Claire Alexander, Group Vice President, Brand Portfolio & Marketing at Capterra.
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The current rise in change fatigue stemming from the prolonged pandemic and uncertain economic conditions has made leading with emotional intelligence a critical leadership skill. Beyond helping to ease anxiety caused by external factors, research shows leaders with high emotional intelligence (EQ) build more productive teams. It’s no wonder that high-EQ project managers have been found to be 11% more successful at managing processes, engaging stakeholders and efficiently using resources.
When practiced intentionally, emotional intelligence can help any employee navigate uncharted waters with a renewed sense of confidence and lead to better business outcomes.
What’s EQ, you ask?
According to Psychology Today, high-EQ individuals are able to regulate their emotions and avoid impulsive or hasty decisions—essential skills in this current market environment. High-EQ leaders tend to create high-performing teams in part because emotional intelligence is so closely paired with collaboration and trust within organizations.
The psychological safety supported by emotionally intelligent leadership is also the key to unlocking the creativity and full potential of a team, enabling more personally satisfying growth and stronger business outcomes. Your employees are human, after all, not robots— and they deserve to be treated as such.
EQ in practice: How can you unlock it?
Knowing that you need to hire for EQ is one critical way to bring this skill into your organization. For most of us, the challenge rather lies in finding ways to develop EQ on an individual and a team level. To that end, here are five tactics I’ve used to help develop emotional intelligence in our organization—contributing to our growth, efficiency and employee morale.
1. Take stock of yourself.
You can’t lead others where you’re not willing to go. We all have strengths and weaknesses in this area. Authentically sharing your own self-assessment and asking your team to collaborate in strengthening your own EQ is a great way to demonstrate authenticity and create buy-in for this entire endeavor.
2. Nurture and grow your team’s capacity through on-the-job coaching.
Once you’ve identified high-EQ leaders in your organization, spend time watching how they engage their team members. Pinpoint the behaviors that make them so effective, and make sure to write those down.
Once codified, discuss your findings with your broader leadership team and set the expectation that you’d like to see more of those practices show up in how others run their teams. Hold yourself and your colleagues accountable with monthly reflections on progress and outcomes. One thing I’ve learned is that by making this a shared exercise across your leadership team, folks will have more appreciation for each other and feel more accountable for collective progress.
3. Utilize book clubs.
The best part of book clubs is the breakout discussions that lead to honest and engaging conversations. Our marketing department recently read Positive Intelligence, which emphasizes the importance of maximizing your potential by practicing healthy mental habits.
As a result of small, peer-group discussions, we were able to harness our greater sense of self and team awareness to identify blockers as well as opportunities for working more effectively together.
4. Implement formal “training” sessions.
Hearing important messages from fresh voices can be an effective way to highlight behavioral changes you want to see in an organization. Whether the conversation is led by an outside speaker or someone internal, creating space for your teams to get comfortable practicing difficult conversations in a low-stakes environment can yield great results.
If you can’t bring people together in person, consider a video-based program, and hold dedicated virtual training sessions. These 15 TED talks on emotional intelligence are a great place to start.
5. Coffee chats and skip-level dialogues.
Implement a cross-disciplinary and cross-seniority networking program in which leaders and individual contributors can learn about each other’s backgrounds, build camaraderie and share work experiences. A first meeting could be structured around anything from personal interests to working styles and progress organically from there.
This activity is meant to foster deeper relationships and new perspectives across the organization. Understanding someone else’s context, goals and aspirations are important inputs for developing the clear-eyed empathy that powers high-EQ leaders and organizations.
Investing in emotional intelligence training is essential for business success.
As we begin planning for 2023, I hope you’ll consider setting aside the time and resources to develop the emotional intelligence of your team. Based on my experience, you’ll be glad you did.
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