Emotional Intelligence: What is it and why is it so important at work?

Emotional intelligence is being able to use your emotions to help you think more intelligently and to be intelligent about your emotions. It is a skill that can be enhanced through training, and is critical to workplace -- and life -- success. Being emotionally intelligent can help employees better understand themselves and others. It is not about dictating "the correct way to feel" rather it helps us to understand the important role emotions can play in our work lives.

In this workshop, based on cutting edge recent research knowledge, we will first discuss exactly what intelligence is, what emotions are and how they fit and work together. We will then examine the four abilities involved in emotional intelligence, and how they relate to work place effectiveness:

- Accurately perceiving emotions in yourself and others. For example, recognizing that something you have done has hurt or upset a co-worker rather than being surprised when they confront you with it.

- Internally accessing and generating emotions so as to assist thought. For example, knowing how your moods can influence your business decisions.

- Understanding the complexity of different emotions and how emotions can predictably turn into other emotions.
For example, recognizing a colleague who has made a mistake is embarrassed about it and may lash out rather than admit his or her error.

- Regulating your own emotions and those of others so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.
For example, knowing about emotional contagion, and how it can influence group dynamics

This interactive session will provide a framework for thinking about new global consumer markets. Demographic shifts, emerging-market growth, and new technology are creating a brave new world of consumption. The focus will be on the emergence of the global middle-class, the peculiarities of the millennial population of young people, women, and 65+ consumers. Implications for banking and financial markets will also be discussed.

Creating Shared Value (CSV) describes a management strategy introduced by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer. Business is connected to society. CSV recognizes that fact, and uses that connection to enhance the profit potential of a firm. Focusing on the enrichment of a narrow group within society, for example shareholders, can lead to an impoverishment of the social environment in which a business operates and can often lead to conflicts with governments and civil society. Strategies that enrich the social environment in which a business environment operates reduce the cost of conflicts, increase the amount of resources available and the customer base, and enhance the profitability of a business firm even as it increases overall welfare. Several multinational firms have adopted CSV strategies, including Google, Unilever, and divisions of General Electric. Latin America offers several prominent examples, including Alicorp, CEMEX, and Native Sugar. Shared value does not imply that a firm`s share of value will diminish. Shared value recognizes the interconnectivity of business and society, and that as overal welfare increases so too will the firm`s. Latin America is especially well positioned to benefit from CSV strategies. In this class session we will review the basic concept of CSV. CSV literature often confuses CSV with Corporate Social Responsibility and with Social Impact strategies, so we will be careful to distinguish those concepts. Using Panamanian and Latin American businesses as examples, we will then work through the three steps in CSV: (a) reconceiving products and markets to provide appropriate services and fulfill unmet needs; (b) redefining productivity in the value chain by understanding it holistically, and (c) supporting local cluster development and improving the external environment that supports the firm`s operations. Finally, we will discuss how managers must reconceive their role in order to accrue the benefits of CSV. Persons participating in this session should take three things away. First, they will become familiar with the concept of Creating Shared Value. Second, they will have a general plan for putting these concepts to work in their firm. Finally, they will have begun the conversation regarding their role as business leaders.

Professor David Reibstein discusses the ethics, marketing, nation branding, and negotiation implications of the ongoing SodaStream/Scarlett Johansson/Oxfam controversy and other innovations for social good.

At the core of an organization`s performance are the decisions that its managers are making. It is the financial, strategic, human resource, marketing and leadership decisions that in the end determine an organization`s performance. Thus, to better understand how individuals make decisions is a truly fundamental issue. In this session, we will discuss a large range of heuristics and decision biases that are commonly observed in decision makers. These biases are widespread because they are in part resulting from how the human brain operates. Drawing on the findings of recent research, this session exposes the participants to these biases through short exercises and shows ways to alleviate them. Biases and heuristics we will cover include framing effects, endowment effects, sunk cost fallacies, self-justification fallacies, halo effects, anchoring effects, confirmation biases, and miscalibrated decision weights. After this session, participants will have a better understanding of the many ways in which individual decision making can become biased, how to spot these biases within one`s organization, and how to create processes to guard against them.

Emotional Intelligence: What is it and why is it so important at work? Emotional intelligence is being able to use your emotions to help you think more intelligently and to be intelligent about your emotions. It is a skill that can be enhanced through training, and is critical to workplace -- and life -- success. Being emotionally intelligent can help employees better understand themselves and others. It is not about dictating "the correct way to feel" rather it helps us to understand the important role emotions can play in our work lives. In this workshop, based on cutting edge recent research knowledge, we will first discuss exactly what intelligence is, what emotions are and how they fit and work together. We will then examine the four abilities involved in emotional intelligence, and how they relate to work place effectiveness: - Accurately perceiving emotions in yourself and others. For example, recognizing that something you have done has hurt or upset a co-worker rather than being surprised when they confront you with it. - Internally accessing and generating emotions so as to assist thought. For example, knowing how your moods can influence your business decisions. - Understanding the complexity of different emotions and how emotions can predictably turn into other emotions. For example, recognizing a colleague who has made a mistake is embarrassed about it and may lash out rather than admit his or her error. - Regulating your own emotions and those of others so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. For example, knowing about emotional contagion, and how it can influence group dynamics

This interactive session will provide a framework for thinking about new global consumer markets. Demographic shifts, emerging-market growth, and new technology are creating a brave new world of consumption. The focus will be on the emergence of the global middle-class, the peculiarities of the millennial population of young people, women, and 65+ consumers. Implications for banking and financial markets will also be discussed.

Creating Shared Value (CSV) describes a management strategy introduced by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer. Business is connected to society. CSV recognizes that fact, and uses that connection to enhance the profit potential of a firm. Focusing on the enrichment of a narrow group within society, for example shareholders, can lead to an impoverishment of the social environment in which a business operates and can often lead to conflicts with governments and civil society. Strategies that enrich the social environment in which a business environment operates reduce the cost of conflicts, increase the amount of resources available and the customer base, and enhance the profitability of a business firm even as it increases overall welfare. Several multinational firms have adopted CSV strategies, including Google, Unilever, and divisions of General Electric. Latin America offers several prominent examples, including Alicorp, CEMEX, and Native Sugar. Shared value does not imply that a firm`s share of value will diminish. Shared value recognizes the interconnectivity of business and society, and that as overal welfare increases so too will the firm`s. Latin America is especially well positioned to benefit from CSV strategies. In this class session we will review the basic concept of CSV. CSV literature often confuses CSV with Corporate Social Responsibility and with Social Impact strategies, so we will be careful to distinguish those concepts. Using Panamanian and Latin American businesses as examples, we will then work through the three steps in CSV: (a) reconceiving products and markets to provide appropriate services and fulfill unmet needs; (b) redefining productivity in the value chain by understanding it holistically, and (c) supporting local cluster development and improving the external environment that supports the firm`s operations. Finally, we will discuss how managers must reconceive their role in order to accrue the benefits of CSV. Persons participating in this session should take three things away. First, they will become familiar with the concept of Creating Shared Value. Second, they will have a general plan for putting these concepts to work in their firm. Finally, they will have begun the conversation regarding their role as business leaders.

BIG DATA: Everyone is talking ab out big data. In this session we will use the term "big data" to talk about the kinds of data to better reach the right customers with the right products and messages. In January 2014, Amazon announced they will start shipping products to customers even before they order to reduce shipping time. How do they do this? We will also have to explore the implications for privacy. Large companies may be leading the charge on big data, but you don`t have to be a large enterprise in order to fully capitalize on this trend. The net result is more efficiency in marketing spending AND customers getting what they want.

At the core of an organization`s performance are the decisions that its managers are making. It is the financial, strategic, human resource, marketing and leadership decisions that in the end determine an organization`s performance. Thus, to better understand how individuals make decisions is a truly fundamental issue. In this session, we will discuss a large range of heuristics and decision biases that are commonly observed in decision makers. These biases are widespread because they are in part resulting from how the human brain operates. Drawing on the findings of recent research, this session exposes the participants to these biases through short exercises and shows ways to alleviate them. Biases and heuristics we will cover include framing effects, endowment effects, sunk cost fallacies, self-justification fallacies, halo effects, anchoring effects, confirmation biases, and miscalibrated decision weights. After this session, participants will have a better understanding of the many ways in which individual decision making can become biased, how to spot these biases within one`s organization, and how to create processes to guard against them.