Does Emotional Intelligence consider cultural diversity?

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is adviced as a skill to aquire as it is essential at the workplace. It is ment to help people to deal better with co-workers, clients and their bosses as well as concequences of stress related to their work. In my blog, developing resilience as a skill, I indicated that EI could be useful in that respect.

However, I believe that EI does not consider cultural diversity. In my experience, how people express their emotions differ accordingly. It may be gender, race, generation, tribal practices or even class that dictate how people handle and express their emotions. Peoples experiences also differ according to their location which makes their beliefs and behaviour to differ. As a result, their judgement of emotive issues will not be the same.

During her presentation, Shameen Naidu of Wits University Councelling and Careers Development Unit (CCDU), provided an exercise that was in a form of a questionnaire. The fact that people's responses differed, can to a larger extent be attributed to their cultural backgrounds. Different societies have different ways of solving issues and the fact that they do not interface with the priciples of EI does not mean that they are wrong.

At the workplace, EI may work for other people while it may not work for others. It is a matter of whether both people have acquired EI skill. When dealing with a person who has professionalism, EI could come about as highly useful skill but individuals backgrounds and beliefs are the ones that detirmin the usefulness of EI.