Our emotions affect our attitudes, behavior, relationships, and performance. So we should explore emotions—our own and others’—and learn how to deal with emotions using emotional intelligence. Let’s do so here. Emotions refer to our state of feeling that influence our behavior. Our brain can’t be logical and highly emotional at the same time, and bad decisions are common when emotions run high. But the old attitude of leaving your emotions at the door when you come to work has changed.

Understanding and dealing with emotions (yours and those of others) depends on one’s level of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has five dimensions. One’s level of emotional intelligence is also called one’s emotional quotient, or EQ (to parallel the notion of intelligence quotient, or IQ). Feelings refer to the conscious subjective experience of our emotions. It doesn’t really matter what people know or don’t know; what counts is what they feel.

Feelings refer to the conscious subjective experience of our emotions. It doesn’t really matter what people know or don’t know; what counts is what they feel. Managers should encourage people to express their feelings in a positive way, but they can’t allow employees to go around yelling at, swearing at, or intimidating others. We have to realize that we can’t order people to change emotions, because it is physiologically impossible when overstressed or angry. Thus, telling a person to calm down or relax doesn’t work; it often has the opposite effect.

We can’t be both highly emotional and highly rational—feelings win. After you deal with emotions, you can proceed to work on content (solving problems). It may be wise to wait until a later time if emotions are very strong. Sometimes people simply need to vent their emotions, so listening is often the solution.