How Business Leaders Can Achieve and Promote Emotional Intelligence

The technical skills you possess can ensure your selection for your dream job and even your first promotion, but what’s next? If you are an aspiring leader, you need to inculcate this crucial skill within you. Insights show that about 71% of employers give equal importance to inter-personal skills as technical skills. Lack of emotional intelligence can lead to several critical problems at the workplace, such as conflicts with colleagues, poor team management, and a lack of improvement in tasks done by teammates, which can be an obstacle to achieving the organizational goal.

Do you ever feel like you are not able to make a healthy bond with your teammates? Your sub-ordinates are not comfortable with you sharing the issues that they face?

Do you feel there’s always a blaming tone in your conversation? Is there always some difference between what you’ve expected (the target) and what you’ve achieved (the actual work done)? These could be some of the alarming signals to start working on your emotional intelligence. Business leaders can achieve and promote  (EI) within themselves and their organizations through various strategies and practices:

Self-awareness: Encourage leaders to develop a deep understanding of their own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values, and triggers. This self-awareness forms the foundation of emotional intelligence.

Self-regulation: Teach leaders techniques to manage their emotions effectively, especially in challenging situations. This includes practicing mindfulness, stress management, and impulse control.

Empathy: Foster empathy by encouraging leaders to understand and relate to the emotions and perspectives of others. This involves active listening, perspective-taking, and genuine concern for the well-being of employees, customers, and stakeholders.

Social skills: Equip leaders with the interpersonal skills needed to build and maintain positive relationships. This includes effective communication, conflict resolution, collaboration, and teamwork. Demonstrate emotional intelligence in action through your own behavior as a leader. Show empathy, humility, and respect in your interactions with others, and openly acknowledge and learn from your own mistakes.

Provide training and development: Offer workshops, seminars, or coaching sessions focused on emotional intelligence skills for leaders and employees at all levels. These programs can help individuals enhance their emotional intelligence competencies and apply them in the workplace.

Foster a supportive culture: Create a work environment that values emotional intelligence and prioritizes psychological safety. Encourage open communication, constructive feedback, and vulnerability among team members.

Recognize and reward EI: Acknowledge and celebrate instances where emotional intelligence leads to positive outcomes, such as improved team dynamics, conflict resolution, and customer satisfaction. Incorporate EI competencies into performance evaluations and promotion criteria.

Incorporate EI into decision-making: Encourage leaders to consider the emotional impact of their decisions on stakeholders and to make choices that demonstrate empathy and integrity.

Continuously assess and develop EI: Provide opportunities for ongoing self-assessment and reflection, as well as feedback from peers, mentors, or coaches. Encourage leaders to set goals for further developing their emotional intelligence skills over time.

By prioritizing emotional intelligence and providing support for its development, business leaders can create more resilient, empathetic, and effective organizations that thrive in today’s complex and rapidly changing business landscape.