Do Leaders Really Need Emotional Intelligence?

Knowing how to get your job done makes you a good specialist, but still not an effective leader. If you want to inspire, move your team forward, and perform effectively yourself, you’re going to need a high EQ or a high level of emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand and manage your emotions, and those of people around you. This is especially important when you have to work under pressure, meet tight deadlines, handle difficult conversations, and deal with failures and crisis periods — all those good old business owners’ routines.

If your aim is to build a highly engaged, motivated team and establish trustful relationships with your employees — EI should be at the top of your self-improvement plan.

Emotional Intelligence in 5 keywords

My business is a Support-As-A-Service company. Human interaction and dealing with emotions are everything to us. When I was starting my career as a customer support representative, I learned about key elements of emotional intelligence. Many years later, I believe they are even more useful in running a business and managing our big team. Those elements were perfectly described by Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist, whose book on emotional intelligence I highly recommend. They are:

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-regulation
3. Social skills
4. Empathy
5. Motivation

EI is a subject of my long-term interest, with one of my publications giving a detailed description of these elements. Now, let me briefly explain the meaning of each point in the context of leadership.

Understanding your emotions clearly, knowing how they can affect your actions, and how your behavior affects others, recognizing your strong and weak points is self-awareness. It makes you see yourself realistically and gives you the self-confidence you need to survive in the business world.

Self-regulationis about being in control of situations. People who lack this quality tend to make rash or emotional decisions that often turn out to be false, fail to follow their values, and even violate work ethics. It also helps you pursue your goals, even despite the setbacks. Each leader who did not lose their business, or even scaled it during global recessions or the pandemic, is definitely familiar with self-regulation principles.

Social skills are something that business owners and managers should know everything about. Negotiation, collaboration, and conflict resolution require emotional intelligence by default. Expressing your thoughts clearly, hearing what another person really wants to say, understanding the emotions of people in the room, and reacting to them properly — these are needed to succeed as a leader.

Empathy is not just the ability to recognize someone’s feelings. It also helps you put yourself in someone else’s position and look at the situation from another perspective. This is a crucial component of proper decision-making, and also of a successful business. It is proven that most empathetic companies earn 50% more than the ones who pay less attention to it.

If you expect your team to be engaged and committed, you should always start with your motivation. For me, the biggest driver is always the understanding that a lot of people rely on me. This helps me make important decisions even in the most turbulent times. If you find the idea that will keep moving you forward, it will help you even through the worst crisis.

Why you should not look down on emotional intelligence

Broad discussions of the EI brought up a lot of criticism from those who consider themselves to be experienced managers. What is the connection between emotional intelligence and a leader’s effectiveness? How can it be measured? And more importantly — what benefits can it bring?

I’m going to offer you three reasons why you need EI:

1. Emotional intelligence improves employee retention and engagement

Harvard Business Review reports that 12% of employees quit their jobs specifically because of insufficient manager treatment. People who are comfortable at their workplace and don’t need to avoid management, show more productivity and are more likely to establish long-term relationships with the company.

2. Emotionally intelligent leaders perform better

Surveys show that, when we talk about management, a high EI level is responsible for up to 60% of job performance.

3. EI helps leaders gain more revenue

According to Daniel Goleman, whom we already mentioned before, if the senior management of a company is highly emotionally intelligent, the company’s earning goals are yearly outperformed by 20%. Whatever your attitude to EI was, no one would reject an extra 20% of income.

Increasing your EI in simple steps

Some people come with their emotional skills naturally, while others would need to learn it. If you do not have a personal coach to work on this, I can offer you some tips I used myself:

• Keep a journal. Just a couple of minutes a day spent on writing down your thoughts. This will bring you to a whole new level of self-awareness.
• Watch people’s body language. Non-verbal signs often say more than words.
• Question your opinions. Before taking any important decisions, get familiar with another side of the story.
• Praise people for good results, and don’t forget to praise yourself.
• Set up long-term and short-term personal goals. If you are realistic with them, they’ll keep you instantly motivated.

These steps won’t bring you to the Forbes Top 100, or at least not at once. But starting to work on your emotional intelligence will unlock new levels of understanding and managing the people you work with and, most importantly, yourself.