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Being emotionally intelligent can be very beneficial to everybody in an organization, but it is particularly important for leaders to master this skill.
Being emotionally intelligent helps you to:
Building good working relationships is important for your career. Co-operation and agreement are the glue that holds teams and organizations together; and emotional intelligence is an essential component in maintaining strong working relationships. Solid interpersonal skills and the ability to ‘read’ and build rapport with other people, are valuable characteristics of emotionally intelligent leaders.
Maintaining good working relationships can be challenging, given different working styles, expectations, and perspectives. Having the ability to weigh up challenging behaviors and be open to differences in perception allows for more flexibility of responses, and is aided by emotionally intelligent thinking.
Even daily challenges like staff not turning up for work or not completing their tasks on time, can test leaders and managers to stay alert and find solutions. When bigger events happen like, for example, a key worker resigning, or losing an important customer, the ability to remain calm, clear-minded, and solution-focused is a key sign of effectiveness and a measure of emotional intelligence. Resilience, the ability to recover quickly or to remain resourceful during and following unexpected hurdles, grows as a result of developing and practicing emotional intelligence, and is a core skill for leaders.
Let’s consider an example of a leader using emotionally intelligent thinking to manage a situation:
The Chief Executive of an organization was disappointed when he realized he would have to re-structure the organization. He had two options, and the option he had chosen would dismantle an effective way of running their service that he and his team had been very proud of for a long time. However, the decision he had made would also preserve more jobs and prolong the life of the service over the next few years. He described it as having made the ‘right’ decision with his head, but a painful and difficult one for his heart. He wanted his close colleagues to feel positive and supported in the new arrangements. To address this, he took an emotionally intelligent decision to seek some personal coaching to help him come to terms with the decision, so that his incongruence would not show and possibly unsettle his colleagues.
Having to let go of prized ideas or ways of working, saying no to what seem like reasonable requests from team members and fielding their resentment, or even deciding among competing priorities are regular occurrences for leaders. High emotional intelligence can take the stress out of such situations where the leader can take them in their stride.
Back to TopBill Phillips is an International Facilitator, Trainer, and Team Coach.
In this module, Bill is the instructor for the ‘Leading With Emotional Intelligence’, 'How to Delegate to Your Team', and 'Providing Effective Feedback' lessons.
Kevin Reid is CEO of Personal Skills Training, Senior Coach at Kevin J Reid Coaching, Co-founder and Communications Director of The Counsel.ie, and Lead Collaborator of LeitrimMade.com.
In this module, Kevin is the instructor for the ‘Coaching and Mentoring’ lesson.
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ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE
As a leader, you will only be as successful as the people who work with you. So it makes sense to build the best, most effective teams possible, and get the most out of your daily interactions with colleagues.
This module will introduce you to the concept of emotional intelligence – a skill that should be in every leader’s toolkit. Emotional intelligence can help you enhance your working relationships at all levels, and you should aim to practice it every day in the workplace.
You will also learn about coaching and mentoring – and how these two activities can bring out the best in your employees.
In addition, you will learn about delegation. How can you delegate successfully? What tasks should you delegate? And how can you ensure you get the best results? The lesson on delegation provides you with the answers.
Finally, the module also looks at feedback, and explains why leaders should never be afraid to provide it – even when the feedback is negative.