Emotional Intelligence. The ability to understand, use, and manage emotions. The concept may seem a bit vague to some. But, as every car salesperson can verify, even the biggest buying decisions are highly emotional. Since the 1990s Daniel Goleman and others have studied the merits of EI in business relations and culture, leadership, sales and marketing.
- In Sales it's mainly about connecting with other human beings at a deeper, more personal level.
- In Marketing it’s, for example, about recognizing exactly how targeted audiences respond emotionally to brands and messages.
- And any leader must know how other people feel, think, react and respond.
LEARNING HOW BRANDS SUCCEED
An article in Forbes outlined why EI is such a vital element of marketing: Mastering emotional intelligence means you’re able to pay attention to things. Like how your brand, and other brands, succeed — or fail — to engage people. In the marketplace and within your own organization.
SOCIAL LISTENING
EI is also about ”social listening”. These days, social marketing teams have every reason to monitor, analyze and ”reinvest” emotional market feedback. In-depth listening and self-reflection on your products, services and market behavior can provide vital guidance in terms of tone-of-voice and messaging. On and off line.
A focused analysis of emotional response could be particularly useful to recognize the nuances of own mistakes and missed opportunities. A similar approach is sometimes applied to develop a more perceptive and open-minded business culture.
So, what about AI? Can AI help you develop higher EI? Yes, says a recent article in Harvard Business Review:
IMPROVING SOFT SKILLS
”Leveraging advances in emotional detection, natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision, and combining it with psychology and linguistics, AI algorithms can … … … …”
Or, in plain English:
Yes, it can. ”AI will help humans do better human work, by helping us improve our emotional intelligence, soft skills, and interpersonal communication skills.” So AI can be pretty good for EI too.
Phyron applies AI to present cars in online ads in the most attractive and engaging way. And to automate the entire process, from ad production to publishing and management. So, both emotional and rational.
