What's PEACEful about the Office Holiday Party?

Peace and joy?or resentment?

Are these words you would ever discuss in the workplace? Do they belong in the workplace?

Well, as an emotional intelligence coach, that 's not even a question to ask, because we don't leave our emotions at home when we go to work. In fact they may be even more apt to appear at work than when socializing or at home.

However there are those who are still behind the times.

The FastCompany article begins ...

"Twenty midlevel executives at American Express Financial Advisors are gathered in a room at a conference center outside Minneapolis. Each has been asked to try to convey a specific emotion -- by reading a particular statement aloud. The challenge for listeners is to figure out which emotion each speaker is trying to evoke. It seems like a relatively straightforward exercise but only a fraction of the group comes anywhere close to correctly identifying speakers' emotions."

Best question they ask in the article, written five years ago, is will emotional intelligence "last" or will it be a "fad"?

Obviously it's not a fad because it's not only still here, it's growing expponentially, and around the world. I'm getting as much business these days from India, Singapre and Malaysia as I do from the US, and from Europe.

However, emotional intelligence is not, never has been, never will be, "fad" material.

Emotional intelligence is a legitimate field of study, like psychology or medicine. It takes time to master the theory, plus it's a field where the information is continually growing, with new technology such as the fMRI and so forth.

Since that article was written several years ago, you know it's also not a fad. For many, it 's the answer "psychology" never came up with. As someone said, "What if the field of psychology had studied for 60 years how to fix it not why it got that way.

What troubles us more than our emotions? What causes us more grief than our emotions ... how they feel, what we do because of them, how we harm ourselves and/or others, self-sabotage ourselves, destroy relationship and jobs ... need I say more?

Read the rest of the article here.