Competitive pressures are forcing services organizations in improving the level of customer satisfaction and services received by customers. Balancing job task requirements with communication skills prompt employees to develop coping strategies that emphasize professional demeanor, the display of skillful technical judgment and the creation of an image of personal concern for the customer problems. The inability of the employees to handle high levels of emotional dissonance may lead to burnout, job dissatisfaction, and decreased return on investments. Employees with higher EQ skills have better success in implementing the technical skills and business practices and help them create good relationship with customers; hence Emotional Intelligence is associated with customer satisfaction. Emotional Intelligence is associated directly in predicting job performance, especially in organizational settings requiring leadership, teamwork, effective communication, job satisfaction, truancy at work, pro-social behaviour, interpersonal relationships at work place, organizational goal achievements and may be relevant to enhancing personal, social and organizational functioning and adaptation. Goleman (1995) popularized the concept of emotional intelligence in his book, “Emotional Intelligence”. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is defined as “A form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action…”(Salovey & Mayer, 1990).

1. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPACT ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
IN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS
Author: Dr. Shoeb Ahmed Ilyas BDS, MPH, EMSRHS, M.Phil. (HHSM), MHRM, MS (PSY), MS (BIOTECH),
PGDMLE, F.H.T.A.
Health Care Quality Management Consultant
Health Technology Assessment Consultant
Ruby Med Plus, Telangana State, India.
E-mail: support@rubymedplus.com / shoebilyas@gmail.com
Introduction
Competitive pressures are forcing services organizations in improving the level of customer
satisfaction and services received by customers. Balancing job task requirements with
communication skills prompt employees to develop coping strategies that emphasize
professional demeanor, the display of skillful technical judgment and the creation of an image of
personal concern for the customer problems. The inability of the employees to handle high levels
of emotional dissonance may lead to burnout, job dissatisfaction, and decreased return on
investments. Employees with higher EQ skills have better success in implementing the technical
skills and business practices and help them create good relationship with customers; hence
Emotional Intelligence is associated with customer satisfaction.
Emotional Intelligence is associated directly in predicting job performance, especially in
organizational settings requiring leadership, teamwork, effective communication, job
satisfaction, truancy at work, pro-social behaviour, interpersonal relationships at work place,
organizational goal achievements and may be relevant to enhancing personal, social and
organizational functioning and adaptation. Goleman (1995) popularized the concept of emotional
intelligence in his book, “Emotional Intelligence”. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is defined as “A
form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and
emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and
action…”(Salovey & Mayer, 1990).
Emotional Intelligence can be operationalized as a set of mental abilities that enhance the
processing of emotional and cognitive information and thus help the individual to solve problem

2. and make more adaptive decisions. The increasing interest in EI is in part due to suggestions that
skills and behaviors associated with EI can be improved or developed (Lynn 2002).
Dynamic process underlying Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is conceptualized in terms of perception, appraisal and expression of
emotion, emotional facilitation of thinking, understanding, analyzing and employing emotional
knowledge, and reflective regulation of emotions. Research suggests that an employee ability to
perceive, identify, and manage emotion provides the basis for the kinds of social and emotional
competencies that are important for employees success in service organizations. The emotional
competencies are linked to and based on emotional intelligence. Emotional competence refers to
the personal and social skills that lead to superior performance in the service organizations.
Emotional Intelligence and competencies linked to it are based on temperament, learning
experiences and reflective goal oriented experiences. Emotional competencies may be linked to
three aspects of the developmental sequences like basic temperaments shaped by innate
biological attributes, social learning of rule-based adaptive behaviors (e.g., emotion display
rules) and development of self-reflective insight. Four components are identified, that are most
critical to success are emotional self-awareness, reality testing, assertiveness and self
actualization. These attributes together form the Emotional Intelligence (EI) construct.
EQ theories help employees to perceive, understand, utilize and manage emotions in an effort to
predict and foster personal effectiveness in rendering services. EI predicts potential to foster a
positive ethical outlook in management decision making and is important tool to improve job
performance. Employee’s cognitive ability seems to play a limited role in accounting for, why
some Employees are more successful than others? What is the evidence that emotional and social
factors are important in service organizations? Goleman (1995) research pointed out the
importance of social and emotional abilities as important factors for personal success and this
evidence is based on research, which came from personality and social psychology, and some
came from the field of neuropsychology. In relation to behavioral outcomes in customer service,
EI can be identified as a potentially important variable, given that employees are required to be
both receptive and adaptive to customer demands.

3. Customer service providers require the ability to recognize and combine interpersonal,
intrapersonal and technical skills in order to increase the level of customer service provided
(Price, Arnould & Deibler 1995). High Emotional Quotient (EQ) employees monitors
themselves, manage their emotions and draw on resources to stay motivated, develop effective
communication skills, develop interpersonal expertise, help customers, help themselves to
improve job performance and live to their vision.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMPLOYEE-CUTOMER RELATIONSHIP
It is theorized that emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive unique interpersonal cues and
to use these cues to guide one’s emotional responses in relationships. Emotions often arise in
response to an employee customer evolving relationships, if decoded carefully they will provide
insight into the components of interpersonal relationships. Emotional intelligence has as much to
do with knowing when and how to express emotion as it do with controlling it. Employees must
identify customer’s emotions and involve them in making service quality improvements and thus
improve perceptions of quality of services. Interpersonal EI skills such as empathy and social
ability are at the heart of handling relationships. They involve understanding the needs of others,
implementing successful conflict management strategies, listening and leadership.
Empathy, it involves one’s ability to identify with the feelings of others and general access to
one’s own feeling state is an important aspect of emotional intelligence. Emotional appraisal (the
ability to accurately identify another’s emotions) and emotional expressions (the ability to re-
experience these emotions oneself) appear to be related to empathy. Researchers have known for
years that it contributes to Business success. Rosenthal and his colleagues at Harvard discovered
over two decades ago that people who were best at identifying others emotions were more
successful in their work as well as in their social lives.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TRAINING PROGRAMS
Some employees suffer with affective disorders that are related to emotional dysfunctions and
expression of negative effect on job performance, such as alexithymia, a psychiatric term
describing a condition in which people show difficulty in understanding and communicating
emotions either verbally or by body expressions. At the extreme selfish Machiavellian
employees, with antisocial personality disorder may possess social skills and Emotional

4. Intelligence, which allows them to exploit others i.e. in the sense of perceiving other’s emotional
weaknesses and then proceeding to manipulate them. Human resource managers must assess
employees Emotional Quotient, as Low EI employees are associated with a liking for harmful
behaviours, hence EI training programs should be organized for such employees to develop
emotional Intelligence skills and competencies which are believed to be able to motivate
employees, to reach higher levels of achievements in job performance outcomes, improving
mental health, thus becoming more socially and emotionally competent and remediation of
various organizational behaviour problems. Human Resource managers must develop standards
for Emotional Training programs which must be systematically constructed, implemented,
assessed on sound theoretical grounding and rigorous evaluation of cost-benefit analysis for
assessing the return for costs associated with delivering of EI training programs.
CONCLUSION
Emotions travel fast in workplace. Other people’s behaviors can affect our feelings, our feelings
can influence our performance and Performance can be enhanced through positive behaviors.
Beecham and Grant says “When people feel good about the person they report to, they feel better
about the company they work for employees do not leave companies they leave bosses.” Human
resource Managers should be efficient to carry out “Emotional task analysis” just as “Traditional
job analysis” and “Cognitive task analysis" to ascertain the affective requirements of different
job requirements. . Emotional Intelligence Skill is not innate but it can be learned, developed and
enhanced.
References
Goleman D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam
Books.
Price, L, Arnould, E & Deibler, S (1995) ‘Consumers’ emotional responses to service
encounters: the influence of the service provider’. International Journal of Service Industry
Management, Vol 6, No 3, 34-63.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and
Personality, 9, 185-211.

5. Lynn AB. The emotional intelligence activity book. New York: Amacom, 2002.