Emotional and Social Intelligence Competencies in the Digital Era

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that emotional intelligence is a crucial component in organizations. It has been proved that leaders and employees who are emotionally intelligent are more efficient, creative, and make better decisions. Although decades of studies in different settings have analyzed emotional intelligence in a variety of roles, there is still a limited application concerning new job profiles such as data professionals. In a world which is rapidly changing because of technological and digital innovation, it is timely to analyze not only the technical skills of these new emerging job profiles but also their behavioral competencies. This chapter aims to first delineate the main characteristics of emotional intelligence. Second, it provides an in-depth clarification of the developed competency framework used to detect the behavioral competencies of big data professionals. Finally, it offers insights about how soft skills are considered to be as crucial as technical skills by the labor market despite the difference between machine and human skills that seem to draw attention to technological and data driven competencies.