Alexis Senge JohnsonDo you lose your temper when you feel frustrated? Do you struggle to build a genuine rapport with others? Do you use active listening when people are speaking with you? Do people tell you you’re a good listener? If you answered no to all or most of those then it’s time to take a deeper dive into your emotional intelligence my friend.
I’ve spent many years digging into this area of leadership for myself and, apparently, it’s becoming the theme of 2020 after repeatedly crossing paths with others who pappear to be lacking any form of emotional intelligence. By now you all know how much I like to share, so let’s dig deeper into this topic together before you cause anyone to begrudgingly start muttering, “enough is enough,” behind your back.
Even the smartest of gals have struggled with emotional intelligence over time. Remember when Lisa Nowak snapped back in 2007? Look, I think we can all agree that her IQ (general intelligence) was off the charts because they don’t let just anyone become an astronaut, but clearly her EQ (emotional intelligence) wasn’t a strength she could lean on during challenging times. Good news for all of us, researchers think that our EQ is actually easier to work on than our IQ so it’s not too late for improvement if you realized it’s not your forte.
It’s been suggested that one of the strongest indicators of success in business is EQ and, through personal experiences, I can’t help but wonder if that’s because a lack of emotional intelligence can break down teams over time. This is all much, much more than just being aware of your own emotions. Can you recognize the emotions others have? If not then you likely aren’t picking up on a slew of other issues bubbling under the surface.
Now don’t let the idea of improving your EQ become a daunting task. It’s just like following any good recipe, so take this on one step at a time. Working on your own self-awareness and self-management can be an excellent place to start. You’ll find that improvements in that area will start to trickle down to those who interact with you daily and will immediately start to demonstrate to others that a positive change in your leadership skills has begun.
Next step in creating this leadership pie of goodness is working on your empathy and social skills so that that you’re giving your best to those working with and for you. You’ll learn a lot about your team and, if you’re lucky, start to regain their trust or even improve productivity when they are focused on tasks at hand instead of milling over past situations that left a bad taste in their mouth. The last step before this leadership pie starts baking is to avoiding falling back into old habits along the way towards reaching your fullest EQ potential.
If you are looking for resources to improve your emotional intelligence, I like RocheMartin for their insight and Mark Manson for his straight-talking humor on what can sometimes be rough subjects. However, the popularity of the subject makes it pretty darn easy to run a Google search that brings endless resources to your finger tips depending on where you want to begin. If you’re unsure of where you land on the emotional intelligence spectrum then try out one of these tests as a start. Once you know where improvement is needed you can begin your recipe for improvement and get your leadership pie of EQ started.
