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EQ: Hands up for an engaging approach

By 24th April 2023April 26th, 2023Blog, Developing communication skills
Woman standing in front of colleagues

Have you ever wondered why we seem to connect with some people and not others? How some bounce up the career ladder, while others of a seemingly similar IQ struggle or stumble? What makes them stand out may be to do with their EQ, otherwise known as Emotional Intelligence.

EQ isn’t a new concept. For more than 25 years Dr Daniel Goleman’s iconic book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ has explained to millions worldwide why EQ matters as much as ,if not more than, IQ.

Yet persistently low employee engagement scores, the great resignation, and a seemingly never-ending stream of remote mass layoffs , tell us that when it comes to EQ at work, we still aren’t that intelligent.

Why Emotional Intelligence matters to you and your organisation’s success

The hallmark of effective leadership is the ability to transform an organisation through its people. That takes vision, strategy, and powerful ideas, but it also takes emotional intelligence.

If we can’t connect and empathise with others, whether it be while communicating one-to-one or one-to-many, we can’t change hearts, minds, or behaviour – in other words we can’t change anything.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

It’s about forging strong connections with others by being emotionally aware, astute, and agile. Dr Goleman suggests there are four emotional competencies:

  1. Self-awareness. Knowing what you’re feeling and the impact your mood has on others.
  2. Self-management. Regulating your emotions so you intelligently respond rather than react.
  3. Social Awareness. Sensing and responding to the emotions of others.
  4. Relationship management. Using all that information to build interpersonal relationships.

In short, it’s our ability to:

  • Spot and manage our own emotions,
  • Recognise others’ emotions and feel empathy towards them, and
  • Use this to respond and communicate effectively to build relationships.

What Emotional Intelligence isn’t!

It’s not about being “nice”.

EQ doesn’t mean skirting difficult issues or treating people with kid gloves for fear of hurting their feelings.

Nobody wants a boss who is averse to confrontation – for they tend to get walked over.

It can mean having to be robust and direct – even if that takes others out of their comfort zone. But it’s not about being at the other extreme and overreacting either.

It’s having the intelligence to use emotions to find that middle path, then navigating it so others feel seen, heard, and included.

But I’m a leader, so I’m already emotionally intelligent, aren’t I?

But are you as emotionally intelligent as you think you are? In 1999 two researchers uncovered what’s become known as the Dunning-Kruger effect – a cognitive bias that causes an overestimation of capability. It suggests that if we lack knowledge and skills in a certain area, it can cause us to overestimate our own competence.

Given Emotional Intelligence isn’t a one and done activity, it’s part of a life-long journey towards better self-awareness, the question we should be asking isn’t around whether we have any emotional intelligence but whether we have enough and could improve our leadership by having more. Because, the more EQ you have the more successful you are likely to be.

“Emotional Intelligence is the largest single predictor of success in the workplace.” – Dr Daniel Goleman in his best-selling book ‘Emotional Intelligence’.

How emotional intelligence makes you a better leader

You’ve probably heard the often quoted saying that “people join companies but leave managers”. A boss with low EQ also tends to have a disengaged team, which leads to attrition.

According to Gallup, there can be up to a 48% differential in turnover between low and highly engaged teams. EQ and engagement save leaders time and energy, their teams unnecessary workload and stress, and their organisation the cost of replacing leavers – with replacement costing up to twice that of a leaver’s annual salary.¹

But be it people leaving or quietly quitting in your team or organisation, low EQ leads to low engagement, which leads to lower productivity, and that hinders leadership effectiveness.

The more diverse a team, the more EQ a leader needs

There’s a proven business case linking diversity with improved financial performance², yet diverse team composition alone isn’t enough to move the dial to secure outperformance. All those diverse individuals in a team need to feel psychologically safe enough to contribute, to feel engaged, to feel included. That requires more EQ from leaders.

Contrary to popular belief, others don’t want to be treated as we personally want to be treated. That would be true were everyone the same, but they’re not, particularly in a diverse team.

People want to be treated the way they want to be treated. That requires leaders with heightened people skills – being astute and agile enough to sense and respond to a diversity of emotions.

Helping leaders with EQ

What we’ve learned, having helped leaders across the globe improve their EQ, engagement, and performance for near-on three decades, is that most benefit from some practical help in understanding and responding to the feelings and concerns of a diverse team and workforce.

As experienced practitioners, we know there are myriad of ways to help leaders increase and amplify Emotional Intelligence, but here are three practical ways Axiom has helped organisations secure EQ success through their leaders…

  1. Interactive leadership workshops and online courses for up to 12 people. Whether it’s our highly acclaimed ‘Straight A’s Approach to Interpersonal Excellence’ or a wealth of other leadership programmes for established, emerging, and new leaders, we offer you the flexibility to ‘mix and match’ content to build a customised workshop that meets your organisation’s precise needs.
  2. Leadership coaching. We match a leader with one of our experienced coaches to ensure the right personal and professional fit. We then create a safe space for a leader to increase their self-awareness, emotional intelligence skills, and agility. We can help you understand your levels of emotional intelligence, through diagnostics tools, then help you with a personalised development plan to help you make progress.
  3. Interactive events. A genuinely interactive event, one that exposes leaders to the heartfelt concerns and burning questions of their people, offers a platform for them to demonstrate their emotional intelligence on an organisation-wide scale. Our approach to live events and conferencing is to find ways to generate this kind of dialogue and real-time problem solving. Listening to, responding, and acting upon the contributions and concerns of others, demonstrates the EQ of your leaders in a highly visible way.

Our leadership development, coaching, and interactive events are just a few ways we can help leaders improve their Emotional Intelligence and people skills – something that’s critical for any leader and organisation wanting to improve employee engagement and experience, enhance performance, and bring about sustained success.

“Truly successful companies have a higher level of Emotional Intelligence, more so I think than academic or business intelligence because it’s about how people work together. If you are looking to create a high performing team, I’d thoroughly recommend Axiom.” – Craig Armstrong, President, Scan-Pac

Want to chat further about how you can help your leaders attune to the contributions and concerns of colleagues and to address them in an honest, credible and emotionally intelligent way? Then please do contact us, we’d love to speak with you.

¹ The ‘Great Resignation’ is really the ‘Great Discontent’, By Vipula Gahdhi and Jennifer Robison, Gallup Workplace, July 2021

² Delivering through diversity Report, McKinsey & Company, January 2018

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