As a leader, you’re most likely always looking for tools to improve your communication skills, grow in your ability to inspire confidence, motivate others, and foster collaboration in your organization.
You strive to show up and present your best daily while achieving personal and professional goals, and you always seek to improve performance and metrics of success. You may be highly skilled, well-educated, and have a deep understanding of the work you do and that your team provides, but what if I told you that’s not enough?
What if I told you that the secret sauce to overcoming so many professional challenges you face lies in increasing your emotional intelligence as a leader? This key leadership skill is often overlooked; but, when focused on it, it can ensure you get the most out of yourself and your team while showing up more intentionally throughout your life.
Improving your emotional intelligence as a leader is fundamental to achieving your personal and professional goals.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
It can be challenging to understand just what exactly emotional intelligence is, as emotions are subjective, uniquely experienced by each of us, and slightly intangible. Every human being has an intricate emotional world and the ability to be aware of our own emotions, as well as be understanding of others, can have a huge impact on our lives and how we show up in our workplaces.
Emotional intelligence is a skill that can be learned, a muscle that can be strengthened, and it’s well worth your time investment as a leader who desires to make an impact.
Emotional intelligence defined: The ability to recognize, understand and manage one’s emotions, as well as the emotions of others.
As a leader, emotional intelligence helps you to understand your own emotions, feelings, and motivations, and those of others so you can respond effectively and empathetically.
It helps you to be seen in the way you intended, understand things from multiple perspectives, and walk away feeling that you responded well in a given situation. What a gift it is to our team when we are emotionally aware, able to pause and check in with ourselves first, and don’t accidentally project our feelings and emotions onto someone else! An emotionally intelligent leader is a more confident leader, a more trustworthy leader, and one who team members know they can go to and open up with, regardless of the circumstance.
Three Keys to Increasing Emotional Intelligence as a Leader
Improving your emotional intelligence as a leader is by no means going to be achieved by simply reading one blog or attending a single training. It’s first and foremost a commitment to foster this skill within yourself, and secondly, it’s an ongoing practice.
It may take some deep diving, self-exploration, and working 1:1 with an Executive Coach, such as myself, as a guide to develop and strengthen this muscle!
However, there’s no time like the present to get started! Here are three things you can start implementing right away to immediately start increasing your awareness of your emotions, responses, and the emotions of those around you.
Take an Intentional Moment
I recommend starting to practice with this when the heat of your emotions isn’t on, at first. Take a moment right now to breathe. Go on, really take a deep inhale through your nose and exhale long and deep through your mouth.
Open up to some self-reflection and curiosity and ask yourself how you’re feeling. What’s going on inside of you? What are you feeling at this moment? See if you can label the feeling without judging it, “happy” “sad” “angry” “overwhelmed” “peaceful”, etc.
Next, see if you can locate where in your body you feel the feeling (you may need to close your eyes for this). Do you notice any tension in your stomach? Tightness in your chest? Openness or spaciousness in your head? Heaviness in your arms?
You can practice this throughout your day to start increasing your own awareness of how YOU feel on an ongoing basis, and I especially encourage you to bring this moment of pause in during moments of conflict or discomfort.
It’s important to approach this from self-compassion and remember that nothing you feel is wrong, bad, or otherwise out of place. This practice helps you to recognize what your feelings are and that they’re valid.
Express Your Emotions
There are many instances in which we have to communicate and express our feelings to others in order to generate action, talk something through, or hear another perspective. You can see how important it is to start with the first step of identifying what you feel before you express it outward.
Trust me, I have many stories of times I did not check in first and a tumble of words and emotions came pouring out in ways I did not intend them to because I failed to understand and acknowledge them first.
When expressing your emotions, you have to think about how you want to express them. You have to ask yourself if it’s appropriate to express your feelings, and how you want to step out as a leader in this scenario.
How do you want to manage your emotions, taking into consideration the experience of the person(s) on the other side? We all have a choice of whether or not we control our emotions or let them control us, and it begins with asking these questions before just blurting them out or making demands thoughtlessly.
Walk Your Way
Your core values go hand in hand with emotional intelligence and how you live and share with those around you. For example, if some of your core values are trust, authenticity, and growth – you don’t want to be stepping out as a leader as someone who’s impatient, disingenuous, and closed off to new ideas.
Am I living out my core values in how I’m showing up as a leader? This is a question to ask yourself when considering how to move forward in your emotional responses, and interacting with others around you.
When we start losing touch with our values, we begin to venture further from who we want to be, and we’re not walking our way.
This can sometimes be challenging and require us to sit with a mindset or thought and actively rewire or change it. Sometimes we need to tweak our outlook on something so that we can show up how we say we want to live.
With awareness, practice, and a commitment to yourself and others, you can begin to improve your emotional intelligence as a leader and present in a way that’s aligned to who you are and how you want to be seen. You will foster greater empathy for those around you as grow in your ability to take their emotions less personally and know that you’re responsible for your own thoughts and actions alone.
An emotionally intelligent leader is a strong leader.
Leadership is more than just managing tasks and delegating responsibilities. It’s about connecting with and inspiring the people around you. Developing your emotional intelligence can help you better understand and empathize with those around you, enable you to create a more positive and productive work environment, and increase your impact as an organization.
Embrace the power of emotional intelligence to be the leader your team deserves.
Contact The Executive Collaborative today.