Emotional Intelligence: The Secret to Great Leadership

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Truly great leaders are hard to come by. While plenty of leadership skills are commonly taught, such as people management and problem-solving, another key skill is often neglected. A lack of emotional intelligence stops leaders from moving from good to great and can detrimentally affect your entire team.

Daniel Goleman first explored emotional intelligence in the 1990s. He was an American psychologist who discussed behavior, emotions, and the brain. He was one of the first people to say that it's not just your IQ that makes you a good leader; it's also your soft, non-cognitive skills, which come from your EQ.

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Your EQ, or emotional intelligence, is measured through ten key factors:  

1. Self-Awareness  

2. Self-Regulation  

3. Motivation

4. Empathy  

5. Social Skills  

6. Adaptability  

7. Achievement Orientation  

8. Conflict Management  

9. Teamwork and Collaboration  

10. Inspirational Leadership  

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To help us unpack the complexities of emotional intelligence and its surrounding soft skills, Sarah Golly led a workshop titled ‘Unlock the Secret Weapon of Leadership’. The session touched on how emotional intelligence impacts decision-making, interpersonal relationships, and leadership skills.

Sarah began by talking participants through how emotions shape decisions, from food choices to how they use their spare time. If you're stressed, angry, happy, calm, or relaxed, you might make different decisions. Your ability to motivate your team will also be affected by your mood, but many leaders don’t consider their feelings enough in their day-to-day.

Emotional intelligence is more important now that more people are working remotely. Leaders must develop a genuine interest in understanding their team’s context and perspective to get the most out of them.

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“If people feel like they can trust their boss, they would be feeling comfortable and happy, so their engagement will be high.”

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When people work in environments with less conflict, they are more motivated and have higher levels of employee satisfaction, leading to lower attrition. From a business perspective, that results in improved client services, increasing their financial position and market share. When people feel better, they perform better, and the business does better. It's a win-win.

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So how can we improve our emotional intelligence and become better leaders?  

First off, we have to understand the biology behind emotional intelligence. The limbic system is where we hear, see, smell, taste, and touch. All the information we experience and receive comes through our limbic system first, which is the emotional cogs of the brain. The messages that we receive travel through the emotional filter of our brain before they reach the rational center.

There are neural pathways that link the emotional and rational areas of the brain, and the stronger those neural pathways are, the more effective your decision-making will be. You can practice using those pathways and develop your brain to be more empathetic.

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“One of my early clients had really low empathy in his assessment, and he said ‘I am straightforward. That's who I am, I'm not going to change.’ He was a bit skeptical about how he could develop empathy at the age of 55, but we worked on it, and he came back to me afterwards and said, ‘Oh, my goodness, that works!’ He was being more empathetic. It's about practice.”

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Once you have a solid understanding of how to train your brain to improve emotional intelligence, it’s time to practice self-awareness and emotional regulation to better understand your own emotional state. This could be as simple as checking in with yourself during stressful periods, noticing your physical and psychological symptoms and working to bring yourself to a more positive baseline through breathing exercises or similar practices.

From there you can apply your emotional intelligence to your wider team. This looks like leading conversations or conflicts with empathy, working to reduce the impact your emotions have on the wider team and exercising your emotional intelligence when making important decisions.

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The leadership equation:

IQ (intelligence) + TQ (technical skills) x EQ (emotional intelligence) = Improved leadership performance

How you attract, retain, and motivate your team, how you treat your customers, and how well your company is led make an enormous difference to your business. People are critical to business performance, and emotional intelligence is the key to high-performing people.