Emotional Intelligence for Effective Leadership

In a prior post I spoke of the benefits of personality tests in the workplace. These tests bring awareness to our behavioral tendencies, and for the leader knowing your tendencies is paramount. A test that I consider to be particularly relevant when leading people (including oneself) is an Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment.

These tests, and there are numerous options available, measure your ability to identify and differentiate between emotions and feelings (No, they are not the same!), and based on your responses determines how intelligently you are able to employ your emotions and feelings in your thinking and behavior. This means the difference between an immediate, thoughtless reaction and a slow, thoughtful response. If we are to become effective leaders, the relevance of emotional self-awareness cannot be understated.

Emotions drive our feelings, which shape our thoughts and behaviors, which then shape our emotions and feelings. Emotions also help shape our memories of past experiences, affecting the present. It can be a vicious cycle of action/reaction if you aren’t aware of what’s going on.

The appropriate application of our emotions and feelings over the course of human history has been shown to render us better equipped to solve a situational need. Fear at the right time means staying alive, fear at the wrong time means a missed opportunity. What I find remarkable is this kind of intelligence is not fixed. EQ, or your emotional intelligence quotient, can be continually developed and fine-tuned through self-awareness.

If we are to create and sustain an efficient human enterprise, EQ needs to be placed as high in importance as any other transferable leadership skill.

Within our organizations, the responsibility falls on leaders to demonstrate their emotional maturity in a given situation, if they are to expect the same in return. Do you want steady performance during times of stress, consistent communication even when personalities clash? Ask yourself: How do I tend to react or respond in these circumstances? How can I expect my team to do otherwise? Leaders tell employees what is ok and not ok through their reactions, or their responses. This kind of emotional effort should not come as a surprise, it is a construct of our biological design stemming from the bond between parent and child, old and young, learned and ignorant. In modern businesses, this behavior is unsurprisingly being demanded of our leaders on all levels.

A 2015 study by the Korn Ferry Institute, Coaching for the 21st Century, asked over 200 Executive Coaches from across the world one question: “What are the top 10 leadership challenges being coached most often?” Executive leadership was divided between C-Suite, Business Unit Leader (SVP, VP) and Mid-Level (Senior Manager). I’ve included the top four, as they illustrate my point well-enough:

At every level of leadership, self-awareness, empathy, and other elements of which emotional intelligence is comprised, are there. Emotional intelligence awakens leaders to the realities facing them: they and their employees are thinking, emotional, and feeling beings, and the leader’s intelligent interpretation and application of thoughts, emotions and feelings beats out any other driver of success. In operating here we actualize co-leadership, where employee and employer co-create the future of the organization through their respective responsibilities.

To not act in service to one another is still in direct conflict with our own evolution in nature- everything is interdependent- and we must strive for a balance between serving the self and serving another if we are to garner a sustainable business result. 

Interested in bringing high emotional intelligence to your team to drive high performance? Let’s connect!