In this article, Let us know about ‘Emotional Intelligence Interview Questions’, Keep reading till the end of the article. Let us know the emotional intelligence interview question.
Not Be Too Modest To take Credit For Your Achievements
Do not be too arrogant to demonstrate self-awareness.
Self -regulation
The most commonly asked questions to assess candidates self-regulation capability are:
Question 1:How do you handle difficult colleagues? OR
Give me an example when you h
n mind
Doad to deal with a particularly difficult colleague.
Question 2:Describe the most difficult person you worked with
Question 3:Tell me about a time when you got angry at work
How to answer?
Emotional Intelligence interview questions
Interviews are a decisive part of grabbing the desired job position. A good interview preparation paves the way to a successful career ahead. Along with sound technical skills, Emotional Intelligence has become a game-changer. It is quite possible to acquaint oneself with all required technical skills but emotional intelligence is something that many of the candidates struggle with while answering questions in an interview.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Before discussing more on Emotional Intelligence(EQ) let us understand what is meant by Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence means being stable and capable of dealing with the emotions of oneself as well as others.
Emotions are unique and primary traits of human beings and it is essential to be aware and acquainted well with emotions whether in a workplace or personal life.
Why workplaces access people for Emotional Intelligence
- At a workplace, a person has to go through many things and might be required to handle challenging situations irrespective of the profile one works for.
- People deal with people to produce results and they have to build interpersonal and professional relations along with handling the job requirements, techniques, knowledge, and meeting deadlines behavioural aspects are something that can not be ignored.
- One who is interested in improving their Emotional Intelligence proves to be an effective professional and productive team member.
Emotional Intelligence is not just a particular quality but encompasses a group of attributes such as
- Self-Awareness
- Self-regulation
- Motivation
- Empathy
- Social Skills
Self Awareness
Self-awareness means
Being aware of one capability.
Honesty with strengths and weaknesses.
Taking accountability and responsibility for actions
Understanding own emotions and moods
Not blaming others for everything.
Self Regulation
It is an ability to regulate emotions and decision-making in various circumstances.
Self Regulation means
Being able to handle pressures
Handle negative situations
Refrain from emotional outbursts
Being moral support for a team
Working towards positive outcomes.
Motivation
Along with the promise of bonuses, salary increases, perks, or a more senior title, good leaders are motivated by intrinsic values.
Emotionally intelligent people know to correlate their goals with inner motivation and communicate this to other teammates leading to positive organizational outcomes.
Empathy
Empathetic work professionals understand the moods and emotions of their teammates. They may figure out a possible change in their behavior in the future by noticing their body language.
It would help to develop strong interpersonal relations and also prevent future problems. It would also help one in understanding the impact of their behavior and actions on others’ lives. It determines workplace culture.
Social Skills
Social skills have a direct, measurable impact on emotional intelligence.
It is the ability to interact, communicate, collaborate within a team.
It helps in building interpersonal relations at a workplace that produces meaningful results.
After having a glimpse of Emotional Intelligence 5 key elements, Here are the top interview questions asked in the interviews to assess candidates on each of these attributes of Emotional Intelligence.
Self Awareness
Most often asked questions to assess self-awareness are:
Question 1: What is your biggest area of improvement?
Question 2: Can you tell me about a time when you failed?
When an interviewer asks this question, they tend to know about your perception of these things. How well do you accept failures? How did you deal with such downfalls?
Question 1 . What is your biggest area of improvement?
This question tends to know, whether you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses ? are you able to accept them and put forth ways to improve them? And why they think this particular aspect needs to be improved. It tests an individual’s perception.
How to answer?
Question 2. Can you tell me about a time when you failed?
How to answer?
What might be a failure to one may not be to the other.
For example
Person A was expecting a promotion in three years. He was not promoted and considered it as a failure wherein person B was expecting a promotion in 5 years and he got promoted in three years so for him this was not a failure. So it completely depends on the perception of the way one looks at it. While answering this, one can talk about their failure experience and also talk about ways to overcome it and the learnings one gained from that particular experience.
While answering the questions about self-awareness keep i
When the interviewer asks these types of questions, they tend to know how well one can control their emotions and their responses.
While answering these types of questions, try to talk about a situation that triggered negative emotion and measures that were taken to stop negative response as a result of that negative emotion.
For example
A team was working on an important project. One of the team members Dave was quite late with his work and also delivering poor work quality. This was putting an extra burden on other team members and was quite annoying for team leader Ben. He realized that he was getting irritated with this as Dave was not showing up to the teamwork which is very important to him. So Ben asked for an explanation for late and poor work and discussed with him the effect of his actions on the team. Also gave him some suggestions to avoid such things in the future.
Ben demonstrated Self-Regulation along with emotional maturity and emotional control instead of being irritated and showing anger outbursts.
Motivation
The most commonly asked questions to assess candidates motivation aspect are
Question 1:What do you do to keep yourself motivated?
How to answer?
The interviewer asks such questions to know about the perception and optimism of the candidate and get an idea of one’s ability to accept challenges.
One can talk about anything that keeps them motivated such as following a workout plan or reading a book, out with friends and family, movies, social work, etc.
Question 2:Tell me about a time when you motivated someone.
How to answer?
Within work scenarios, there are times when others need motivation.
The interviewer wants to know if the candidate is capable enough to motivate others.
While answering you can talk about a situation such as when one of the colleagues was unable to work and decided to leave. One can talk about how they decided to have a conversation with them privately and giving the personal touch to the conversation motivated them to work and look forward to greater goals in life and look forward to opportunities. Or situations where one of the colleagues was facing difficulties in fitting into the work environment and you tried to acquaint them with the environment offered the sort of help if required so that they do not feel alone and hopeless in case of any troubles or challenges ahead.
Empathy
The most commonly asked questions to assess candidates Empathy are:
Question 1:What do you do when someone comes to you with a problem?
Question 2: Tell me about a time when you coached someone through a difficult time.
Question 3: Tell me about a time when you had to deliver difficult news.
How to answer?
While asking questions related to empathy, interviewers try to know about one’s ability to understand the feelings of another without being carried away by the emotion of another person and understand his /her emotion and situation. This is important as it determines the kind of decision one makes. While answering such questions one can talk about situations wherein they interacted and took an empathetic approach to solve a problem.
For example:
A team is working on an important project.
The team leader, Reva notices that the quality of work produced by Sid is not satisfactory and also he is delaying his work more often.
Even she noticed that Sid seems quite disturbed and distressed these days. Reva had a conversation with Sid about this and came to know that he was going through a divorce and thus could not focus on his work properly. Reva decided to give him the time and space he required and even other team members cooperated and agreed with Reva’s decision. The team completed the project on time.
Here in this example if Reva would not have been an empathetic person and would have ignored Sid’s problem it might happen that the whole team’s performance and work quality would have been affected.
One can include any such instance where an empathetic approach helped them make better decisions and lead to positive outcomes while answering questions related to empathy.
Social skills
The most commonly asked questions to assess candidates social skills are:
Question 1:Tell me about a time when you had to persuade a client, a customer, or manager round to your way of thinking.
How to answer?
While answering this question
Talk about the challenge
The approach you had to solve the problem
The way it affected the situation.
Question2:How do you build relationships at work?
Talk about instances wherein your activities helped build strong relationships at work.
You used your communication skills and empathy to solve someone’s problem and get meaningful results.
For example
Team members are supposed to submit weekly reports to their team manager and the team manager reports them further. One of the team members, Rio is not able to submit reports on time. This became a usual thing and spoiled the relationship between the team manager and Rio. Sia, a team member noticed this and decided to talk about this to Rio. Sia and Rio met over a coffee, she asked her if he was facing any challenges at work. Rio told her about the challenges he is facing with the report. He said he is unable to understand some basic things due to which he is not able to submit the reports on time. Sia offered to help him after work as she was good with work reports. After that Rio submitted his work reports on time.
In this example, Sia’s approach to helping one of the colleagues contributed to improving team performance. Also, it helped Sia develop a good professional relationship at the workplace.
So when asked such types of questions one can put an example like this and answer.
Social skills are a key indicator of having Emotional Intelligence.
While asking such questions, the interviewer wants to assess candidates on how well they can communicate, collaborate and socialize to draw meaningful results. While answering such questions in an interview, one can talk about an instance wherein they resolved a conflict or convinced a client.
Some of the most asked questions to assess the emotional quotient
- If you have to release all the stress after a hectic day at work, How would you do that?
- Can you share about any of your achievements that you’re most proud of and why?
- Who are some of your top role models, why do they inspire you?
- How do you celebrate success?
- How do you respond when a co-worker challenges you?
- Have you ever been in a situation where you had to change your behavior, either at work or at home? Can you share why you had to change, and how you changed?
- What do you do to recover from failure?
- Share about some instances when you felt demotivated, and what did you do to overcome this?
- How would some of your closest friends describe you?
- Is there any behavior that makes you angry/annoyed? What is it?
- Tell me about a time you faced an ethical dilemma at work. How did you deal with it? What was the result?
- Tell me about a time someone criticized your work. How did you respond?
- How would you resolve a dispute between two colleagues?
- If a customer called to complain that the price of our product/service is too high, how would you handle it?
- Tell me about a time you had a conflict with your supervisor. How did you resolve it?
- Give an example of a time when you have thought outside the box?
- Which is your biggest achievement?
- What for you is the key to building a great relationship?
- How did you prepare for this interview?
- What would your current manager say about you?
- What would you do if we didn’t offer you this job?
- Why should we give you the job?
- Give us an example of a time when you solved a problem.
- What are your long-term goals?
- Describe a difficult situation at work and how you handled it.
- How do you handle pressure at work?
- How do you stay organized?
- How would you describe your work ethic?
- What is your greatest weakness?
- What are your biggest Strengths?
Important points to keep in mind while answering questions of Emotional Intelligence:
There is no right or wrong answer
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to deal with emotions, different situations, and various responses of their own and others.
Since every human being is unique, they can have different perspectives and viewpoints. There is no perfect answer to a particular question. It depends on the experiences of an individual and their lookout for those experiences.
Make maximum use of real examples and or frame a story that sounds realistic
When illustrated with real-life scenarios interviewer gains an overall perspective of your personality.
Do not blame
While answering, avoid blaming situations, managers, colleagues. Talk about actions, talk about approach how you handled a particular problem. When a candidate blames someone, it gives a negative impression.
Follow the STAR method to answer questions
While answering questions based on EQ, follow
S-SITUATION-Describe the situation
T-TASK-What was the task to be done
A-ACTION-What action one took
R-RESULT-What was the result of the action taken .how it affects/learnings from it.
Avoid telling long boring stories
While talking about your previous experiences do not try to explain the whole background Keep it simple, crisp to the point.
Try to read the interviewer’s mind.
Before answering a question it is important to know the aspect interviewer is trying to assess you on and answer accordingly.
Stay calm and relaxed
It is the most and foremost be it any interview. Stay confident.
The calmer the mind is more active it performs.
One may encounter a question related to something not experienced before. Comprehend things well, take your time and then answer the questions. Do not rush.
Things one can do to work on their Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is all about understanding emotions and dealing with them in day-to-day life. So one can be better at it with little activities and practice.
Work on Five Key elements of Emotional Intelligence
Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Motivation, Empathy, Social skills.
- Spend some time with your own
- Practice Yoga and mediation
- Analyze your actions.
- Ask genuine people for feedback
- Maintain a diary or journal.
Emotional Intelligence is not just important in one’s professional life but it also plays a great role in personal life. The points discussed above will surely help one to work on their emotional quotient and have successful interviews ahead.
Grammarly score
