Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
Posted on August 28, 2023 by Rob Murray, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Understanding and using Emotional Intelligence as a leader is vital for high performing leadership today.
Emotional Intelligence can account for up to 90% of success for high performing leaders. The ability to judge one’s own emotions and those of the people around you, and then use that information in decision making and communication is vital to successful leadership today.
Emotional intelligence has been defined in a variety of ways but for our discussion about its’ use in leadership emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and assess one’s own emotions and the emotions of others and then to use that information to guide one’s actions.
• Responding to your own emotions: Knowing, directing, and channeling your emotions so that they don’t control things they shouldn’t.
• Recognizing others’ emotions: Knowing how others are feeling just by seeing their expressions and/or knowing their personal stories.
• Influencing others’ emotions: Influencing others means combining the first two skills with the ability to impact the emotional lives of people around you.
• This flows into Relational Intelligence, using this information in how you communicate with the people around you.
In his must-read book for leaders, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey points to where emotional intelligence can play a key role in leadership. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”. He was not the first to use this quote, but it is said to be one of the foundations for his inspiration in this landmark book. It speaks to taking the time to assess the situation and responding only when ready, a clear place for the use of emotional intelligence in our role as a leader. Taking the time to understand where we are emotionally and how that will affect our response to a situation, then adding in our understanding of our coworker’s personality and current emotional state of mind gives us a good path towards a winning outcome.
It can take a long time to build trust within a team but can take a moment to damage it. A thoughtful response is far superior to a reflexive verbal blast to any of the many stimuli we face in our workday. The way in which you interact with others establishes the atmosphere of leadership within a team and the company as a whole. Leaders who possess limited or insufficient emotional intelligence will find it hard to connect with others and struggle in managing their own emotional reactions. This will eventually lead to diminished team engagement, poor results, and team turnover.
Emotional intelligence from leadership helps create a good work environment of trust and the culture needed to drive results. This environment has 5 main characteristics:
• Team members embrace their accountabilities and know how they are contributing to the overall success of the company.
• Team members trust that their targets are attainable and that they are supported in reaching them.
• Team members are comfortable and confident in bringing forward new ideas.
• Strong performance is recognized, poor performance is coached, and people are clear on how to be successful in their roles.
• Team members feel that they are part of something and want to contribute to its’ success.
Tapping into our emotional intelligence combined with building effective communication skills helps get us on the above path with direct reports, co-workers, leaders, and others within our circle.
The ability to understand and control your own emotions and understand other people’s emotions helps to improve how we communicate with others. And in turn, build trust, which is one the key ingredients to an effective relationship with anyone.
Effective communication with others makes all the difference in making positive things happen.
