Why Emotional Intelligence is Key to Success in Your Leadership Role

Do you know someone like this; the person who is self-aware and who always seems to be able strike a chord with those around them, who is able to navigate their relationships – both business and personal – with clarity and sensitivity, while maintaining boundaries and never compromising their own emotional needs?

This person has high emotional intelligence.

It might be that the qualities I’ve described above are ones that you already possess, or are currently working on improving. Or it could be that you struggle to form and maintain those valuable, quality interpersonal relationships with your direct team, or other members of your organisation.

Wherever you currently are in terms of your ability to utilise your emotional intelligence at work to eradicate problems and lead your team effectively. Today we’re going to look at why as a leader, it’s absolutely vital that you are able to reach a level of emotional intelligence that is going to benefit you in your leadership career.

First let’s explore what high emotional intelligence looks like.

What Qualities do Emotionally Intelligent People Possess?

As I mentioned above, emotionally intelligent individuals can usually be identified by being those in any setting who are able to mediate the emotions of a situation, both by expressing their own opinions sensitively and by also seeking to understand the viewpoint of those around them.

While this might sound like I’m describing someone who is simply a peacekeeper, there are some subtle yet important differences between those who only want to avoid conflict, and those who are able to lead a group of people, with different priorities and viewpoints, to an end goal using their emotional intelligence skills.

Leaders with high emotional intelligence are able to tap into the emotions of those around them to enable better collaborative working, by truly understanding and harnessing people’s drives and behaviours in order to find the best outcome in any scenario.

Pulling a team in the same direction is not easy, and that’s why not everyone can make it as a successful leader. As a leader, one of your main priorities should be coherence – and an essential part of this is motivating your team to work to the best of their abilities.

Emotionally intelligent people are able to deal with any negative situation that arises, and emotionally intelligent leaders are able to build on this and create a strong foundation to anchor their team to.

Is Emotional Intelligence an Inherent Leadership Quality?

While it is true that leaders tend to have more developed skills in certain areas than their colleagues in non-leadership roles, it is not a given that all leaders have well developed emotional intelligence.

Many leaders find themselves in leadership roles due to their expertise in their field, or other ‘hard’ skills, such as negotiation, being excellent at stakeholder management, or developing and delivering technical strategies.

When issues occur within teams, it can be easy to look at the outputs to assess the team’s effectiveness or success but remember that the success of a team lies within the strength of its ability to ride out problematic periods and come out stronger. An excellent leader will possess the right emotional intelligence skills to be able to really people-manage employees when they need it most.

So, what should this look like in your leadership role? Let’s take a look at how to develop your emotional intelligence skills as a leader.

What Emotional Intelligence Skills Should Leaders Work On Developing?

Emotions are the foundation of everything we do. In our personal lives, and in work too – people, no matter how skilled they are or how much capacity they have to give to a particular role, find it much easier to put more effort into a project when they have a positive emotional attachment to it. A great leader will find and nurture these positive connections between the individual and the organisation’s goals.

You will often find organisations looking to improve team ‘morale’ using arbitrary team building exercises, when the underlying issues usually stem from a lack of true connections within the team, built on a foundation of mutual respect and understanding.

Here are three foundational pillars of emotional intelligence to focus on developing, to help you in your leadership position.

1. Empathy

As a leader, your time and resources can often feel stretched to the maximum, and delivering the aims of the business will always feel like your top priority. You might expect a lot of your team, but that’s because you know they are capable and you want them to feel the same drive and reward that you get from your leadership role.

However, the reality of the situation might be quite different and without frequent conscious mindful attempts from you to empathise with each of your team members, and adapt where possible to accommodate their current needs, you may start to notice the gap becoming increasingly large between what you expect from your team, and what is actually being delivered.

Empathy is essential in order to connect with people who have different priorities and viewpoints to yourself – it is a critical leadership skill.

1. Self-Awareness

Like empathy, self awareness is a skill that can be honed by consciously reviewing your thoughts and behaviours to recognise potentially unhelpful traits.

In a high-pressured work setting, our own priorities can fill our headspace, making it difficult to see the bigger picture and view things from your colleagues’ perspective. To develop self awareness as a leader will mean you will be able view the overarching vision in a pragmatic way.

Be mindful during your interactions, consider how your communication style could come across to others. Are you presuming knowledge? Are you giving correct context? Are you asking the right questions?

1. Perceptiveness

Actively observe your team’s interactions, paying attention to things that others might overlook. Has someone’s communication style or tone changed, and if so, why might that be? Engage in conversations with genuine curiosity, aim to learn as much as you can about your team, what they respond well to, what they find challenging.

Finally

We work with teams and individuals to help them recognise and reach their full emotionally intelligent potential and help them to understand the transformative power that high emotional intelligence can provide.

If you would like to know more about how we can help develop emotional intelligence, for the benefit of your team and your organisation, let’s talk – click here to connect with me.

Until next time,

Julia Carter

About Julia Carter

Julia Carter is the MD of Zestfor?Ltd and specialises in working with leaders and managers of virtual and hybrid teams to improve team effectiveness.

Effective leadership involves numerous competencies, but it also requires a core mindset which is rarely explored in leadership programmes. Julia’s mission is to instil this core mindset into as many leaders as possible so that they can empower their people in their areas of specialty...and hopefully in their personal lives too.

In 2009, Julia founded Zestfor - a training consultancy and continues her mission.

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