The Role of Emotional Wisdom in Salespersons’ Relationships with Colleagues and Customers

Emotional wisdom is defined as a set of seven dimensions of basic skills and meta-narratives concerning how to regulate emotions within specific domains in such a way that the individual’s and firm’s well-being are tied together. Using operationalizations of emotional wisdom for salespersons from a wide range of industries (Study 1) and in automotive dealerships (Study 2), with respect to both colleagues and customers, it is discovered that salespeople who score high on emotional wisdom cope differently with socially chal-lenging situations and achieve better social relationships than those who score low on emotional wisdom. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Suppose a salesperson compares him/herself with a colleague who is perform-ing better than him/herself and feels envy as a result. S/he may regulate or con-trol this envy by congratulating the colleague, so as to be able to maintain a good relationship with the colleague. Or imagine a salesperson who develop