Leading with emotional intelligence

LEADERSHIP

Strong leadership is vital for our organization to help deal with the current opportunities and threats. It is essential to developing the next level of leaders. However, most leaders tend to underperform because they stay average because

·         They don’t have time to develop leadership in others

·         They underestimate how much influence they have

·         They do not have requisite training and skills to lead a team

When the leader is an underperformer, the team, and the organization will also underperform.

Those organizations investing in leadership development tend to perform better than those that do not. Investment in leadership development results to

·         Improved bottom-line financial performs

·         Drives a performance culture

·         Attracts and retains talent

·         Increase the organizational agility.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizations should promote emotional intelligence with leaders to avoid problems such as lack of impulse control and underperforming employees because leaders are not motivating, clear, or acknowledge their efforts. Emotional intelligence refers to exhibiting a good balance of social and personal competencies in four areas that include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The goal is not to be a star in all the four areas, but to have a balance of competencies in all the four areas. 

personal	Social
Self-awareness Emotional self-awareness Self-confidence Accurate self-assessment	Social awareness Empathy Organizational awareness Service orientation
Self-management	Relationship Management
Emotional self-control Adaptability Initiative Trustworthiness conscientiousness	Communication Developing others Building bonds Influence Change catalyst Teamwork and collaboration

EMOTIONAL SELF-CONTROL

Emotional self-control demonstrated by a leader’s ability to manage impulsive and or distressing feelings. Leaders competent in emotional self-control can stay composed, unflappable and calm in stressful situations irrespective of the environment. Self-control and self-management are the ability of a leader to be aware of what they are experiencing and be able to accept, manage, and adjust to their emotions.

Strategies for gaining better emotional self-control

Self-awareness

Those executives who do not develop self-awareness risk falling into an emotionally deadening routine that will threaten their true selves. Being aware enables a person to have the ability to respond or to be responsible. An awareness of the trust component causing mistrust helps the leader to have a target on what to correct or to monitor.

Affect labeling

Affect labeling helps an individual to accept and normalize what they are feeling. One way of gaining intelligence quotient is through labeling your feeling. Naming the feeling, normalizing it, and nurture a new direction is a good way of gaining better self-control.

Emotional audit

The emotional audit is a tool that helps with self-awareness and self-management.it asks strategic questions that may change the focus when a person emotionally charged. The goal is refocusing activity-aware from the amygdala and light up other areas of the brain so as to gain more cognitive control.

Mindfulness

Being mindful is a means of paying attention to the present moment without the impact of judgment. It is a form of mental activity that tends to train the mind to be aware of its awareness and intentions.  It helps in promoting focus, flexibility, resilience, and flexibility.

 Shuttling exercise

The exercise enhances mindfulness through being aware of your external surroundings and your internal sensations. The exercise helps in bringing an individual back into the moment.

Identifying triggers

Identifying your main triggers can help in emotional self-control. A trigger is something that gets you irritated, upset, or impatient.

Reappraisal

Reappraisal involves giving a situation or experience a new, different, and more constructive meaning. It helps in bring the prefrontal cortex function and release the grip of an amygdala hijack.

SELF-CONFIDENCE

Self-confidence tends to be a key building block for an individual’s career success and in self-awareness cluster. Confidence involves knowing your abilities and having faith in them to make sound decisions during uncertainty and in pressure. A confident leader takes on challenges and holds to his view even if others disagrees. The strategies for improving confidence include

Being on your case vs. being on your side

Leaders who are hard on themselves are usually blinded to problems inherent in their leadership style. They may need a strong language to alert them of the serious impact it has on their ultimate well-being and performance. Changing our self-evaluation tend to improve how confident one feel and allow us a greater awareness of how we evaluate others.

Reflections on thinking

Reflecting on thinking is a good process that stimulates answers. Part of being confident involves being aware and awake when we ask ourselves internal questions. It is necessary that we allow our brains to search for more positive and constructive answers rather than only focusing on the negative.

Busting perfection: creating realistic expectations

Success-drive people normally set goals for themselves, but the goals may set them up for frustration or failure because they are unrealistic. Extreme expectations tend to influence one’s ability to achieve the goals. Stress, anxiety, pressure may have an impact on focus and creativity needed in moving towards the unattainable goal. A way of countering perfection is to start making small changes at the beginning and all throughout as it will help break the pattern.

Success rules: who is running you?

The objective of this strategy is becoming aware of your rules for being successful. Unexpected rules or outdated rules tend to leave an individual feeling unsatisfied and like a failure.

Success log

Writing a log of past successes is a method of enhancing confidence. We have had many successes in our lives that are easy to forget. However, the successes may leave a footprint for future successes, and one can build confidence through reviewing the past successes.

Current success log

It is essential to keep a current log of the weekly or daily successes and achievements. The successes can help an individual in defining their strengths.

Five pivotal people in your life

According to Dr. Phil, everyone usually has five pivotal people in their lives that represent positive forces. They are people from our history who shape our sense of confidence and self-worth.

Visualization

As a way of improving confidence, regular visualization of mastering your most challenging situations can be helpful. The pre-practice tend to inform your nervous system and also helps create neural pathways to make the performance more natural.

Decisiveness

Strong leaders do not usually act as a group’s brain, but they are a consensus builder. Decisiveness is a key quality in what makes a good leader. When making decisions, it is important to cross-examine all aspects, clarify assumption, allow others to challenge your thinking, and develop a disciplined process.

Thin-slicing

It is the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in a situation or behavior based on the narrow slices of experience.

TEAMWORK AND COLLABORATION

Teamwork and collaboration help in building an atmosphere of a friendly and cooperative relationship with a team. Those teams that have a greater average emotional intelligence tend to have a higher team functioning than those groups with lower emotional intelligence. When working as a team, it is necessary to present the team with up-to-date and accurate information about the achievement of the stated goals. So as to thrive, leaders should devote time an intention to teambuilding by helping employees practice their skills, improve their weaknesses, and enhance strengths.

The key ingredients that organization should consider mastering competency of teamwork and collaboration include

Shared vision

It is essential to create a clear and inspiring vision for the future communicated regularly, understood by all, and reinforced in numerous ways. Leaders should have a clear picture of the vision with the plan to communicate it to the team.

Trust among members

A star leader must develop interdependence with others and show high trust and risk-taking. It is possible to develop trust by trusting other people through making and keeping small promises, being vulnerable and admitting your mistakes, and also setting high expectations for the team and encouraging risk-taking.

Expectations and guidelines

A star leader tends to clarify reciprocal expectations and establish guidelines for working together in an effective manner. In this ways, the leader and the team may decide how they will make a decision and clarify expectations from the leader to the team and from the team to the leader.

Communication skills and conflict resolution

A star leader normally makes thinking known and heard, resolves conflicts, and identifies assumptions. A good leader will treat each person as being a chess player with the unique talents and vary their communication to fit the person. Ito ensures communication; the leader will give the team specific tools for communication and work through conflict. A leader needs to appreciate differences and communicate to each person in a way that fits the person’s style.

System thinking

System thinking involves looking at the big picture and realizing how their actions affect others. Such a leader knows that co-workers, customers, family, and vendors intertwined as stakeholders, as a way of helping the team see the big picture; the leader may encourage the team to elaborate possible consequences before making a decision.

Personal leadership

Personal leadership strategy involves taking risks that are consistent with values. In this way, the leader tends to stretch and encourage other people in spite of fears and doubts.

Accountability and consequences

When working with a team, a leader should discuss accountabilities and the consequences up front before the project starts and reviews them all through the project. An effective leader tends to provide a plan for dealing with obstacles before they arise.

Ongoing learning and recognition

The strategy involves taking the time to reflect to discover whether what worked can be useful again. It involves learning what not to do, deciding who should know this information, and then deciding informal and formal celebration for the win. A good leader will look for every opportunity where they can learn and improve.

DEVELOPING OTHERS

Developing others is important in leading others to be star performers. It involves identifying the potential and strengths of others and designing and implementing a plan to help them to succeed. Strong mentoring and coaching are methods of developing others as it helps better employee performance, high levels of job satisfaction, reduces rates of turnover, and more opportunities for a pay increase and promotion.

Strategies of executive coaching when focusing on developing others

Hiring stars

Hiring executives with strong emotional intelligence competencies tend to increase the rate of success. It is necessary to understand that every position in unique in the fact that some positions need high interaction and collaboration while others require a lot of individual planning and effort.

One-on-one meetings

One-on-one meetings are essential and without this meeting, the leader is missing the tool for moving people from good to great. Such meetings help one to be current with what the department is working on and also provide a chance to offer suggestive input on the direction of initiatives. The benefits of the one-on-one meetings are that you get to understand what people are doing and the key challenges, you recognize accomplishment; you value employees, give and clarify information, coach about inner battles or outer battles, and teach about the company.

Soaring with strengths

When working with employees, it is important to scan for their strengths, team them how to apply their strengths in other areas, and also, help them to stretch their strengths.

Input+1

The strategy involves the learning theory. It is important to teach to the specific level and the style of the learner as it allows the learner to learn more and develop better self-esteem. A star leader should focus on determining the employee comfort zone and how to push to the right amount so that he is successful.

Circle of influence

The circle of influence is a great strategy for establishing responsibility and determining when to refocus energy on more fruitful endeavors. It involves the circle of concern, the circle of influence or power, and the circle of focus.

COMMUNICATION AND EMPATHY

Communication and empathy tend to be the foundation of all the relationship and social skills. The communication competency includes listening with an open mind, cultivating an empathetic give-and-take, and sending clear and convincing messages. So as to ensure effective communication, people should receive the message with intent intact as the sender did plan.

Strategies to help improve communication and empathy

Empathy skills

Empathy refers to the ability to understand other people and accurately hears the unspoken thoughts, concerns, and feelings of others.

Listening and rapport-building skills

Empathy tends to be the foundation of listening, and a leader who does not listen well to his people will make people suffocate in their feelings of insignificance. So as to establish a thriving relationship, people should know that you are listening.

Power of language

The way a leader uses language is vital in effective communication. The choice of words, stories, metaphors, and pictures tend to separate the star communicator from the average. People normally remember a story or metaphor more than any other way of communication. The use of this two communication strategies enables an individual to hit the communication target with the direct reports.

Clarity

Clarity during communication equals more security, better work, and more job satisfaction. Without connecting people to the key goals and purposes, they feel unmotivated and disconnected.

Giving feedback

Providing feedback tends to be an important skill in enhancing performed when both delivered and received well. It is essential to provide feedback frequently and on time.

Reference

Nadler, R (2011). Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On Strategies for Building Confident and Collaborative Star Performers. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in research paper services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for professional research proposal writing services.