Leaders must possess emotional intelligence in order to establish and sustain positive working relationships with their team members. It enables you to gain a more comprehensive understanding of others. This allows you to comprehend the factors that inspire your team members and maintain their engagement in the workplace. This enables you to comprehend team dynamics, which in turn enables you to mitigate toxicity within your team. Additionally, emotional intelligence facilitates the development of collaboration and creativity. This is because it cultivates a sense of security that enables individuals to perform at their best. Emotional intelligence is considered one of the most critical skills for professional success, according to the World Economic Forum. Emotional intelligence has either constrained or augmented the success of numerous established and experienced leaders, and numerous employees have resigned from their positions due to their boss’s lack of emotional intelligence. Ultimately, emotional intelligence is crucial in the workplace, particularly in the context of leadership.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
To examine the precise definition of emotional intelligence briefly. The capacity to perceive, comprehend, regulate, and regulate emotions is the most common definition of emotional intelligence. According to Daniel Goleman, a renowned psychotherapist and expert in emotional intelligence, our ability to recognize, regulate, and articulate our emotions is defined as emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence initially appears somewhat ambiguous, despite the definition you select, which may lead you to believe that you possess it. I am capable of comprehending my own emotions. I comprehend the emotions of others. However, are you aware that there is a great deal more to the development of emotional intelligence than you may have previously believed?
Step 1: Developing Emotional Intelligence
Many individuals often lack the ability to comprehend and be conscious of their own emotions, a skill known as emotional intelligence. According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, 95% of individuals believe that they possess self-awareness, but in reality, only 10 to 15% of individuals truly exhibit self-sentience. Consequently, we have a tendency to overrate our level of self-awareness, which can result in an overestimation of our emotional intelligence. Allow me to introduce an exercise that will enhance your self-awareness regarding your emotions. Emotions play a significant role in the formation of emotional intelligence. This self-awareness reflection activity will prompt you to contemplate your interactions with colleagues in the workplace and identify the factors that may cause different emotions to arise. One side will exhibit positive emotions, while the other side will exhibit negative emotions.
The majority of our emotions can be classified as either positive or negative. I would like you to reflect on your professional interactions and respond to the following inquiries. What are the events or situations that cause you to feel calm, and what are your calm triggers? What are the events or situations that bring you joy, and what are your happy triggers? What are the events or situations that trigger your sense of fulfillment, and what triggers your sense of fulfillment? Therefore, contemplate your work experience over the past week and your interactions with colleagues in order to identify the triggers for each of these positive emotional states. Next, you will replicate the same process for negative emotional states. Reflect on your professional interactions and respond to the following inquiries. What are the events or situations that cause you stress, and what are your stress triggers? What are the events or situations that cause you to become angry, and what are your anger triggers? What are the events or situations that cause you to feel frustrated, and what are your frustration triggers? This simple exercise should provide you with a more profound understanding of yourself and a more profound understanding of your own emotions. This is the initial phase of the process of cultivating emotional intelligence.
Step 2: Building the Emotional Intelligence
Once you have achieved self-awareness, you can proceed to comprehend the emotions of others. It can be challenging to truly understand another person’s emotions from an external perspective, as it can be challenging to interpret their feelings based on external cues. that they show you, such as their verbal or non-verbal communication, but the real one.
This is important! In the workplace, individuals often present only what they want you to see, making it challenging for a leader to fully comprehend the emotions of others. However, there are steps you can take to improve your understanding. There are some things you can do to try to understand other people’s emotions as best you can. I recommend a three-step process.
First, start by observing people, either individually or as a group. You’re still getting cues only from external actions or behaviors; you’re still facing a filter where people might not act or behave in an emotionally revealing or emotionally honest way, but you’ve got to start somewhere, so begin by observing. Pick a situation or an event at work, for example, a meeting, and start to observe the people in that group as you’re observing. Ask yourself this question: Do people display positive or negative emotions? Overall, this will help you categorize their emotions as positive or negative. If there are mainly positive emotions on display, then which is the overarching positive emotion? If there are mainly negative emotions on display, what is the overarching negative emotion? It could be one of the emotions we discussed earlier, or it could be another emotion that you detect.
Second, once you have improved your ability to read people, you should proceed to the next step: listening. The key here is to listen with the intention of understanding. This implies that you must listen without passing judgment, as it can hinder our ability to accurately read people or comprehend their emotions. It’s like a block or a barrier that distorts the way that we see things. If you’re truly committed to developing emotional intelligence as a leader, then you need to make sure that you leave judgment at the door. There are a number of opportunities for leaders to listen during one-on-one meetings. This is a great opportunity for you to listen to your employees as a leader. As they talk, you can’t listen to identify them. What are their problems? What are their struggles? What solutions have they tried? What strategies didn’t work, which ones did, and why didn’t they work? Group meetings are another fantastic opportunity for you to listen as people talk and interact during the meeting. You can listen to individual team members to really understand what they’re saying, and you can read their external cues to further understand their emotions and what they’re feeling.
The third thing you can do to understand someone else’s emotions is to ask. Once you have observed them and listened to them, if you still want to know how they’re feeling, simply ask them how you feel about the progress on this project. Do you want time to prepare? In the majority of cases, your team members will feel hurt, understood, and appreciated simply because you ask them how they feel about something we’ve covered.
Step 3: Apply Emotional Intelligence
 Your own emotions Understanding other people’s emotions is the next step, and you need to know how to react accordingly. This specifically focuses on managing and handling emotions, as previously mentioned. According to the Wikipedia definition of emotional intelligence, what this really means is to be aware of your own emotions and recognize other people’s emotions so you can respond in an appropriate way. Leaders who do respond appropriately build stronger bonds with people. Work leaders who respond appropriately create fractures in their team, leading to dissatisfaction, low or minimal contribution, and very little engagement. I think you can guess which type of leader is more successful in their career and has a better reputation at work, so you can react accordingly and be successful.
Guidelines for responding appropriately as a leader, especially one with high emotional intelligence, how you react depends on the specific situation and the people you are with. However, there are some guidelines or tips that you can follow to develop person-focused leadership. So this means building good relationships with people in your team, trusting them, and showing genuine concern for them. be empathetic. This refers to recognizing the thoughts, attitudes, and emotions of another individual, essentially placing yourself in their position. Whenever someone shares a good idea, it’s important to acknowledge their contributions and encourage them to approach any shortcomings or failures with curiosity. Empathize with the individual who made the mistake, and instead of criticizing or mocking them, strive to comprehend the reasons behind their error and devise future solutions. Ensure that no one feels left out of the group. So work on developing psychological safety with your team, and make sure everyone knows the value. Ensure that everyone is contributing, understanding, and addressing conflict immediately. Don’t ignore it, and certainly don’t pretend it’s not your job. To appear authentic, use genuine body language.
This article focuses on building emotional intelligence for leaders. I hope you found a lot of valuable tips and insights that you can apply to your leadership journey. Thank you so much for reading. If you liked this article, share it with your friends.
If you’re interested in learning more about the character Assassination: Killing People without a Weapon, here’s the link to open and read it.
Regards
Dr. Abid Hussain Nawaz
