Essential Emotional Intelligence Ratios for Leaders

One of the key emotional intelligence ratios required to achieve?high-performance as a manager is your?Emotional Assertiveness?versus your?Compassionate?Empathy.?The more the two are in sync, the better leader you will become.

Emotional assertiveness is how you successfully communicate your feelings and beliefs in a non-threatening way. Think about it as the line between being passive and aggressive. The goal is to be at the mid-point.

For business leaders, compassionate empathy is essential. It goes?beyond just being able to "put yourself in the shoes"?of your peers and direct reports. Compassionate empathy takes it a step further by taking it from feeling to action. Daniel Goleman described it this way,?"Compassionate Empathy means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it."

If your emotional assertiveness dominates your compassionate?empathy to your colleagues, they will retreat to performing just enough to cover themselves. They don't believe you care about what's going on with them, and their voice doesn't count.

Alternatively, suppose your empathy is a lot higher than your assertiveness. In that case, you can get so consumed by the feelings of your colleagues that you lose your own identity and voice, and your leadership effectiveness will suffer.

• How do I determine?the effectiveness of my assertiveness to empathy ratio? Pull aside a trusted peer and ask them the following questions.In our one-on-one discussions, do you feel like I'm really listening to you??
• When you've come to me with a problem you are stuck on, have I offered sound advice and taken the lead to help you work through it?
• Do I focus more on what I have to say in meetings, or do I listen more and respond appropriately?
• Do you think my direct reports believe I really care about them?

If you don't like the responses you get from your peer, the good news is you have the?opportunity to make different?choices and get a more?desirable outcome?the next time you are in one of these situations.

If you'd like to discuss this further,?schedule?a complimentary 20-minute one-on-one Zoom call with Jeff.

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