Civil servants are very important in the actualization of national goals and development in nation building.
Vigoda-Gadot, Eldor, and Schohat, noted in their article Engage them to public service: Conceptualization and empirical examination of employee engagement in public administration published in The American Review of Public Administration 2013: The responsibility of the public sector is to promote public policy with a sense of “mission” toward the state and its citizens. This unique sense of purpose calls for engaged public sector employees, who serve rather than simply do the job. (p. 522-523).
Excellent public services build on excellent civil servants who are both emotionally intelligent and engaged in their work.
The most effective civil servants tend to exhibit a high degree of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is “the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth” (Mayer and Salovey, 1990). Such an ability may be viewed, in line with the job demands-resources model (JD-R model: Bakker, 2011; Bakker and Demerouti, 2017), as a resource.
Emotion is also a factor in organizational success in the process of an employee in decision-making, transparent and open communication, ensuring customer loyalty, and teamwork.
Emotional intelligence is also detected can affect the self-esteem of employees in an organization.
An emotionally intelligent civil servant brings more energy to the system, thus influencing the working attitude of each employee.
It help instil better communication as an emotionally intelligent civil servant will be able to communicate policies better. Also, the person will be able to foster a healthy relationship with subordinates.
It also repose trust in the system as an emotionally intelligent civil servant will listen attentively to the problems of people, empathizing with their situation and bringing positive change in the work attitude of bureaucracy thus can help in making the system more trustworthy in the eyes of citizens.