There are many challenges facing us all today, particularly given the nature of the current global situation. With the speed and complexity of our lives, it is easy to forget what matters most and it is difficult to stay focused.

The very tenets in EI itself involve abilities that are crucial to the successful management of change:

• SELF-AWARENESS - Observing yourself and recognizing a feeling as it happens - so how do YOU feel about change

• MANAGING EMOTIONS - What emotions does change engender and how can they be managed so that they are appropriate: realizing what is behind those feelings; finding ways to handle fears and anxieties, anger, and sadness.

• MOTIVATING ONESELF: Anyone who’s been through change, or is facing change, knows how difficult it can be to be motivated at certain times in the process, so the ability to channel emotions in the service of a goal, emotional self control, and stifling immediate impulses can be crucial.

• EMPATHY: Perhaps one of the most important aspects of change is the ability to display sensitivity to other’s feelings and concerns, together with the further ability to take their perspective: appreciating the differences in how people will feel about things.

Understanding and learning to be emotionally intelligent can make huge differences in the success of change management programs, providing guidance on how to better manage relationships, how to adapt to change more effectively and be resilient in the face of setbacks.

• ADAPTABILITY - People lacking this ability are ruled by fear, anxiety and deep personal discomfort with change.

• SELF-CONFIDENCE - the sureness that allows us to quickly adjust our responses, even dropping everything without reservation as realities shift.

• INNOVATION - taking pleasure in originality - people who have this can quickly identify key issues, simplify problems, and find original connections and patterns that others overlook.

Those possessing Emotional Intelligence recognize the need for change and can thus remove barriers, they can challenge the status quo to acknowledge the need for change, champion the change and enlist others in its pursuit, modeling the change expected of others.

There is now a considerable body of research suggesting that a person’s ability to perceive, identify, and manage emotions provides the basis for the kind of social and emotional competencies that are important for success in almost any job. Furthermore, as the pace of change increases and the world of work makes ever-greater demands on a person’s cognitive, emotional and physical resources, this particular set of abilities will become increasingly important.

Can people’s feelings give them an edge in the corporate environment? Proven research is available which demonstrates that feelings can, and do, give people an enormous edge at work. Those who possess emotional intelligence are often perceived as being "set apart" from the average performers, and we now know that 90% of leadership success is attributable to emotional competencies.

Why should organizations embrace emotional intelligence for their people? For any organization to re-invent itself, the basic assumptions, visions, strategies and identities have to be questioned, BUT people hold emotional attachments to all these elements of their working lives, making it all the harder. In addition to the numerous pathogens that can prove fatal to a company such as shifts in markets, myopic strategic vision, hostile take-over, there is also the failure to recognize the need for EI. Lack of this can render a company vulnerable to the others - the corporate equivalent of a weakened immune system. In essence, old ways of doing business no longer work and there are increasingly intense competitive challenges that we need to adapt to if we are to prosper. More than ever this poses the challenge of leadership supply: the capabilities needed for leaders in the next century will be different competencies such as change catalyst, adaptability, leveraging diversity, team capabilities, and these weren’t on the radar a decade ago.

With the advent of the virtual organization, the premium on EI is set to rise, as organizations become increasingly dependent on the competencies of workers who are independent agents, and the rising popularity of telecommuting is accelerating this trend. Autonomy can only work hand in hand with such factors as self-control, trustworthiness and conscientiousness.

The "bottom line" is that EI can be learned - we can add these skills to our survival tool kit. We can assess and improve emotional competencies in order to upgrade performance and increase competitiveness, and we can provide "emotional competence tune-ups" for our organizations.

At the individual level, elements of emotional intelligence can be identified, assessed, and upgraded. At the group level, we can fine-tune the interpersonal dynamics that makes groups function better, and at organizational level, we can revise the value hierarchy to make EI a priority in terms of recruitment, training and development, performance and evaluation.