Social judgment: Emotional intelligence at work 

How well could you read the expressions in the Emotional Code game? The game tests your social judgment — that is, your ability to distinguish and recognize other people and their emotions. Social judgment is important to us as leaders because our problem-solving takes place in a social context where we must make sense of others and the social systems in which they operate.

Social judgment is part of a broad range of cognitive abilities that enable people to understand and interact with others. Leaders need to inspire, motivate, and enable others to perform. Social judgment enables us to create a community, fostering collaboration and connectivity. Social judgment is also important to support reputation management, as it enables us to monitor how our actions are perceived by others.

The Emotional Code game tests your ability to tune into the feelings of others. This is integral to emotional intelligence, which includes the capacity to identify emotions and understand their origins and implications. (Mayer et al, 2000). Stein et al (2009) found that emotional intelligence was related to profitability and that leaders with more of it were respected by others for their ability to manage people and organizations.