Building a leadership role through Emotional Intelligence

I’ve always been a supporter of Emotional Intelligence for those in a leadership role. I believe that the last two years, with the many changes the pandemic has brought to our lives (personal and professional) has shown us how empathy and “emotional management” are becoming more and more important. Especially for those with leadership roles, or who aspire to lead.

In recent years it has become clear that managing performance and skills in an optimal way, in addition to personal relationships, is simply not enough. Those who run a company, or even just a team, need to work on the skills of emotional understanding and empathic ability, as a fundamental priority. Why? Because the situations which have arisen from 2020 onwards are so different and so important that the professional and the personal? spheres are no longer separable. The pandemic, the recovery, the geopolitical instability are issues too huge to be left out of the workplace: they influence our daily behaviour, adding further complexity to the already delicate balance between professional and personal motivations.

Personal performance is not just a matter of individual skills and abilities. It is strongly influenced by emotions and feelings, which directly affect numerous factors: motivation, inspiration, creativity, concentration, learning processes, and performance. All of which means: results. In December 2020, Forbes started highlighting the growing importance of awareness, learning and improving Emotional Intelligence techniques, especially in leadership roles. Today this skill is becoming a priority for the success of a company, an organisation or a team group.

What do I mean by Emotional Intelligence?

Naturally, this is not my definition: the American writer and psychologist Daniel Goleman already defined it many years ago. He also introduced it as a fundamental component of a good leadership “skills portfolio”.

EI is the ability to notice, identify, understand and manage our own feelings and emotions, as well as that of other people. It includes a wide range of abilities, skills and elements to be taken into consideration, including self-control, social skills, relationships, communication and influencing or motivating other people.

It may seem strange to think that the emotions of your colleagues, collaborators and employees must be considered when analysing results or carrying out work projects: but this has simply become an imperative. This knowledge is quite recent, and in many cases is still not taken seriously.

On a personal level, I am convinced that EI is a vital skill which has one innate part and a second part that undoubtedly needs to be worked on.

Emotionally understanding the people we work with (or any other people), knowing how to identify with them, empathise in a sincere and profound way, without hidden thoughts or prejudices, and without the constant worry of "results"… well, it's extremely difficult. But it helps to establish a truer, more trusting, more serene and ultimately more effective relationships.

How can it affect leadership?

High levels of emotional intelligence help to make optimal, fully aware and emotionally intelligent decisions. This means that you can aim for the achievement of your goals by positively involving others through a shared vision.

I speak from personal experience: usually, emotionally intelligent people are not as stressed and anxious as others, and this helps in making difficult decisions with more serenity. It also helps in establishing stronger relationships all around, every day… a clear advantage in the workplace and also in personal life.

A few steps to learn or improve

Of course, I’m not a psychologist or a professor. I’m talking out of my own experience. I know that EI is a learnable skill, and that training and coaching classes can be extremely useful in this sense. You can develop it and build on your personal baseline. You just need to have some understanding of EI, use certain mental tools to help you, and practice them diligently. This is what I did, and what I still do, everyday: I try to improve my ability to understand others and guide them, effectively and together, towards our results. Or better still, instead of guiding them, I try to make them guide themselves, towards a shared goal.

A few tips I found useful, on the way to learning and improving my Emotional Intelligence in a leadership role:

1. Recognise your emotions, try to observe them and analyse them while you are experiencing them, and also afterwards. Try to describe them and recognise their typical features (whether physical or emotional). Describing them enables you to see them as something separate from you, which therefore can be recognised in yourself and, with certain limits, in others.
2. Make an assessment, a list of strengths and weaknesses. Identify ways in which you need development, and how to improve at understanding others’ feelings. It’s all very personal and depends on the people you are relating with.
3. Mindfulness: this means developing the ability of being totally present in the moment and aware of everything around you.
4. Listen with tolerance, compassion and empathy. Try to move away your own feelings and concentrate on how other people might feel and identify their emotions. This can help you to empathise with them and give an appropriate response to them and their needs. Empathetic leaders listen carefully and are approachable: this is probably the most difficult part of all.
5. Be curious and encouraging, show interest (and be interested) in your team members' hopes, dreams, goals and ideas. Compliment people for good ideas, or provide positive criticism if ideas need to be improved and re-elaborated.
6. Awareness. Leaders continuously interact with each other, so social awareness is paramount to recognising their moods, states and feelings. From an organisational point of view, this helps you to be more aware of strategies, priorities, politics and trends.