Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Relations in Service Industries in Nigeria

The study examined emotional intelligence and interpersonal relations. Unethical behaviour of employees that arises as a result of emotion made this investigation necessary. The objectives of the study were; to determine the nature of relationship between self-awareness and empathy toward colleagues in the organization and to ascertain the nature of relationship between social skill and improved team work with-in the organization. To achieve the objectives, a survey research design was adopted. The population of the study comprised of 167 staff of the selected deposit money banks and Taro Yamane formula was used to derive 118 as the sample size of the study. The techniques employed in analyzing the data were descriptive statistics and Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient. The results indicated that self-awareness has a positive and significant relationship with empathy toward colleagues in the organization and also social skill has a positive and significant relationship with improved team work with-in the organization. Based on the findings, the study concluded that emotional intelligence has relationship with interpersonal relations. It was recommended among others that managers of deposit money banks need to deploy means of enhancing social skills and abilities of the employees through (seminars and workshop) in other to improve the level of team work and employees’ involvement in the workplace.