Can great leaders be made? Yes, leaders can become great, but this requires acumen, expertise, and soft skills. Known as emotional intelligence (E), these soft skills are beneficial in motivating people, navigate through challenging situations, and deliver their best performance.
Companies lose money due to poor communication, lack of trust, and low employee engagement. Only 21% of employees are engaged and approximately 60% feel emotionally detached at their workplaces. This results in a loss of productivity exceeding $7.5 trillion, which is roughly 11% of the world’s GDP. So how can companies overcome the massive cost of low engagement and emotional intelligence?
What is Emotional Intelligence?
EI is the ability to manage, recognize, and understand other people’s and your feelings. This is important as effective leaders must manage not only their emotions but empathize with their people’s feelings too. First introduced in the 1990s by Peter Salovey and John Mayer, the concept of EI has since become an essential leadership trait.
The behaviors shown by emotionally intelligent leaders include:
Self-awareness
This ability allows you to recognize and comprehend your drivers, emotions, strengths, and limitations. Self-awareness helps leaders to sustain a positive outlook even in difficult situations. While 95% of people think they are self-aware, in reality only 10% – 15% show real self-awareness.
Self-management
It showcases how leaders manage their behaviors and emotions practicing restraint and focus. Self-management comprises four competencies, which include self-control, achievement orientation, adaptability, and positive outlook.
Social Awareness
Empathy and organizational awareness are two competencies under this leadership trait. The former enables you to recognize other people’s emotions, display an active interest in their concerns, and recognize cues about their feelings and thoughts. The latter is the ability to comprehend group feelings, identify influencers, and understand its dynamics.
Relationship Management
The competencies that motivate others to deliver their best performance include coaching and mentoring, conflict resolution, influencing, inspirational leadership training, and teamwork. These traits positively impact team members and encourage them to work towards achieving the organizational goals.
Importance of EI on Leadership Effectiveness
Great leaders develop robust relationships, foster a collaborative work environment, and promote a positive organizational culture. Emotional intelligence is important for:
Conflict Management
Conflicts happen and effective leaders should manage these constructively and positively. Leaders with higher EI remain calm and composed in conflicts and empathize with others thereby de-escalating the situations. Additionally, they use their soft skills to find a win-win solution to develop stronger relationships and teamwork.
To help understand, here is an example. Assume that there is a conflict between two of your team members Sudha and Radha. Radha thinks that Sudha is not doing her share of the work and Sudha feels that she is not receiving necessary guidance from Radha. After hearing from both, you will derive a solution that is beneficial to both and suggests a structured plan or clear division of roles and responsibilities thereby eliminating the conflict and developing a positive work environment.
Develop Robust Relationships
Robust relationships are crucial for organizational success. Leaders having higher EI build rapport and trust by being empathetic to their team members’ emotions. Additionally, their team members feel appreciated and valued thereby increasing engagement, job satisfaction, and motivation. According to a study, employee engagement and creativity when teams are led by empathetic leaders increase by 76% and 61%, respectively.
Efficient Decision-Making
Emotionally intelligent leaders use their soft skills to recognize and understand their feelings to make rational and informed decisions. Additionally, they consider the feelings and perspectives of their team members to make inclusive decisions, which are aligned with the overall organizational goals and visions. Companies that prioritize EI are likely to perform higher than others by almost 22x.
Inspiring and Motivating Teams
Effective leaders use their empathy and EI to foster a positive and supportive organizational culture. Using their communication skills, they can bring clarity, inspire, and motivate their team members to deliver their best performance.
To understand, consider that you are leading a software development team that is demotivated and overwhelmed amid a highly complex project. As an emotionally intelligent leader, you would recognize the challenging situation while providing encouragement and support to your team members. Throughout the project, you would be empathetic and understanding while appreciating, recognizing, and valuing their efforts. Using EI skills, you will boost their morale and increase their productivity to successfully deliver the project.
Unfortunately, only 36% of people are emotionally intelligent. In 2021, the EI market was valued at $868 million, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 25% until 2030. The demand for EQ is expected to grow by 6x in the next five years and emotional intelligence training programs will play an important role in creating great leaders.
Elevate your leadership skills and drive success with Pragati Leadership‘s Emotional Intelligence Training. Discover how enhanced emotional intelligence can transform your effectiveness as a leader. Join us today and lead with empathy and impact!
