Emotional Intelligence Leadership

Genuine human connection is at the heart of emotional intelligence (EI). Leaders more than ever need to connect to those they are leading. And perhaps more critical is that people, employees, volunteers need to feel connected to their leaders. They do that, we do that through human connection. Face-to-face.

Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to get rid of your PDA. I am suggesting that if you are wanting to improve your EI or are in need of developing emotional intelligence, you opt for a face-to- face conversation more than every-so-often. Leadership is many things. One is the art of getting things done, usually for a positive business result, through other people. While there are other ways to get results, one of the best ways is by building relationships. Studies show that one of the things employees want from their work environment is a positive relationship with their supervisor.  When that is a given, it’s fine to use your PDA to send a quick request and receive a timely response. But if your primary form of communicating is via a hand-held device, and you don’t already have a strong positive relationship, it’s time to put it down, walk around the corner and say hello.

Don’t sacrifice a relationship for what initially appears to be a more efficient way to get things done. The long run ROI just isn’t there. If however, you invest in building relationships through genuine human connections and then use your BlackBerry wisely, your efforts will pay off.

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Everyone agrees that as a leader, part of your job is to improve business results. Uh huh. Well, this is why you have to be emotionally intelligent: Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and co author of Primal Leadership with Richard Boyatzis and Annie Mckee found that an affiliative leadership style which builds emotional capital is more effective in today’s organizations than the leadership styles of yesterday. The data reviwed by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee suggest that HOW a leader leads is key…to the bottom line. The numbers point to a leader’s style being about 70% of the emotional climate and climate is in large part the reason why people stay at a company. A good emotional climate makes employees feel good to be a part of that entity. Emotional climate then drives about 20%, sometimes more, of business performance.

How does emotional climate come to be? As noted, a leader’s style and how s/he makes you feel creates the emotional tone of the workplace. There are four fundamentals of what is known as emotional intelligence that enable a leader to create a great emotional climate. They are: self- awareness, self-management (self-management of emotion), social awareness (empathy), and relationship management. Each of these components is inter-related and we’ll be talking more about these in future posts. But for now, it all starts with self-awareness.

By a certain point in life, we tend to think that we know ourselves pretty well. Perhaps. Then again maybe not. Or maybe in certain ways, but not in the realm of our emotions. There are three key competencies to being self-aware according to Hay Group’s Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI): emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence.

• Do you know the signs that tell you what you are feeling?

• Do you use that information to help you shift your focus if needed?

• Do you have strong sense of your capabilities? Of your shortcomings?

• Are you open to feedback and do you solicit it regularly?

While it’s tempting to answer “yes” to these questions and conclude that you are in fact emotionally intelligent, it turns out that there’s a range of emotional intelligence. And, perhaps more importantly, emotional intelligence, like leadership, can be developed.

Take action on becoming more emotionally self-aware: the next time you are working, notice how you are feeling. Happy, frustrated, calm, energized? Then, see how that impacts what you’re working on. Are you productive, creative, efficient? Is everything flowing easily? Or are you slogging through it just to get it checked-off the list? Are you doing C+ work? Check-in with yourself . Note what emotions and patterns of emotions cause you to be at your best.

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