Emotional Intelligence Sets Leaders Apart
Emotional Intelligence is described as the act of knowing, understanding and responding to emotions while being aware of how your words and actions affect others. And interestingly, it is emotional intelligence that accounts for close to 90 percent of qualities that help people climb the success ladder, even when IQ and technical skills are roughly similar. Leaders who have a high EI quotient are highly successful in the workplace and tend to have excellent interpersonal relationships. A leader lacking emotional intelligence is not able to gauge the needs, wants and expectations of the team effectively. He/She also tends to react emotionally and erratically that leads to degeneration of overall culture, thwarting attitudes and decline of positive feelings toward the company and the mission.
Emotional Intelligence is what sets leaders apart, and is defined as aspects of self discussed below:
It is defined as the ability to recognize one's own motivations and behaviors. A person having a clear and strong understanding of who he/she is realizes what needs to be improved and how. Being self-aware in a leadership position also means having a clear picture of your emotions and how your actions affect people around you.
Known as discipline, this involves controlling our disruptive emotions. Leaders cannot afford to lose their cool and verbally attack others, make hurried or emotional decisions, stereotype people, compromise on their values or get stressed. Staying calm and clear helps to think and communicate more clearly with the team. This also helps to keep the team moving in a positive direction.
For leaders, having empathy is critical to manage a successful team or organization. This helps to develop the people on their team, challenge the unfair ones, give constructive feedback, and listen to those who need it.
Motivated leaders work consistently and continuously toward the goals of the organization. And as they are self aware, they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work and expect the same out of their team emphatically.
5. Social Skills
Cultivating and maintaining healthy and productive relationships is essential for leaders to gain higher emotional intelligence. You must communicate effectively and clearly to manage relationships in order to move the team in a desired direction. Studies show that effective communication is 7% the words we say and 93% tone and body language.
Emotional intelligence is a powerful tool critical for exceeding goals, improving critical work relationships, and creating a healthy, productive workplace and organizational culture. According to research emotional intelligence is twice as important in contributing to excellence as compared to the combination of intellect and expertise alone. As Emotional Intelligence is not fixed, it can be nurtured and strengthened by individual efforts.