skills to have a comfortable stay at Oxford high school. After staying at Oxford high school for two years, it’s when I got a permanent job as a Nursery manager; it was my joy to have moved to greener pastures.
Things at my new venture were not the same as at oxford high school, as a leader of a team of people who provided day-care services and learning for babies as well as young children between birth and five years old, controlling all of them to ensure that services are accorded to the young ones as per their parents was not easy (Dulewicz &Higgs 2013, p.193). Each of the service providers I was in charge of had his own weaknesses; right from those could treat the children harshly to those who were very reluctant to attend to them. I could spend most of the time quarreling with the workers when I observed such behaviors. For the first few weeks of my stay at the daycare, I could go leave the workplace at the evening very angry, a condition which escalated to cause me a high blood pressure (Nikolaou &Tsaousis 2012, p.327). All the workers in the daycare hated me with passion because of my behavior. At a certain point I thought of resigning but encouraged myself to get a solution instead of quitting the job.
The solution was none other than being emotional intelligent, a step that enabled me to manage my personal emotions as well as the emotions of my workers. Generally, it took me three steps to achieve it: being sensitive to my emotions; harnessing my emotions and applying them to thinking and solving problems; and managing my emotions, which entailed regulating my own emotions and calming down my counterparts at the daycare (Day 2012, p.581).
Emotional intelligence became that thin line in the sand that separated my character of a “boss” to that of a real leader. By adopting emotional intelligence, as a leader I began to inspire confidence and motivated my cohorts in the workplace who began to follow my footsteps.
Cultivating the virtue of emotional intelligence in my position as a leader was very crucial as it made my career easier and stress-free. Again, I started to be self-aware and recognizing my emotions as they happened. It was a vital skill for me, as it helped me in obtaining clear understanding of my strengths as well as weaknesses without obstructions. In addition, I was able to perceive my emotions when arising in reaction to any actions by the employees (Oshagbemi & Gill 2013, p.288). For that matter, I was able to address any problem as well as handling future complications better.
The skill enabled me as a leader to always stay aware of my feelings and learnt how to manage my emotions whenever they arose. Emotional intelligence enabled me to regulate myself and stay in control and not letting anger take over my behavior. I restored the respect from the employees which had grown weak due to my emotional reactions towards them before.
Being emotionally intelligence also helped me nature the skill of effective communication which enabled me to bind workers together. Knowing that they could talk to me about the problems they encountered and that I could listen unlike the case before bind them firmly in the workplace. Through effective communication, team building resulted and increased employee loyalty. The daycare comprised of employees from different regions, mixed races, genders, nationalities and faiths, people could accidentally offend one other and therefore effective communication enabled me to manage such diversity (Ochieng &Price 2010, p.449).
Due to poor communication before, the daycare was experiencing all sorts of problems. Like employees receiving conflicting information, the HR issuing warnings without investigating real issues, different supervisors not responding to employee questions or avoiding employee issues. These and others were all observable due to poor communication. But after adopting effective communication skills, the problems were resolved and prevented them from escalating.
As a leader with emotional intelligence I was always tuned to employee emotions and could easily pick up on what was affecting them. I could find myself sympathizing with them by putting myself in their shoes and giving them a helpful feedback. Emotional intelligence was a critical skill for me as I worked closely to motivate and inspire a team.
In the daycare, conflicts could emerge from time to time and which could threaten and disrupt the efficiency and productivity of the institution. However, as a leader with emotional intelligence I was equipped to solve such conflicts and come up with solution. With this skill, I could quickly placate any arising disagreements between the employees and other parties. Above all, as a leader I used my emotional intelligence to lay a foundation for an effective workplace (Leithwood, Mascall, Strauss, Sacks, Memon & Yashkina 2017, p.37).
Another important skill I developed through emotional intelligence is the interpersonal skills, skills which restored the ill relationship between my leadership and the employees in the daycare. Interpersonal skills ensured my success as a leader at the workplace and promoted a positive working environment. Empathy, communication and cooperation were the main keys to establishing strong relationship with the workers.
Strong interpersonal skills have helped me establish connections with the workers in charge of. The workers require affirmation, and assurance of their skills, insights and abilities value in the workplace (Ochieng &Price 2010, p.449). Without the kindness, a mutual respect as well as appropriate emotional responses, workers would have been viewing me as aloof, unapproachable and self-focused.
A daycare is among the most sensitive working environments where slight mistakes may lead to lawsuits, even in cases where the workers are still qualified. This has been attributed to lack of empathy, compassion and genuine concerns for wellbeing of workers. Most of the litigation cases in this field are as a result of employer-employee relationship failures and poor communication, such as nursery managers who ignore the attendants’ feelings or fail to give them the necessary attention. For that matter, the attendants being driven by the force of being ignored by their leaders end up treating the young ones maliciously. In certain cases, this results to death or injury of these kids and which leads to lawsuits (Ochieng &Price 2010, p.449). This was exactly the case during my first few weeks after becoming the nursery manager of the institution. Parents could find their kids very dirty during the pick hours, a condition which led some of them withdrawing their children from the daycare. This was all because of the ill relationship I had with the workers. Even if any of them was sick, they feared approaching me to explain because of the relationship I had with them. However, on developing the interpersonal skills, everything began to run smoothly.
Being emotionally intelligence also helped me nature the skill of effective listening which enabled me to bind workers together. Knowing that they could talk to me about the problems they encountered and that I could listen unlike the case before bind them firmly in the workplace (Oshagbemi & Gill 2013, p.288). Through effective communication, team building resulted and increased employee loyalty. The daycare comprised of employees from different regions, mixed races, genders, nationalities and faiths, people could accidentally offend one other and therefore effective communication enabled me to manage such diversity.
Customers of the daycare who are generally the parents require the assurance that their needs are taken care of and that their requests are paid attention. Without the appropriate interpersonal skills, the customer service concerns are likely to be encountered and other small issues escalating (Oshagbemi & Gill 2013, p.288). The strong interpersonal skills I came to learn later like being patience, expression of gratitude towards the workers and making efforts to diffuse the angry and temperamental workers made my leadership in the daycare to run much smoother than it was before. Without the interpersonal skills, I could not have been able to handle conflicts properly as well as dealing with high-stress circumstances, leading to frustrations for both me and the rest of the workers.
References
Dulewicz, V. and Higgs, M., 2013. Leadership at the top: The need for emotional intelligence in organizations. The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 11(3), pp.193-210.
Nikolaou, I. and Tsaousis, I., 2012. Emotional intelligence in the workplace: Exploring its effects on occupational stress and organizational commitment. The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 10(4), pp.327-342.
Day, D.V., 2012. Leadership development:: A review in context. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), pp.581-613.
Oshagbemi, T. and Gill, R., 2013. Gender differences and similarities in the leadership styles and behaviour of UK managers. Women in Management Review, 18(6), pp.288-298.
Ochieng, E.G. and Price, A.D.F., 2010. Managing cross-cultural communication in multicultural construction project teams: The case of Kenya and UK. International Journal of Project Management, 28(5), pp.449-460.
Leithwood, K., Mascall, B., Strauss, T., Sacks, R., Memon, N. and Yashkina, A., 2017. Distributing leadership to make schools smarter: Taking the ego out of the system. Leadership and policy in schools, 6(1), pp.37-67.