Why high EQ is a MUST in hospitality and tourism
Imagine you are with your best friends in a beautiful restaurant and just finished the main course. And the nicely groomed waiter comes at the right time and asks ‘Hey guys, would you like any coffee and maybe there’s a dessert you would like to share?’ Now imagine the exact same scenario, the only difference is that the waiter plainly says ‘Can I get you a dessert?’ with bad timing, probably even interrupting your conversation. Which situation will make you more likely to indulge in the guilty pleasure? The subtle difference is a serving staff with a Higher EQ than the other, but sometimes it can create a completely different customer experience.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ), in a nutshell, is the ability to identify, understand and manage one’s own emotions which leads to characteristic behaviours, and also to navigate in social complexity and influence others.
“The decision making of customers is mostly emotional!”
We all know that the hospitality industry is the most customer-focused industry. Research has shown that when people make decisions, they use the emotional part of the brain 10 times more often than the rational part of the brain. A great server knows what the customers want when they want it without having them tell you or even without the customers’ own realization. That person can anticipate that a guest is in a hurry and adjust the check-in process accordingly. Emotional intelligence is highly relevant to the service environment, every interaction between customers and staff as well as within the organization requires a high level of EQ to achieve better results.
EQ is also very beneficial to the organization itself. EQ is all about empathy and understanding each other and effective communications. Sometimes it’s not about the task it’s about the person. An organisation that focuses on improving the people will see the better performance of the business. With regards to communication, the words are just 7% and the rest of the message is defined by all the other stuff — body language and tone of voice. Great teamwork can only be achieved by highly efficient collaborations between every team member.
EQ training at SWISS IM&H
Even though some people are born with higher EQs, the good news is EQ can be trained and developed through experience and training. At SWISS IM&H, we have a dedicated program to train our students for a higher EQ. The five basic elements of EQ are self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social skills. Our reflection workshop explores all five of these elements.
It’s our priority to prepare these students in their future line of work the best we can, and Emotional Intelligence is definitely a useful weapon, if not the most powerful one, in their arsenal.
