Have you ever wondered why some teams operate like well-oiled machines while others struggle?
The secret often lies in emotional intelligence (EI). As a leader, your success is tied to the emotional health of your team. If you don't have emotional intelligence, today is the day to learn how to develop it.
Heads up, though; some soul-searching is ahead.
Understanding Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is sometimes called emotional quotient (EQ). It means that you can understand and manage your own emotions while recognizing and influencing the feelings of others.
There are five parts to emotional intelligence:
Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Motivation
Empathy
Social skills / Relationship management
By now, you can see why emotional intelligence is a bit of a unicorn for most people and why leaders who don't have it tend towards having teams that think they are jerks, ineffective, or give themselves special treatment. Whether that list is accurate matters little if that's the team's perception of their leader.
Let's remember that people follow as they're lead, and if leaders lack emotional quotient, then their people will, too. If a leader has that list of qualities, there's magic; they'll have a more cooperative and productive work environment and fewer team members with bad attitudes towards leadership.
Emotional intelligence is not just about recognizing feelings but about taking actionable steps to lead more effectively. The development of EI empowers leaders not only to face challenges but also to inspire their teams.
Let's dive deeper into the five parts and see why they matter (and why they are so hard to master).
The Importance of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness serves as the cornerstone of emotional intelligence. It means you recognize your emotions in real-time and understand their influence on your behavior and decision-making.
If you're not self-aware, you're defensive, inflexible, and cannot adapt to change. You have low empathy, poor communication, arrogance, and seek attention. You tend to overestimate your strengths and values while underestimating your weaknesses. Blaming others is part of the package, and it happens often because you avoid hard decisions and keep repeating mistakes because you can't learn from past experiences. We won't even get into how you're oblivious to social cues.
If you're not self-aware, your emotions run the show and you make terrible decisions (or procrastinate and let situations decide outcomes for you). You're not thinking through what's happening; you're feeling through it. You're letting fear, worry, or other emotions drive your decisions. And while "follow your heart" might play well on Instagram, it's a terrible leadership principle.
Stressful projects and situations increase frustration levels. That impacts how you communicate with your team. Do you shut down? Practice avoidance or procrastination, hoping the problem will just go away some other day?
Building self-awareness is like asking a fish to think about water, especially if you've never bothered to do it. It means thinking critically about the patterns of your reactions; pattern recognition is essential for lots of reasons, but especially in self-awareness. And, if you can't manage that, think about the patterns you see in your team when you react in specific ways. Is there a blowback? Apathy? Anger? Frustration?
You can start being aware of what your emotions are doing in many ways, but here are a few essential tips:
Pay attention to your physical body. Emotions manifest through muscle tension, headaches, increased heart rate, aches, etc. If that's happening, consider that there's an emotional response going on even if you didn't realize it.
Identify what triggers you. Be honest. Is it a person? A repeated request you hate dealing with? Fear? Frustration over the same mistake being made? Know what sets you off so you can prepare yourself emotionally to handle it differently when that is on the horizon.
Learn to listen to what's being said. If your team is coming to you with suggestions and critiques (especially about the same things), listen. Not just to what they're telling you but also to the realization that you're doing something that triggers their response. What they don't say is also what they're saying. If you have no logical or wise response to their concern, shouldn't that make you wonder about what you're doing?
If you can't decide if your reaction to a situation is off, your team's response to your reaction will let you know. You're a mirror to your team; if you're calm and reasoned, they will be (for the most part).
Practicing Self-Regulation
If you get the self-awareness part down, next up is self-regulation. It's great to be aware of what your emotions are doing, but now you have to manage them. It is no small and easy thing to control your mind, your feelings, and your thought life.
As a leader, though, that's part of the requirement. Do it, or get out of leadership.
There's no shortage of methods to manage your emotions. Here are just a few ideas:
Cognitive reframing. Practice thinking differently about situations than you usually do. Dig into neuroplasticity and read up on how to rewire your brain by purposefully thinking differently. Your emotions are gut reactions; you are trying to regulate them.
Decision-making techniques. If emotions are overwhelming your decision-making, use formal techniques to strip them out of the process and stick with them even if your emotions want to interrupt. This might include the Eisenhower Matrix, SWOT analysis, cost-benefit, A/B testing, PEST analysis, or something similar.
Do some physical activity. Go for a walk, even to the break room to get a cup of tea. Do some stretches. Just move around and get the blood flowing to your brain. Get some endorphins flowing. Your emotions will be affected.
Change your language. Read better books, be purposeful in the entertainment you consume, listen to thoughtful podcasts, and, in general, change your language. Because your language impacts your thought life, and that's what we're dealing with.
STOP. Use the STOP technique. Stop, Take a breath, Observe, and Proceed to be purposeful and mindful, not shooting from the hip or gut.
Self-assess. In a moment of solitude, assess your feelings and ask why you feel that way. Consider all the different ways you could respond, and choose the one that helps your team.
Get help. If self-regulation is out of your reach, it's time to find someone specializing in dialectical or cognitive behavior.
Sometimes, I ask myself, "Why do I want to punch this guy so bad?" and, starting with that self-awareness, I travel to not punching anyone through self-regulation. If anything, even the time taken to think about what's happening at the moment is enough time to take a beat and not react.
Leaders who self-regulate model that behavior for their team. Tense situations can have their temperature raised or lowered based on the leader at that moment. Without self-regulation, the same holds, but in a negative way.
Building Intrinsic Motivation
What's worse than a leader who isn't motivated?
Again, if you model doing the least amount of work to get the job done, if you show up late and leave early, if you cut corners, if you look out for yourself above other people or motivations, if you don't see the need to improve your skills...your team will do likewise.
Motivation is how people stay engaged. It is the antithesis of checking out and coasting.
So, how do leaders motivate themselves and their teams?
Money
Time off
Reduction of workload
Pizza (if you know, you know)
Those are fine, but they are also finite.
There is a limit to how much of that you can offer and, after a while, how much of it still seems special enough to your team to work as a motivator.
Internal motivation matters. As the leader, it matters that you do what you expect of your team. That means:
Pursuing professional development even if it's not required.
Pursuing self-improvement even if it's not required.
Going above and beyond what's expected of you to help your team.
Wanting to create excellence in your department or organization even if it's not required.
See the pattern there?
Motivation is the thing that takes you beyond the bare list of what's required for a department, team, or project to function. It's the difference between a jogger and someone training for the Olympics. It's about investing your team in outcomes that align with their values.
If you have people on your team who seem perfectly happy to slop along and do the bare minimum (and even less, if they know there's no disciplinary threat), never trying to improve for their own personal growth, content to ask people to help them and show up late and leave early and slide through the mud until retirement, the worst thing you can do as a leader is model the same behavior. You might not be able to change them, but you definitely won't if you don't rise above it yourself.
Internal motivation is the only long-term solution for forward momentum. External motivation, whether through reward or punitive action, only lasts so long before a kind of emotional scar tissue sets in, and your team doesn't feel it either way.
Cultivating Empathy
Empathy packs the biggest punch when it comes to emotional intelligence (though a narcissist or sociopath can abuse it).
Do you have the ability to understand what other people are feeling? This comes naturally for some and is entirely absent for others.
How do you learn empathy?
When things go poorly, ask a person what they feel and why, and listen. Ask them what they would have preferred from you, and do not get angry or defensive at their answer.
Be present. Long emails aren't a substitute for looking your team in the eye and letting them talk to you face-to-face.
Practice self-awareness in a way that makes you realize there are other perspectives. Be genuinely curious about those perspectives and ask open-ended questions to discover their origins. You might find some surprising reasons you never considered.
Practice being a listener. Don't interrupt. But also practice being a doer if action needs to happen after listening.
Regularly ask for feedback on your leadership and let people be honest without fear of reprisal. Make changes your team suggests if you realize they're right.
Try the Three Whys approach, and ask why three times. The first answer is the initial response, a surface answer. The second will be a deeper understanding. The third is the core purpose. (This can also work for self-awareness and internal motivation for yourself or as a team exercise.)
Empathy requires that you actually care about your team and your work. It will be hard to resurrect if you're just there for the paycheck and benefits.
Enhancing Social Skills And Relationship Management
Strong social skills are essential for effective leadership.
Do you have a good relationship with your team, or are you just there as the figurehead to tell them what to do, correct them, and then head out early for your appointment at the golf course?
Not every person is "likable," but as a leader, you should at least try to see them as "relatable." Even the most challenging ones, those people who have rotten attitudes, never stop talking, or can't seem to figure things out, are in a relationship with you.
Think of a map or a chessboard. You are in one place; they are in another. They are, by default, in a relationship with you, located in a place that can be described based on where you are and where they are.
Could you take the time to consider each person on your team and define the relationship?
At the end of a long day, it's easy to dismiss each person with a stereotype based on frustration, but put some time in and think of what they bring to the team and how you relate to them. You could even throw the Three Whys into the mix to delve deeper into your discovery. Why do they do what they do, and why do you respond the way you do?
The Positive Impact on Team Effectiveness
Teams with a high emotional intelligence at work for them have:
Better teamwork and collaboration.
More considerate and cohesive.
Better workplace culture.
More respectful of each other.
Better conflict resolution.
Better problem-solving.
Less stress.
More motivation.
More responsible for mistakes with a focus on solutions.
You might not ideally get your whole team on board with improved EQ, but you can model it so they reap the benefits of those around them making changes.
Strategies to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence
By implementing a few practical strategies as outlined here, you can increase your emotional intelligence:
Be purposeful in thought: Think about what you're thinking and doing, and dive deep into the why. Be honest, and make course corrections.
Seek Feedback: Get insights from your team about your communication and emotional responses. This feedback can guide you in improving your interactions.
Emotional intelligence isn't some fluffy emotive thing. It's the basics of understanding what motivates you and the people you lead and making changes that improve the entire package.
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