What do you do if your team lacks emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is a critical part of stakeholder and change management when it comes to IT strategy, and is crucial to the success of any initiative. It starts with promoting self-awareness among team members. Before one can sense what others may be feeling, it is important to be able to understand one's own emotions, behaviours, reactions, and the reasoning or triggers behind them. This takes practice, getting used to stepping back, reflecting on the situation, and thinking about how one feels and why. Once this skill is mastered, it becomes easier to derive meaning from verbal and non-verbal cues that are displayed in communication with others, such as tone, body language, and choice of words.

Encourage open communication and empathy within the team. Offer training or workshops focused on emotional intelligence skills such as active listening, conflict resolution, and understanding others' perspectives. Create a culture of respect and understanding where team members feel comfortable expressing their emotions and concerns. Lead by example by demonstrating emotional intelligence in your own interactions.

In my experience, the scenarios in which a lack of emotional intelligence is identified chiefly respond to the misalignment of the expectations of the team members with the functions they perform; on rare occasions, it has to do with the personal deficiencies of the team members. On the contrary, the vast majority are associated with poor management of expectations by the company with those of its staff. They define a job profile with specific characteristics, knowledge, and skills, but in practice, they develop different activities.

Emotional Intelligence is the foundation for IT Strategy teams who need to maintain the balance for the successful outcome. If the team lacks the Emotional Intelligence, I would look at every individual of the team for the SWOT analysis instead of the team as a whole. For each specific individual needs, the suggested approach would vary from mentoring, training recommendations, delegation, shadowing, job rotation and more 1-1s. By doing this, the member would be able to identify and work on their specific needs which when extrapolated at the team level would change the course.

Carrying out diagnoses to measure the level of Emotional Intelligence can be a good exercise, but, at least, I always have my reservations because how a person reacts to a work event responds to different causes; most are caused by a poor definition of roles and responsibilities that are not the responsibility of the employee; instead, it falls on the leaders who must make the appropriate adjustments to their ways of working and, if necessary, rethink the Value Chain of the Company itself. What good is a diagnosis that tells you that employees do not meet the profile, but you never look back to see the root cause of the problem? It usually refers to a poor definition of roles and responsibilities.

I have witnessed that training your work team on topics beyond the technical knowledge that their position demands, such as the development of soft skills, has a powerful impact on the members' performance and, consequently, on the team's performance. Training the members and treating them as coachees, accompanying them on their journey of discovering their soft skills, has exceptionally positive results, both for each employee and the company; it reduces turnover, increases communication, and opens the possibility of training a culture of innovation.

Leading by example is paramount in fostering emotional intelligence within team. By consistently demonstrating empathy, active listening, and effective emotional management, we can set the tone for collaborative and supportive interactions. These actions not only establish expectations but also inspire the team to emulate these behaviors, ultimately enhancing our collective emotional intelligence and driving success in IT strategy.

In my opinion team is an extended family.As in a family every level of hierarchy has to consider his/her team as a family.All relationships get a boost with the best attribute called EMPATHY…Whenever I talk to my team,I have to understand the background where he is coming from…and the best way to do that is to Lead-by-Example. I have to know what my employees are going through on day-to-day basis.How is his relationship with spouse and kids etc Emotional Intelligence is a broad concept and this can be increased only if everyone has good relationship with everyone else…so if I can empathize with everyone else, it surely is going to create strong bonding and thus both intelligence & emotional quotients will improve