A Leader’s Emotional Intelligence

“What really matters for success, character, happiness, and lifelong achievements is a definite set of emotional skills — your EQ — not just purely cognitive abilities that are measured by conventional IQ tests.”

— Daniel Goleman

Often when I talk about emotional intelligence (EI), people try to give me examples of how they empathize with others. They say things like-

“I saw an old man begging for food right outside a famous restaurant and I felt really bad about it and gave him my food”

“The other day my friend came to my place and she looked really upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that she was about to lose her job. I wanted to help her, so I shared some of the recruiting posts I came across on LinkedIn.”

Empathy is often confused with sympathy and compassion, each of which is a reaction to the suffering of others. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings in a situation from their point of view, rather than your own.

Imagine your friend just lost her job. She is distraught because she worked hard and was expecting a promotion. Even though you have a secure job now, you remember what it is like to not have a job. You don’t try to fix things for your friend. Instead, you make an empathetic statement like, “I’m so sorry that happened. I know how hard you worked at this job, you must be so disappointed.”

You will be shocked to see how many people confuse emotional quotient (EQ) with empathy. EI/EQ is much more than empathy. Empathy, although a major contributing factor of EI, is a subset of EI.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

“We define emotional intelligence as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”

— Salovey and Mayer

Now that we are familiar with what Emotional intelligence (EI), emotional quotient (EQ), or emotional intelligence quotient (EIQ) means, let’s look at how it makes us better leaders in our work lives.

Several studies attempt to study the relationship between EI and leadership.

Although EI does play a positive role when it comes to leadership effectiveness, what makes a leader effective is what he/she does with his role, rather than his interpersonal skills and abilities. Although in the past a good or effective leader was the one who gave orders and controlled the overall performance of the organization, almost everything is different nowadays: leaders are now expected to motivate and create a sense of belongingness that will make employees feel comfortable, thus, making them work more effectively.

— “Impact of Leader’s Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Behavior on Perceived Leadership Effectiveness: A Multiple Source View” published by Deepika Dabke (https://doi.org/10.1177/2278533715605433)

A good leader motivates themselves and those around them to have clear goals and take initiatives, achieve great things, and think positively. All the while being empathetic towards thier subordinates.

“In a study of skills that distinguish star performers in every field from entry-level jobs to executive positions, the single most important factor was not IQ, advanced degrees, or technical experience, it was EQ. Of the competencies required for excellent performance in the job studies, 67% were emotional competencies.”

— Daniel Goleman

Let us look at the other factors, besides empathy and motivation, that contribute to EI. From the snippet of the research paper by Dabke mentioned above we realize that a good leader also needs to create a sense of belonging and make people around them feel comfortable. These qualities can be classified as social skills.

Having good social skills or good interpersonal skills helps you connect with people around you. It helps you empathize, regulate and motivate those around you. By connecting with your employees on an emotional level, you make them feel comfortable and hence create an environment of trust and comfort for everyone. Several studies show us how having such an environment helps to increase the efficiency and productivity of employees. But we don’t need studies to tell us this, if you have been working for someone or have people working for you, you might have noticed how productive and efficient you and your subordinates are when they are working in a happy environment.

Although empathy, social skills, and social awareness help you to understand people and act accordingly, you also need to understand and regulate yourself as well — Self Awareness and Self Management are the two other major contributors of EI. They help you become a better leader and develop self-confidence.

What are self-awareness and self-management?

Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself, objectively evaluate yourself, regulate your emotions, and understand correctly how others perceive you.

Self-awareness plays a major role in gaining self-confidence. When you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses and what the person you are dealing with thinks of you, you can use them to your advantage and maneuver the situation in your favor.

Self-management is the ability to manage your behaviors, thoughts, and emotions consciously. You know what to do and how to act in difficult situations.

When you are asked in an interview to tell your strengths and weaknesses, more often than not, it is to evaluate how aware you are of yourself.

Imagine a person who bottles up their emotions and can keep those emotions deep inside until they can no longer hold them inside. For example, your colleague misses a deadline and the client expresses his disappointment. Now you feel really angry. Someone that’s not aware of this anger might lash out and explode. This would only amplify the negativity, as emotions like these tend to increase in a heated situation. Knowing about these emotions will help you control them so much more. If you are completely self-aware, you will be able to stop and think about this situation rationally. Ask yourself questions like -

• Are you angry at this person? Or it is your pent-up frustration that you are projecting on him?
• Why was he not able to meet the deadlines? What could I have done to avoid it? How to avoid it in the future?

By being self-aware, you can control your state of mind in many situations.

To sum it up your Emotional Intelligence compromises many aspects — empathy, motivation, social skills, self-awareness, and self-motivation are some of them. To become a better leader, you need to inculcate these aspects.