What it takes to be an effective leader – developing EQ – Workshop 5

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Hope you are finding these Workshops helpful and putting your learning into practice. Remember what Confucius had to say:

“I listen and I forget;

I see and I remember;

I do and I learn”.

Leadership is not an intention, it’s about taking action; it’s about doing. Try out what you’ve learnt from these Workshops and go a little outside your comfort zone. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.

Continuing our journey and exploring the 1st Principle to our Leadership framework – Learning about leadership is at its heart learning about self; it’s about developing a heightened level of self awareness. – let’s turn our attention to developing our emotional intelligence – our EQ.

What do we mean by EQ – at a very fundamental level it’s about our ability to manage ourselves and our interpersonal relationships. The good news is that EQ is a skill. In other words we each have the capacity to develop our EQ skills and become better at how we manage our own emotions and our interpersonal relationships.

It’s often said that we join a company and leave a leader. Think about it, why did you decide to voluntarily leave a previous job? Probably because you didn’t value or respect or get on with your leader.

To better understand EQ and the behaviours emotionally intelligent leaders typically demonstrate, I want to refer you to the work Daniel Goleman has contributed to this area. He identified 18 EQ competencies, which based on his extensive research, describe what it is that emotional intelligent leaders consistently do. These 18 EQ competencies are divided into 4 categories, namely:

1. Self Awareness
2. Self Management
3. Social Awareness
4. Relationship Management

Make a start to developing your EQ and experience the benefits, not only in terms of your own effectiveness but also in the quality of your relationship with others. EQ is the single most important skill of any leader. You can have the most brilliant technical mind, be the smartest person around but if you aren’t emotionally intelligent you are basically ineffective. It’s your choice.

I’d encourage you to get some feedback from others – your team members, your boss and senior colleagues and ask them to complete the attached EQ Assessment. Listen to what they have to say (don’t be defensive, rather try and understand why they feel the way they do), think about their feedback, thank them for their feedback and then ACT on it. This is how you develop your EQ.

Let me know your thoughts about emotional intelligence. Have you worked with others who lack EQ and others who demonstrate high levels of EQ? How have these relationships differed? Share how have you gone about developing your ability to better self manage and develop more constructive interpersonal relationships?

Enjoy the learning journey and I look forward to sharing more next week.