Emotional Intelligence (EQ) - the root of leadership success

Hello again! It's week 3 of the ripple effect newsletter. Your responses and feedback has been invaluable! As a thank you, I'm sharing with you a picture of me as a toddler - don't worry, it relates to our topic, too.

Today’s read will take about 8 minutes to read. The clock starts now.

Introduction

We spend too little time in our life thinking about how much we are learning. From the second we are born, we start responding to receptors around ourselves. Hunger startles something within us, so does thirst. Pain cannot be expressed in any way other than crying. Our guardians react to the calls we send to them. With time, the unidirectional conversations become bidirectional. We define connections: crying drives empathy; applause drives motivation; fear means quick reactions.

Later in life, we get our first interaction with leadership - through our school professors. Looking back to my teachers who lacked emotional intelligence, I remember a time in my life that included daily stress, dissatisfaction, and lack of engagement in their classes, even if the topic was something I was passionate about.

On the other hand, teachers who have shown empathy, and a high level of emotional intelligence, have motivated me to give my all to their classes. My dedication was closely connected to how I was interacting with the teachers. Overlooked back in the day, there are very few students that will now remember a teacher for their knowledge, instead of for their style of engaging.

When leading my own teams, I have been put in front of the same questions: What was it about my previous leaders that I enjoyed? What made me connect with them? How did they work and communicate? Unknowingly, I was getting my first interactions with the pillars of emotional intelligence.

I can wholeheartedly say today that having emotional intelligence is the make or break factor in today’s businesses and communities. We’re in the era of connections: let’s deepen our understanding on a topic that we’ve been brewing since we were born.

Objectives

Subject

The last decades have seen a major increase in how important emotional intelligence is in successful leaders. Rather than only judging someone’s abilities based on their knowledge, generally measured with our IQ, in the 1990s the “emotional intelligence quotient”, or EQ, was introduced. John Mayer, one of the psychologists who coined the term defines it as follows:

Since its introduction, EQ has made ripples around the world, redefining what it really means to be a good leader. You may be good at creating cool planning sheets for your team, but without motivating them you won’t be driving any product success. You may be extremely skilled at programming amazing algorithms, but you won’t be able to share your findings if you get angry and lose your temper during presentation meetings.

When you think of a "perfect leader," what comes to mind?

You might picture someone who never lets their temper get out of control, no matter what problems they’re facing. Or you might think of someone who has the complete trust of their staff, listens to their team, is easy to talk to, and always makes careful, informed decisions.

All of the above actions are indicators of high emotional intelligence, and rely on 5 main pillars.

Framework

The pillars of emotional intelligence

Goleman describes emotional intelligence as a combination of five skills that we start forming early in life and that form a core part of our personalities. In order to improve your emotional intelligence, it’s important to understand what each element entails. Here is a closer look:

1. Self-awareness

If you're self-aware, you always know how you feel, and you know how your emotions and your actions can affect the people around you. Being self-aware when you're in a leadership position also means having a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and it means behaving with humility.

2. Self-control

Leaders who self-control have the ability to stop or redirect their impulses and moods. They think before they act, and do not make rushed emotional decisions in stressful situations.

3. Motivation

Being motivated goes beyond being driven by the hunt for social status and money. Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work.

4. Empathy

Leaders with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else's situation. They help develop the people on their team, challenge others who are acting unfairly, give constructive feedback, and listen to those who need it.

5. Social skills

Strong social skills offer leaders the ability to build strong relationships and networks. Beyond this, social leaders are great communicators, open to hearing bad news and good news, and they're experts at getting their team to support them and be excited about a new mission or project.

Building mechanisms and systems that allow us to understand and develop all of the five pillars of emotional intelligence should be mandatory for everyone working with people, not just for leaders.

The goal is to identify patterns that we can acknowledge and begin improving. The source of our introspection should stem from our wish of development, rather than from self criticism.

The patterns of emotional intelligence are not set in stone, they’re elastic. Once you become aware of any negative behaviours such as defensiveness or aggressiveness in your work, you can adapt and mitigate their consequences.

Tackling self-control

Amongst the 5 pillars, your self-control in the face of emotions is key. Your team reacts to your mood. A leader’s mood is communicable; the way you respond and interact will affect the experiences of everyone working around you. Goleman named this mood contagion.

If you go in with a bad attitude towards a person, so will your team. If you’re sad and low energy in a day, your team will read and match that. If you let your emotions control you and you publicly display them, they will be transmitted to the ones around you. Our bodies respond to the psychological cues of the ones around us, involuntarily.

Further, your self-control dictates your integrity. Impulsive actions could compromise your position as a leader, your influence, and the trust people will put on you. Keeping a clear mind in highly stressed environments is invaluable, to ensure that we act with the right intentions behind our words and actions.

Here’s a framework on how to nurture self-control.

Final thoughts

Improving your EQ is a continuous task in your leadership experience, dare I say in your life. These concepts are fundamental in how you function in today’s modern society. With every step towards the right direction you’re improving how you’re managing your own emotions and how aware you are of them. You’re adding bricks towards being a better leader for the ones around you, rooted in your deepest motivations. You’re able to facilitate difficult conversations, which cherish our diversity and different personalities.

Eliminate reactiveness and stay in control. Emotional intelligence allows us to understand and harness what is happening around us, between us, and within us.

If you believe in my thoughts and ideas, I get closer to others alike who would appreciate my content through your reposts, shares, likes, and comments. In a digital algorithmically world, your smallest interactions are of immense value. I’m always excited when conversations spark in comments, or when someone asks for more information. Shall you be that person in the future, I thank you and I look forward to discussing with you further!

Quality content

When busy, it’s very easy to forget what are the real reasons why we’re dedicating time to what we’re doing. Our actions and words are driven by our internal motivations. While it’s possible to shape our life around materialistic values, the greatest form of satisfaction comes from responding to what really calls us.

Remembering our real motivations grounds us, and allow us to be more self-aware of ourselves and our surroundings, while also enhancing our ability to stay in control.

As days pass, we may put in the background our motivations, due to other things taking more of our brain bandwidth. For some, the last time they thought about their motivations behind their work was when they had their entry interview with the HR team. To bring your “Why am I doing this” back to your consciousness, you can use the Five Whys exercise:

That’s it for today. Thanks so much for reading!

There’s so much more I want to share with you about emotional intelligence, but I’m trying to keep this newsletter to the point.

Feel free to reply to this email with any further questions you may have, I am always available.