| Emotions can dominate thoughts and profoundly influence a person's behavior. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to be aware of, understand, manage, and use the information provided by emotions in self and others. In the workplace setting, EI enables effective leadership, teamwork, flexibility, and increased productivity. Technology is the underpinning of organizations and identified as the primary catalyst for increased productivity. As reliance on IT grows, communication and collaboration with IT and other departments becomes increasingly important. The problem addressed in this study was the concern that levels of EI may be low among IT professionals, and that this may be having a detrimental effect on individual and organizational productivity. This nonexperimental, quantitative study compared the EI levels between information technology (IT) professionals and non-IT professionals. Also examined was the relationship between EI levels for IT professionals and the number of years of experience in the profession. Participants were selected using purposive sampling, a nonprobability sampling method that was both convenient and suitable for this study. Analysis of variance showed significantly lower EI levels than non-IT professionals. There was not a significant correlation between the EI levels of IT professionals and the number of years of experience in the profession. Research recommendations include the integration of EI discovering and development components for all new employees and concentrated training efforts for IT employees. |
