Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
We are remembered for how we made someone feel, not for what we said or did. That means that we are remembered for our level of emotional intelligence!
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Simply put, our emotional intelligence is our ability to be aware of, express, and control our emotions as well as perceive the emotions and feelings of others.
Emotional Intelligence enables leaders to manage relationships and communications with empathy as well as take accountability for their own behaviors.
Emotional intelligence can be broken down into six core competencies:
Self-awareness
Self-management
Social awareness
Relationship management
Motivation
Empathy
Motivation and Empathy are elements in relationship management and social awareness, so sometimes these two are not listed separately.
Self-awareness is the fundamental baseline for emotional intelligence. It is a leader’s ability to understand their own strengths/weaknesses, as well as understand the effect their emotions have on their team’s performance. Interestingly, research demonstrates that while the vast majority of people will claim that they are self-aware, very few actually are.
Awareness of unconscious biases is arguably necessary for one to declare oneself self-aware – yet how many people have tried to discover their own biases? By definition, we are not aware of these biases until we make an effort to unmask them – and only then can we become self-aware enough to try to manage these biases with emotional intelligence.
Self-management refers to the ability to control your emotions, by separating stimulus from response. Responses should be values-driven rather than instinctive or reactionary. In order to have a credible level of gravitas, one must have effective self-management, and therefore one must have good emotional intelligence to develop executive presence and influence.
Social awareness describes your ability to recognize others’ emotions. People strive to understand their colleagues’ feelings and perspectives by utilizing empathy, which enables them to communicate and collaborate more effectively.
This increased level of communication also helps the emotionally intelligent leader to develop awareness around organizational dynamics – a.k.a. corporate politics. Using empathy to understand individual and group motivations enables the management of relationships.
Relationship management refers to a leader’s ability to influence others. This may be through positive reinforcement, conflict management, or understanding what is deemed as respectful behavior. A recent Society for Human Resource Management survey found that 72 percent of employees rank “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels” as the top factor in job satisfaction (www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/hr-magazine/how-to-resolve-workplace-conflicts). Job satisfaction is clearly a key to engagement and retention, which are synonymous with results!
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important for a Leader?
Clearly from the above, we can surmise that the primary importance of EI is in generating engagement as it enables the building of trust between employees and their leaders. Engagement leads to results as more discretionary effort is brought to bear. Higher engagement also leads to lower costly employee turnover.
A second reason EI is so critical is that everyone needs to be able to communicate. Those who cannot communicate effectively will be overlooked and have little influence on decisions or the direction of the organization, regardless of their other skills. Being able to detect emotions and feelings in others, is essential to being a strong communicator. It stands therefore that those with high emotional intelligence will wield greater influence and have higher-flying careers.
The third benefit to high EI is understanding organizational dynamics and being able to maneuver effectively through corporate politics to benefit both oneself as well as their team and the organization. At worst, this benefit may seem a little Machiavellian as some leaders use their perceptive abilities to manipulate others for their personal gain, however, this is also necessary for a leader to move in sync with the organization.
Tips to Lead with Emotional Intelligence
There are many ways an emerging leader can exercise their emotional intelligence muscles to become better and stronger. For example;
Empathetic Listening will help you to understand others and will also increase their willingness to return the favor by actively listening to you. Practice going beyond active listening to try to place yourself in the speaker’s situation. Feel what they feel and let them paint their picture fully. Do not let your experiences or opinions paint their picture for them.
Understand One-self (self-awareness and self-regulation)
Practice humility as this will avoid the trap of hubris.
Keep a journal to better understand your own emotional triggers.
Take a deep breath and pause when feeling emotionally triggered.
Practice self-accountability and expand the gap between a stimulus and your response.
Deliberately try to unmask your unconscious biases so that you can start managing these biases.
Get to Know others to understand what motivates their behaviors and where you, as the leader, can help support them. Practice and hone your conflict resolution skills as well as your positive reinforcement skills.
Practice staying positive. Acknowledge difficulty or true hurdles and then focus on optimism and what can be done to move in the direction of a solution.
Conclusion
Remember that how others feel will be a real factor in results attainment for the team and the sustainability of those results, as they tie back to engagement and organizational trust.
You will be remembered for how you make others feel, so choose your words and actions wisely!
