The EQ of Leaders

Today's newsletter is sponsored by Workplace from Meta, where culture and technology come together to create a more productive future of work. Check out?www.workplace.com/future?to learn more.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In yesterday’s article, we made no secret of the fact that we believe the need for increased EQ is not reduced to leaders but is instead universal and no one can succeed in the new world of work in its absence.?

To respond to ever-increasing demands on technology, work has shifted to extreme collaboration and open experimentation to power innovation at super-fast-pace, and it now requires an ability to understand and manage ourselves and comprehend and navigate the relationship with those we are teaming with. That is what EQ is. To even apply themselves to this new world of work, there is no one who could not benefit from increased self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management in the workplace and those are the elements that make up EI as defined by Daniel Goleman, the original EI pioneer himself.?

Even so, while everyone needs EQ, leaders undoubtedly have a more urgent need.

As this video acknowledges, being a leader is far from easy and we have great empathy for their plight in particular when it comes to the immense need for EQ and the gap between that need and its official recognition in the business world. The best measure of that lack of recognition can be found in how our emotional performance and our willingness to increase it is never the object of any evaluations and implicitly isn’t being remunerated as realistically no one is being compensated for their soft skills set. What’s worse is that, should one become invested and self-didactic enough to grow their emotional intelligence, it can quickly make their lives even harder as those with high EQ often find themselves potentially suffering even more when confronted with the lack of EQ their peers have.

https://youtu.be/E8uzonyBCYo?

Anyone who has ever been in charge of people whether the line manager to a few, the product manager of one or the CEO overlord of hundreds of teams knows that the ability to listen and empathise coupled with genuine and open curiosity for their people alongside a dose of comprehending the emotional situation of their peers is a minimum cocktail to navigate the managerial relationship.?

That said, most people-managers come up the ranks from having been exceptional technical or operational people and have even less formal training in even naming emotions, forget have been exposed to any frameworks of understanding team dynamics and any strategies on how to navigate it to keep their people happy and efficient but have instead been throw into the frying-an of human needs when it comes to feelings armed with no knowledge and no resources to change that.?

In a select few cases, the luckier ones are offered a coach and when that is the case and people also apply genuine goodwill and investment in learning and growth and have the right support and tools for it, the newly minted people manager can quickly raise their EQ and become the leader the team needs.?

This is because the beauty of investing any time in the emotional wellbeing of your own self and that of the team lies in how the gains are evident, immediate and exponential, and they pay immense dividends in productivity.?

Most of the teams and leaders we work with, report huge initial jumps in their ability to perform once they have elevated the human work to habit level. This also anecdotally correlates with a sharp increase in their EQ and capacity for naming, regulating and observing emotions so it’s a natural and well-established direct link to productivity and high performance.?

The silver lining of the topic being finally elevated in the strategic discourse as we outlined yesterday despite how it doesn’t translate into corporate action as fast as we would need it to, is that those of us courageous enough to take up the human work ourselves can do so now without fearing their employer would find it frivolous or “fluffy” and thankfully, EQ is one of those abilities that can see great benefit from invested time into learning and understanding, so we must try and get more of it at all costs and to help our people on the road of getting more as well.

Investing in the right tools and mindsets to help our people that want to do the human work has never been more crucial so hopefully, companies everywhere will come along on the journey and help all of their employees acknowledge, categorise and feel their emotions freely and expressly and use that as a competitive advantage and not the impediment it had historically been seen as.?

———————————————————————

At?PeopleNotTech?we make?software?that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams, come see a DEMO.

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Te