Emotional Intelligence Leadership

In last week’s post, I talked about the top three reasons why you, leader, need to be socially aware. They are:

1) It’s a small world, getting smaller by the minute.

2) You can’t be a success in leadership on your own.

3) People do business with people they know and like.

So how do you become socially aware? How do you increase your social awareness?

The number one way is to listen. LISTEN. Stop talking and really focus on the other person and what s/he is saying or trying to express. This means no interrupting and no drafting your response in your head while the other person is speaking. It is being truly present in that moment with that person, completely focused on him.

When we really listen and give another person our full attention, it builds trust and respect and good relationships. Whenever I ask people what qualities or characteristics they think of in great leaders, “being a good listener” is always on the list. Good Listening is developing the skill to peel away layers to get to the core of the message. Yes, you should be able to paraphrase what you heard, AND you should “get” the underlying message, the unspoken words. It means paying attention to body language, voice-tone and the words. Hopefully, these three match and are congruent. If not, body language is the most reliable way to “hear” a message.

It seems simple and yet it isn’t always easy to do. Leaders can build this skill and for those who do, they improve their social awareness and they expand their circle of influence It takes practice, being open to receiving feedback and taking action on the input.

Are you ready to increase your social awareness, build more respectful, trusting relationships and expand your leadership circle of influence?

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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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