Once leaders get promoted, they enter an environment that tends to erode their emotional intelligence. They spend less time in meaningful interactions with their staff and lose sight of how their emotional states affect those around them.
Because leadership divorced of managerial authority is not a role with ongoing responsibilities, there is less need for emotional intelligence. However, having interpersonal skills gives such leaders a greater number of influencing tactics. Those without such skills must rely on hard evidence and a confident delivery.
Low emotional intelligence could result from a medical condition like alexithymia or autism. It can also be a consequence of a mental health condition or addiction.
Low emotional intelligence has demonstrated negative effects in the workplace; it lowers morale and reduces productivity. When leaders exhibit low EQ, the effects are especially pronounced.
Emotional intelligence is important in leadership because it improves self-awareness, increases accountability, fosters communication, and builds trusting relationships by helping leaders process their emotions in a more positive way that allows them to address challenges more effectively.
Leaders have to be self-aware to understand the emotions of the people they lead. If you don't know and understand yourself, how can you be expected to understand anyone else? If you're not self-aware, you can't manage your own emotions, and by extension, the emotions of your team.
3 Ways to Develop More Emotional Intelligence as a Leader
Here are 3 practical ways to develop your emotional intelligence: Practice mindfulness. Learn to accept feedback. Use 1-on-1s and downtime to develop empathy and mentor employees.
Emotional intelligence develops a positive work culture in the organization, which vicariously increases efficiency and productivity. It instigates growth, innovation, and creativity in the organization and team members. It constantly motivates team members and leaders to put their best foot forward.
Individuals who lack emotional intelligence are basically individuals who struggle with managing their emotions, lack empathy, and are unable to understand the feelings of others. Here are five key elements to emotional intelligence: Self-awareness. Self-regulation.
People with low emotional intelligence (or lack it entirely) often make the mistake of only recognizing and exercising their own emotional strengths. As a result, they fail to truly connect with their environment and the people around them — and it always backfires in one way or another.
One frequent criticism of EI boils down to the terminology. Critics argue that EI isn't really intelligence in the same way that someone with a high IQ might be proficient at processing information or solving problems.
Being a leader of a group of people is to have a very important relationship with those people. In the HBR, Goleman writes: The most effective leaders are all alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence.
It could easily be argued that emotional intelligence is an important characteristic for anyone at any level of an organization. A leader's emotional intelligence can have far-reaching influence over their relationships, how they manage their teams, and generally how they interact with individuals in the workplace.
According to Goldman, emotional intelligence is made up of five key components, self-awareness, empathy, motivation, social skills, and self-regulation. The better you are at managing these areas, the more emotionally intelligent you will become.
Results suggested that individuals with high levels of emotional intelligence are most likely to use a transformational-leadership style and least likely to use a laissez faire leadership style. No gender-based differences emerged for leadership style or overall level of emotional intelligence.
To be a leader, you must utilize and balance both intelligence- IQ & EQ. While your IQ helps strategize, it is the EQ that helps focus on being ultra-perceptive of situations, for emotional intelligence to be effective, it has to start with yourself.
Recent reports show that hiring managers are looking for candidates with higher emotional intelligence. EQ alias emotional intelligence is the most counted skill over IQ and technical skills combined. The world economic forum ranked emotional intelligence in the top ten job skills required in the coming year 2022.
The lack of empathy is common among managements, even though they do a great job. However, it is hard to improve a weakness that you are not aware of, and selfishness is the main agent that clouds the judgment.
Goleman's EQ theory comprises five core components: empathy, effective communication or social skills, self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation. It doesn't take much to familiarize yourself with the skills that make up EQ.
Emotional intelligence is a set of skills and behaviors. While some people will be naturally more adept at certain aspects, EI can be learned, developed, and enhanced.
In other words, emotional intelligence can be used for good or evil. This is the dark side of emotional intelligence: using one's knowledge of emotions to strategically achieve self-serving goals.