Overview
What is emotional intelligence? Can you use it to become a great team leader? In fact, does it even work in the business world? Well, it’s a resounding yes to both questions!
Emotional intelligence has five main components which every forward-thinking team leader should understand:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Self-motivation
- Empathy
- Social skills
If you can understand these five components of emotional intelligence and know how to apply them to your business practices as a team leader – then you can motivate your team in ways that are less sensitive, more authoritarian, and far more effective (where other approaches have failed).
In this article we’ll show you how it all fits together, and from here you can develop your understanding through practice, observation, and – if you want a really fast track way to progress, you can enrol on a team leadership training course.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
Your ability to understand and manage your emotions, and recognise as well as influence the emotions of people around you, is called emotional intelligence.
If you were to take an emotional intelligence test, how well do you think you’d fare as a team leader?
Well, don’t worry about that just yet!
Let’s first understand how a lack of emotional intelligence or inadequate skills around it can affect you and other people you deal with: workplace conflicts, lack of motivation, and misunderstandings, to name a few. But why do you think this happens?
This dynamic spurs from a general inability to comprehend or recognise emotions – both your own and those of others.
Many experts believe that some of the most common symptoms of inadequate emotional intelligence skills include difficulty in managing and expressing your own emotions. For example, you might struggle to acknowledge one of your team members’ concerns in an appropriate or fruitful way, or have difficulty listening actively.
Let’s stop for a moment and consider the relationship you have with your subordinates or team members:
- Do you feel that your conversations with them are difficult, uncomfortable, or strained?
- Are you in the habit of quickly pointing fingers when you don’t get the desired results or the delegated work doesn’t go as planned?
- Do you have a high tendency to let an outburst of emotions when your team doesn’t listen or when things generally don’t go your way?
All of these may point to a lack of emotional intelligence.
Don’t worry though: you’re not alone. Even the best leaders struggle with things like emotional intelligence, and especially empathy. So how do we begin to address all these shortcomings?
Let’s discuss the five components in more detail:
How The Five Components Of Emotional Intelligence Come Into Play
Self-awareness
The ability to recognise and understand your own emotions is called self-awareness. Look at it this way: it’s the what you’re feeling and the why. It’s also appreciating how the ‘what’ and ‘why’ affects those around you.
Being self-aware forms the foundation of great intuition and decision-making. It instinctively helps you make the right decisions in all areas of life, and not just the workplace.
A self-ware team leader always knows his/her strengths and weaknesses, and what’s important to him/her, especially in terms of values and morals.
Self-regulation
After understanding emotional awareness, you need to know how to manage those emotions. This is so important, as we sometimes have to try extra hard to manage the negative ones!
Treating others with respect is paramount but so is staying in control. One of the ways of staying in control is to avoid emotional outbursts. Instead, practice being calm and rational.
Feeling angry and frustrated after not seeing results? Don’t worry. Take a step back and breathe deeply. Focus on that for a while.
Additionally, focus on establishing your core values and staying true to them, no matter what. Always, always hold yourself accountable personally for any mistakes you make. Do not be quick to blame others.
Self-motivation
The next element of emotional intelligence, self-motivation, is about developing the drive to improve and achieve.
Set high (but achievable) standards for yourself and work consistently towards what’s important to you.
Be ready to take the initiative – don’t waste time when opportunities come by, snag them and practice assertiveness.
Self-motivation can also be developed through resilience and optimism. By finding the positive in any situation, including especially those that didn’t go as planned, you can really build optimism to boost your self-motivation levels.
Empathy
Empathy is not only a key interpersonal skill, but also a very important skill that every great team leader needs to nurture. It’s the ability to put yourself in someone else’s place and understand the situation from their perspective.
In addition to having awareness of other people’s feelings, it’s also important that you acknowledge and respond to their thoughts, feelings, or opinions. This goes even if you disagree with them!
If you learn to respect diversity and inclusion, you can develop a deep sense of empathy because it is very similar to developing good communication skills: paying close attention to both what you and others are saying – whether that’s verbally or via body language and gestures.
Social skills
A great team leader is always a great ‘people person’. That means having the social skills to deal with others in a productive and effective way, and without causing conflicts.
With the right set of social skills, your team will see you as someone who is trustworthy, transparent, and confident in his communications.
By demonstrating good social skills, you’re showing your team that you are just as good at listening as you are at speaking.
It’s not by coincidence that great leaders also have incredible social skills. They inspire and motivate everyone they meet. They know how to manage change and resolve conflict effectively. And, they never hold back giving credit where it’s due.
Closing thoughts
The aspects of emotional intelligence we’ve discussed here are a great starting point if you want to be a successful team leader in the long run,and although we’ve just scratched the surface, this is a great way to sketch out your own action plan. So start your journey today and you’ll see real results that will put you in a different place.
