Leadership and management is not just about building the right team, but also having good communication skills, being able to motivate and coach them and setting the right strategy and performance targets. These are all essential leadership skills but a vital skill that many leaders over look is Emotional Intelligence. Leaders who integrate emotional intelligence into their daily routine are 80% more successful than their counterparts and add immense value to both their team and organisation.
It is said there are four key components that make up emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness
- Self Regulation
- Motivation
- Empathy
- Social skills
Self-awareness
Do you have a clear honest understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a leaders? Perhaps ask your team for some feedback. By showing your team you are keen to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, it creates a great example and makes it easier for you to able to discuss theirs with them.
Self-Regulation
As a leader how do you hold yourself accountable? Do you understand your own emotions and triggers? Do you have strong values both morally and ethically and are able to apply these to leadership situations? Can you remain calm in a storm and deal with your team without your emotions taking over? Showing what accountability and calm way of dealing with issues looks like, is key to encourage those behaviours in your team.
Motivation
How self-motivated are you? Do you set yourself challenging gaols and work towards them until you have achieved them? Are you motivated to lead others to get the best from your team? Do you have a positive mindset? These are key skills for any leader.
Empathy
The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shows and see things from their viewpoint. But more than this, it is the ability to understand others feelings and be considerate of their needs.
Social Skills
This is the element which focusses on great communication. Communication in all areas such as: conflict, change, encouragement, influence etc. It doesn’t mean in a social environment; it means day to day how good are you at all round communication in various scenarios? Can you get others to come on board, listen and work with you – rather than against you?
The benefits of using Emotional Intelligence in Leadership:
Helps you take control of any kind of conflict or emotions within the workplace
With the right skills, using emotional intelligence will make it easier for you to connect with your staff when dealing with conflict management.
Creates a positive working environment and encourages teamwork
As using emotional intelligence improves yours and your team’s communication skills, it means your employees will trust you and value your leadership – which in turn cascades down into better teamworking.
Improves communication within your team
Emotional intelligence is essential for leaders to become a successful communicator in the workplace. Good communication using EI results in improving your professional and person relationships with each member of your team, creating a trustworthy atmosphere where people feel able to open up about difficulties and struggles.
Helps with successful change management
Going through any kind of change in the workplace can be stressful for employees and cause anxiety and frustration which can turn into burnout which will lead to a bigger resistance for that change. By using emotional intelligence, you can help employees become more adaptable to change management rather than resistant. Good leaders will be aware and try get to the bottom of why employees may be resisting, question why they are feeling this way and then give them a positive outlook on the change and why they should contribute.
Controls stress
Emotional intelligence can also be a great way for stress management for yourself and your employees in the workplace. Making sure you aren’t expecting perfection from yourself and others will give you a more positive outlook as it will help you develop and grow over time, rather than expecting the best and failing which in turns leads to stress. It’s also important to process your mistakes and learn from them so you are able to look back on what you can do differently next time, otherwise you will be setting yourself and employees expectations that may not be possible to meet right away, and will add to everyone’s stress levels
It’s a key skill of a strong leader
Emotional intelligence overall makes you a stronger leader. Great leaders know how to influence and inspire their team members by fully working on understanding themselves, others and guiding them in the right direction.
How can you improve your Emotional Intelligence?
A great profiling tool is the EQi2.0
It looks at various areas of your current Emotional Intelligence and how balanced you are. We can then, either via training or one to one coaching, help you improve on your weaker areas, to create a better understanding and more balance profile.
For more information on Emotional Intelligence, Sales Training, Leadership, or Coaching training please contact Sales Training International on +44 (0) 1704 889325 or email info@salestrainingint.com for more information.
