I went to the Capital Grille in Providence for my last birthday because...well, because it’s my wife’s favorite restaurant.  After another characteristically fine meal, my wife and I retired to the bar for an after-dinner drink and a cigar (pre-smoking ban).  One of the bartenders that evening was Paul whom I had met some years ago in a reversal of roles.  He was the sometime guest of the president of a private country club that I formerly managed.
We chatted and I ordered our drinks and my cigar.  Paul filled the order and then moved down the bar to service other customers.  As I cut my cigar and searched for matches, Paul appeared, as if on cue, with a lighter and ashtray.  He lit my cigar, we chatted for a few more minutes, and he once again moved down the bar to see what anyone needed.  I watched him shake hands with some, casually greet others, smile and frown, lean in close to hear, laugh, scowl.  All the while he grabbed glassware, ice, spirits, wine and beer. He made drinks the way the man in the tollbooth makes change. He left behind a string of happy, satisfied customers.
Paul is a professional bartender and very good at his craft.  The question I asked myself, sitting at the bar that night, was why.  What makes this bartender different from so many bartenders?  Was he faster?  Was he more accurate?  Did his drinks taste better?  No.  The answer, instead, lies in a relatively new subject – emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence, put simply, is the ability to understand and control your own emotions and those of others.  It is a measure of what might commonly be referred to as soft skills and has been proven to be a predictor of excellence for many front-line employees, especially those in the service industry whose jobs include significant customer contact.  For years IQ tests, SAT’s, GPA’s and other measures of aptitude have been used to predict future success in many endeavors.   Interestingly, recent research indicates that a high IQ is an excellent indicator of competence at a particular task, but not excellence.  Think about it like this.  A good bartender may have been able to make all of the drinks I saw made on the night of my birthday.  Only a great bartender could have made them while treating each of his customers like they were the only ones at that bar. 

Emotional intelligence is based on five emotional competencies – self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.  The better you are at mastering these competencies, the more likely you are to be considered excellent in what you do.

• Self-awareness refers to you ability to recognize and understand your own emotions as well as your own strengths and weaknesses.  You anticipate a really busy night, and you know that really busy nights have a negative effect on you and, ultimately, your customers. Maybe you can do some extra side work to make you feel more comfortable before your shift and to help you better cope during it.
  
  
• Self-regulation refers to your ability to control your impulses and moods.  One of your customers has just sent his fra diavlo back for the third time because it’s “spicy.”  While you might like to punch him in the f!@#$% mouth, you really shouldn’t.  Seriously, even subtle body language can send a really poor message to your guests.  Control yourself.
  
  
• Motivation refers to the internal satisfaction you get from doing your job well.  Be the type of person who believes that any job worth doing is worth doing well.  It will serve you well.
  
  
  
• Social Skills refers to your ability to manage relationships, particularly in the long term and even to your short-term detriment.  If you have lots of regulars who request you, you are likely good at this.  If not, you need to work on it.
  
  
• Empathy refers to the most important of the emotional competencies for customer service providers.  It describes your ability to identify and understand the emotions of others and treat them accordingly.  This particular competency evokes images of the classical bartender putting a rocks glass and a bottle of rye on the bar and offering to listen to all of his customer’s problems – the bartender as psychiatrist.  This is what Paul is best at – identifying what his customers need and then providing each a miniature individualized service package.
  
  

You have read this entire article and the only one of the competencies you possess is self-awareness.  You know this because you are self-aware enough to know that you are really bad at all of the others.  Fear not.  Research also indicates that you are likely to get better at each as you get older – EI almost always naturally increases with age.  If you can’t wait, you can also get better by practice.  Find someone like Paul who’s good at a particular skill and emulate them.  You should get better at it because it’s important.  Trust me.