I know this sounds like a tricky question as an organization is not a sentient being, so how can it have emotions or the need to manage them? Your organization, small or worldwide, is built by human beings:founders, investors, employees, partners, customers, clients, and competitors. Thus, whether you are aware of it or not, their emotions are running your business. Hence, your organization also has emotional intelligence. An emotionally intelligent organization is one that cares and nurtures for its people and for humankind at large, not only for its profits.

Feeling engaged, feeling excited, feeling motivated, feeling cared for, feeling stressed, feeling overwhelmed, feeling burned out, feeling unappreciated, are all emotions running your organization, from top to bottom. And all these feelings need to be addressed.

Emotional intelligence in an organization needs to be role-modeled by the leaders, whether they are situational leaders or top-of-the-ladder leaders. Also, if you want to build an emotionally intelligent organization, you need to have a vision, mission, values, and purpose that attract emotionally intelligent collaborators. And to keep them on board, engaged, excited, productive, efficient, happy, and proud, you need to build a corporate culture and environment that cares, nurtures, and helps develop your human beings, to bring their best to light if they feel you care about them they will give you their very best and help you grow an outstanding organization.

You need to realize that you are running or building an organization for the future in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, that the vast majority of your employees, partners, and customers are very young with a very specific set of values, principles, and vision and they want to make a difference in the world and work in an emotionally and physically healthy environment toward a more democratic and humanistic economy.

Around 2020, 46% of the working force will be millennials, and they are known for being driven by purpose. Organizations with a purpose bigger than profit have a growth rate triple that of their competitors who are driven by profit above all. Millennials, your working force of the future, need to be surrounded by people that appreciate and value the work they are doing. They will be on fire if they feel they are working on an organization with a meaningful purpose that wants to make a difference in the world and also cares for the environment, not only for profit. Working in a cool office is awesome, but for your special workforce, a purposeful culture is more important. And a culture of purpose drives exponential sales growth. Put purpose before profit and your team will drive revenue through the roof. People want to make money but they also want to make a difference in the world.

Millennials are also known for having a low-score emotional intelligence, which is not accurate, because when they undergo emotional intelligence training or are coached within an emotional intelligent environment they develop their emotional intelligence competencies and skills very fast and easily. After all, if emotional intelligence is the missing link in the traditional educational system, how could they learn it?

So, how can we assess the level of emotional intelligence in our organization? And, how can we develop and build an emotionally intelligent organization?

First off, many organizations by using Employees Engagement Surveys are already assessing their employees' emotions-feeling engaged, feeling motivated, and so on. However, this is not the same as assessing the level of emotional intelligence of the organizations. As an individual, you have self-awareness and an organization has organizational awareness. Organizational awareness refers to the ability to recognize and understand how structures in which you and others operate can influence the emotions of the people working there. You can gain some level of organizational awareness by doing basic research on the company itself:

• What is the organization's mission?
• What are the organization's values?
• What are the department goals?
• Are there any specific goals expected of each team member?
• What is the culture of the organization?

Imagine that the culture of your organization is very conservative and controlled such that emotional expression is looked upon as inappropriate. In another organization, you might be admired and encouraged for being expressive. Or there might be a very hierarchical structure to your organization so that those you supervise might feel uncomfortable telling you how they feel. Or the organizational structure itself might be driving some feelings in the people you are working with. For example, they may feel frustrated in their current position and feel that there is nowhere else for them to move to or grow, which could be manifesting itself in anger or disappointment. Or a change in organizational structure could have them feeling anxious about the future. These are all areas where you might find clues to how people are feeling.

You can run an Organization's Emotional Intelligence Assessment, as shown in the following screenshot, to have a baseline of the level of your organization's emotional intelligence and what you need to improve: