The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

The technical skills that secured your first promotion might not guarantee your next one. If you want to be a leader, you should take into account an emotional component, as it’s the key to coaching your team effectively, managing stress, providing constructive feedback, and collaborating with others.

This component is known as Emotional Intelligence (EI), and it is one of the most sought-after soft skills in the workplace. In fact, 71% of employers value emotional intelligence more than technical skills when evaluating candidates.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

It’s the ability to understand and manage one's own emotions while also recognising and influencing the emotions of those around one. Researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey first coined the term in 1990, but psychologist Daniel Goleman popularised it later.

Goleman highlighted the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership over a decade ago, stating that all effective leaders have high emotional intelligence. It doesn’t mean that IQ and technical skills are unimportant, but they are basic entry-level requirements for executive positions.

Emotional intelligence has evolved over the years into an indispensable skill and has become the strongest performance indicator. This illustrates why emotional intelligence is crucial and why employees with high emotional intelligence are likelier to stay calm under pressure, resolve conflicts efficiently, and empathise with their colleagues.

Tips to Tell Whether Someone Is Low on Emotional Intelligence:

Misunderstandings and confrontations in the workplace are frequently caused by low emotional intelligence, usually due to an inability to notice or understand these emotions.

One of the most common signs of low emotional intelligence is difficulty managing and expressing emotions. You might struggle to appreciate or listen to your colleagues' concerns attentively.

Consider the relationships you have with your coworkers. Ask yourself:

• Are your conversations often tense?
• Do you frequently blame others when projects don't go as planned?
• Do you tend to get extremely angry?

These are all signs of low emotional intelligence.

You must practice empathy while learning the fundamentals of emotional intelligence if you want to improve your social skills.

The Four Pillars of Emotional Intelligence:

1. Self-Awareness.
2. Self-Management.
3. Social Awareness.
4. Relationship Management.

You need to be aware of what each element comprises if you want to build emotional intelligence.

1. Self-awareness:

It is the cornerstone of everything since it describes understanding your strengths and weaknesses and observing your emotions and their impact on you and your team’s performance.

Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich concluded that while 95% of people think they are self-aware, only 10 to 15% of them genuinely are. This discrepancy might cause issues for your employees. Working with colleagues who lack self-awareness can halve the team’s chances of success, increase stress, and lower motivation.

Self-awareness is important because it helps you bring out the best in others by first bringing out the best in yourself. One example of how you assess your self-awareness is by making a thorough assessment of your performance and comparing it with input from your manager, coworkers, and subordinates. It offers insights into your behaviour and helps you discover how you are perceived within the organisation.

2. Self-management:

It refers to your ability to regulate your emotions, particularly under pressure, and to maintain a positive outlook despite setbacks. Impulsive leaders low on self-management skills often struggle with self-control.

Reactions are instinctual responses. The more attuned you are to your emotional intelligence, the easier it becomes to shift from reacting to responding. It's essential to take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and do whatever it takes to manage your emotions—whether that means taking a walk or calling a friend—so you can respond to stress and challenges with wisdom and composure.

3. Social Awareness:

It's important to understand and manage your own emotions, but you also need to be sensitive to those of others. Social awareness describes your ability to recognise the feelings of others and the atmosphere within your organisation.

Leaders who excel at social awareness practice empathy. They try to understand their colleagues' emotions and perspectives, enabling them to communicate and collaborate effectively with their peers.

Global Leadership Development Organisation DDI ranks empathy as the most important leadership talent. It also notes that leaders with this capacity outperform others in mentoring, employee engagement, and decision-making by over 40%. Researchers have concluded that managers who exhibit greater empathy for their subordinates are perceived as better performers by their superiors.

Empathic communication allows you to work better independently and help your team more effectively.

4. Relationship Management:

It refers to your ability to influence others, provide coaching and mentoring, and resolve conflicts efficiently.

Some people prefer to avoid conflict, but addressing issues properly as they arise is crucial. Research shows that each unresolved conflict can waste around eight hours of business time on gossip and other unproductive activities, draining resources and morale.

You must engage in those difficult conversations if you want to maintain the contentment of your team. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, "respectful treatment of all employees at all levels" was ranked as a critical component of job satisfaction by 72% of employees.

Tips to Polish Your Emotional Intelligence:

Enhancing your emotional intelligence requires a strong sense of self-awareness as a leader. Here are several ways you can develop it:

1. Journaling:

Write and reflect daily on how your emotions have influenced your decision-making, interactions, and meetings—positively or negatively—to identify what to repeat or avoid in the future.

2. Conducting 360-Degree Feedback Evaluation:

Seek feedback from your manager, colleagues, and peers, and evaluate yourself as well. Comparing these results will highlight any weaknesses or leadership gaps.

3. Active Listening:

Eliminate distractions, focus on what the speaker is saying, and show that you're engaged by paraphrasing their words and using non-verbal cues.

4. Observing Your Emotions:

When you sense a strong emotion, think of why you feel that way and what triggered such a strong emotional response. This practice increases your emotional awareness and helps you better understand the emotions and perspectives of your colleagues.

5. Taking an Online Course:

Dive deeper into emotional intelligence and learn leadership principles to understand your strengths and weaknesses better.

These foundational steps in self-awareness and empathy are essential for building a strong framework for emotional intelligence. They pave the way for a deeper exploration of the four pillars crucial for effective leadership.

Parting Words:

Leaders drive their organisations' success; therefore, low emotional intelligence can have serious repercussions, like lower employee engagement and higher turnover rates.

Technical proficiency alone is insufficient if you cannot collaborate or communicate with others in your team.

Emotional intelligence boosts your relationship-management skills, which are crucial for fostering interaction, empathy, and collaboration among team members. Mastering emotional intelligence allows you to advance both your career and your organisation.