Course Spotlight: Emotional Intelligence for Leadership

Research by Harvard Business School found that over 70% of employers think emotional intelligence (EQ) is more important than technical skills when recruiting new staff.

In a recent BBC interview, in the UK, CEO of Neal’s Yard, Anabel Kindersley, stated that when she is hiring, she looks for people with "equal EQ as IQ.”  This clearly shows that employers are recognising the importance of emotional intelligence in their employees.

Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to recognise their own emotions, and the emotions of others, being able to manage and use their emotions. It includes empathy, good judgement in social interactions, motivation, self-discipline, self-awareness and good social skills. 

Emotional intelligence is important at all levels of an organisation, including leadership.  EQ is important for a number of reasons, such as  –

Preventing Disconnect

EQ can be useful for leaders working with remote workers. Remote workers can experience a disconnect with the organisation as they are not there in a face-to-face situation. They can feel isolated and left out of decision making or news from the organisation. A good leader will keep remote staff fully aware of any decisions and information that affects them.

Preventing Bad Habits

High EQ can help to present poor work habits and build cooperative teams through good communication and leading by example.

Collaborative Leadership

A poor leader will rely on outdated management styles, such as hierarchical leadership. Whereas a leader with good EQ skills will also show good collaborative leadership, including staff in decision making, listening to what staff have to say and taking notice.

Predicting Performance

EQ is a strong predictor of performance in the workplace. Employees and leaders with high EQ are more likely to stay calm under pressure, respond to other workers with empathy and resolve conflict more effectively.

Do You Have High EQ?

High EQ is important in leadership to avoid conflicts and understanding in the workplace. A poor leader may also struggle to manage and express their emotions.

Are you a leader, but want to improve your leadership skills?

Or would you like to become a leader?

Then consider whether you have high EQ.

Do you blame others when things don’t go as planned?

Do you consider your own role in the situation when things don’t go as planned? What could you have done better?

Do you find that your conversations with others feel strained or awkward?

Are you prone to outbursts of negative emotions, such as anger, upset etc?

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

If you have answered these questions honestly and most of the answers are no, then try to become more aware of your empathy and emotional intelligence, by practising the four key components of emotional intelligence –

Self-awareness

As we just asked, if something goes wrong, do you automatically blame others? If you are working in a team, then usually everyone in the team has a part to play. Could you have improved how you performed? Self-awareness is about being aware about your own behaviour, but also the impact your behaviour has on others.

In a team where members are not self-aware, this can lead to poor motivation and performance. So, self-awareness is important.

If you cannot see if you have contributed to anything going wrong, why not ask other members of the team, or your peers. Perhaps hold a short meeting and ask them to consider how things could be improved next time you are in this situation. 

Self-management

BUT staff may not be willing to share their feelings about your performance if you have poor self-management. For example, if they say that you contributed to a problem and you start shouting at them or blaming them, they are not likely to be willing to speak out. 

Self-management is the ability to manage your own emotions, particularly in stressful situations.

Within self-management, also consider what you expect from your staff and how you perform. A simple example – A is a leader and expects his staff to always be on time for work and for meetings. However, he has very poor time management. He does not lead by example, but becomes angry if staff do not do what he expects. This causes resentment within the team.

Social awareness

Pay attention to others.   There are lots of ways we can see that a team is unhappy, such as –

high levels of sickness

high staff turnover

presenteeism (where the person is present at work, but performing due to capacity due to lack of interest, illness etc).

Pay attention to how the team behaviour. Is there a light, happy, tone in the workplace? Or do people look angry and upset? Does the mood in the room change when you enter the room? Consider how you behave. What could you do to change this?

Show empathy and understanding.  If B came into the office late, A, for example, might have started shouting and being irritated. But what if B’s car had broken down, or they had a serious problem that morning.  If it was a one-off situation, A should really talk to them, find out how they are, if there is anything wrong. Not simply assuming that they are late for no reason.

If a person is consistently late, then this is a different situation. If there is no valid reason, then this would need to be resolved in a professional way, using disciplinary procedures. But if there could be a valid reason that a business could resolve. For example, perhaps the person has to drop a child at nursery and struggles to be in on time. Could they start half an hour later? Or work flexi-time?

Relationship management

Relationship management is our ability to mentor, coach and influence others, and resolve conflicts effectively.  If we do not deal with conflict effectively in the workplace, it can lead to a waste of business time. For example, through gossip, unproductive meetings etc.

So good conflict resolution is important.  Tough conversations with your team can be important and essential, but they should be handled respectfully.

A post on LinkedIn recently mentioned that in a meeting, a staff member went to his CEO and asked what the CEO’s plans were for listening to the employees. The CEO basically ignored him and then made his life difficult afterwards. The employee left shortly afterwards and joined another company, leading a successful career. The CEO clearly demonstrated hierarchical leadership and, in the process, lost a valuable employee. Listening to your staff is important for so many reasons –

You employ your staff because they do their jobs. They have ideas. They can be useful. So, listen to them.

By listening, we can try to resolve conflicts before they happen. Rather than deal with difficult decisions afterwards.  This is why collaboration is so important in leadership.

High EQ and empathy are essential for good leaders today.

If you would like to develop your EQ skills, please get in touch with us.

We offer courses in -

Emotional Intelligence

Conflict Management

Anger Management

Human Resources

And more.

Contact us on admin@acs.edu.au