The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
Emotional intelligence, a term defined in the early 1990’s, is the ability to understand and manage our own emotions, as well as to recognize and influence the emotions of others.
Prominent author and psychologist Daniel Goleman, instrumental in bringing an awareness of emotional intelligence (EI) to the business community over the past two and a half decades, emphasizes the importance of EI by stating: “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.”
In other words, emotional intelligence has increasingly been recognized as a differentiator between leaders who will advance in their careers, and those who won’t.
What follows then is a quick overview of what EI means as applied to leaders, as well as steps some leaders are taking to develop it.
First, let’s briefly look at the 4 most frequently identified EI competencies. They are:
- Self-awareness – the capacity to recognize one’s strengths, limitations, and impact on others.
- Self-regulation – the capacity to manage one’s emotions and outlook instead of being reactive.
- Social awareness – the capacity to recognize and empathize with others’ emotions.
- Social/relational regulation – the capacity to influence others for positive outcomes even when stress or conflict are involved.
Not surprisingly, studies show that developing these competencies makes a difference in a variety of key leadership outcomes. For example, higher EI competencies in leaders correlate with higher team job satisfaction as well as increases in team engagement and skills acquisition.
On the other end, lower EI competencies in leaders correlate with an increase in team turnover intentions, employee burnout, and even unethical team cultures.
Results like these occur because leaders set organizational tone, which, in the “great resignation” era, makes EI more relevant than ever as employees continue saying no to organizations where leaders lack emotional intelligence.
What can you do to increase EI? Certainly, a 360-degree feedback scenario can help raise a leader’s awareness, as well as reading literature about EI and practicing acts of simple reflection (ex. What am I feeling now?). Even more targeted strategies however involve standardized assessments that measure and educate leaders on the competencies described above.
One assessment example is the Emotional Quotient assessment by Target Training International (TTI). With graphs and helpful explanations, it assesses EI (or the lack thereof) in the assessment taker, and when debriefed professionally, it provides opportunities for growth in both awareness and regulation competencies.
And as a final thought, for those not quite sure that exploring EI could advance them or their team, consider a study by organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich who found that 95 percent of people believe they’re sufficiently self-aware at work, whereas empirical measures found that only 10 – 15% actually are.
Want more? If you’d like to explore emotional intelligence or assessments further, just let us know. We’d love to help.