Employees or management who can’t deal well with others can be a drain on a business, but working on emotional intelligence skills can help your whole team in terms of happiness, productivity and profit.

By Erin Rigik Del Conte, Senior Editor

On Wednesday, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show began with a number of educational sessions to help retailers better their businesses.

In a session titled, “Don’t Get All Emotional On Me: An Intro to Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and What it Can Do for You and Your Business (Part 1),” Speaker Robert Huebner, president of 200Mark Consulting, explained why emotional intelligence is a profitable tool and important skill set for convenience store owners, operators and front-line employees to master and how attendees could apply EQ at the workplace.

Emotional intelligence involves being able to step back in moments of heightened emotions and regulate ones response to the situation in order to improve the outcome of the situation.

Road range is one example of a low emotional intelligence (EQ) reaction. Today, some eight in 10 drivers are said to have road rage and these people are coming off the road into your stores. How you and your employees interface with these customers can have a huge impact on outcome and the overall experience of customers, which is key to your bottom line.

Leaders with high EQ listen, admit mistakes, face into difficult conversations, create a high performing workplace and build strong teams as they can bring people together via these skills. On the other hand, leaders with low EQ are arrogant, volatile, rigid, selfish, avoid accountability and respond in insensitive ways.

Having the self awareness to watch and understand one’s reactions, self manage to disrupt emotional impulses and having the social awareness to explore others’ feelings and perspectives is key to driving a positive work environment and high performance among staff.

Do you know and act on things that bring out the best in your employees? While drawing the line with employees is often necessary, how a manager draws lines can be done differently with different employees based on their needs.

Bosses should model high EQ by showing up the right way in situations. If the boss is the person with low EQ, employees should keep the high road in those situations and can potentially speak to the boss about how such behavior can impact profitability and bottom line.

Such behavior from a boss can have dire consequences, such as giving employees the message that this negative behavior leads to success, when in fact it can result in a loss of profitability due to a drain on productivity from the team and the cost of lost employees who leave for a better work environment.

Lastly, even if you’re mastering your emotional impulses in difficult situations, stepping back and choosing how to respond in a positive way, make sure your body language is matching your efforts. If your actions and your words are conveying two different things, people are likely to believe your actions/body