First Day on the New Job: Emotional Intelligence

Gone to Chicago for the week on business. Blog will resume when I return.

Can't wait to see my home town again. Hope there are snow flurries. Plan to see Fledermaus at the Lyric, eat a Loyds, stay at the Palmer House (OK, HILTON). I'm excited and in a special kind of way, because this is going home to me. Today's blog recommendation talks about this sort of thing - or rather the great discomfort we feel when we are going somewhere totally new - including a new job.

Check it out: "Your First Day on the Job"

Most of us have had two or more "first days on the new job" and know that it can be hell. Why then, asks our blogger, don't others try and make it more amenable?

THAT IS A GOOD QUESTION.

It can set the tone for the the rest of the engagement so to speak.

He answers his own question, with a bit of the self-awareness we get from emotional intelligence: "I can only think that it must be the result of the general lack of emotional intelligence that one sees in the average IT workplace, combined with the poor standard of management that seems a ubiquitous feature of corporate environments ..."

Self-awareness -- because we moved a lot when I was a kid (for good reasons, at least for my parents), I've always had a soft spot for the "new kid on the block." When I worked in an office, I was usually the one to look after the new person - unofficially of course. I made sure they knew where the bathroom and coffee were, and supplies; offered to help when I saw them looking lost; asked them for lunch early on.

During my years in offices I had good and bad experiences in this respect. I know that when I was introduced properly to the others, my early weeks in the new place were a delight, and it bore fruit in the long-term.

We - human beings - are naturally xenophobic. We do not like strangers. Underneath, we fear them. It's natural. And I'm afraid it's exacerbated by the things we hear in the media. Nevertheless, it's EQ, and it's civilized behavior, and etiquette, to do what you can to make the new person feel AT HOME.

Just say "yes." Hazing and hell week belong on the college campus, for youngsters (whose neocortexes are not fully yet developed - or their EQ).

It's the decent thing to do, and it's emotionally intelligent!