“Our ability to manage ourselves and handle relationships matters twice as much as our Intelligence”– Daniel Goleman
A business has several indicators of its growth. Productivity, sales, growth margins- these are some of the key indicators linked to how a business performs. A vital factor that drives business growth is leadership. Amongst many aspects, the quality of an organisation’s leadership is pivotal to its success. Very often, an organisation’s success, or lack of, is directly linked to its leadership.
Why is leadership so crucial for an organisation’s success? In my opinion, leaders play a key role in linking an organisation’s vision to the heart- its people. For any business, its people are central to what they do. Without people coming onboard, how would an organisation deliver its services/products? And without leaders to guide and inspire team members, can people effectively deliver what is expected of them?
We briefly identified a few indicators of business growth. There is one aspect in businesses, which can amplify these indicators. That aspect is Emotional Intelligence (EI). Let’s look at a few key statistics- 90% of top performers in an organisation have high EI. On an average, EI is responsible for 58% of employees’ job performance. These findings certainly underline the importance of EI in an organisation’s growth. Higher EI leads to a culture of effective collaboration between people; it leads to higher trust. Quite crucially, in challenging situations, EI contributes towards team members understanding one another and rallying together to come out stronger.
This leads to the next bit- how does this culture get propagated? Who plays a key role in ensuring this? The answer, invariably is Emotionally Intelligent leaders. Leaders are key influencers of an organisation’s culture. Here’s an interesting fact- it only takes 7 minutes for your mood as a leader to spread across in your team and influence everyone around you. So, a happy leader creates a happy team. Similarly, an Emotionally Intelligent leader creates an emotionally intelligent team. Given the impact EI has on job performance, a leader’s state plays a significant role in driving this.
Curiously enough, while EI is considered as one of the key factors in an organisation’s success, emotionally intelligent leaders are a rare breed. Majority of leadership in organisations do not demonstrate emotional intelligence, as they focus on more tangible metrics to gauge effectiveness of the organisation. Intent aside, what differentiates emotionally intelligent leaders from the others? With this article, we look at 3 key habits of emotionally intelligent leaders that enable them to create a culture of trust and collaboration. If you are a solopreneur and do not lead a team, these insights can still prove valuable when interacting with different people, such as your customers, suppliers as well as partners.
1. Listening to Others: This is a habit synonymous with great leaders, not just emotionally intelligent leaders. Here’s how things pan out- When you listen to others, they feel heard and this creates a healthy rapport in your interactions with them. This is what leaders create as well in their interaction with their teams. By being great listeners for their team members, customers and other collaborators, they create healthy rapport and deep functional relationships with them.
This practice rubs off on their teams, which enables them in turn to form functional relationships with each other, and support each other extensively, thereby improving the team performance as a whole.
2. Create Win-Win scenarios: A very common scenario where Emotional Intelligence proves valuable is during conflicts resolution. While working in teams, or with different stakeholders, conflicts often come up. These could be conflicts between the leader and a team member or stakeholder, or it could be between team members. It becomes important for leaders to resolve those conflicts to ensure that team dynamics is not impacted.
A key aspect of conflict resolution that leaders often employ is to create a Win-Win situation for all involved. How do they do this? During conflicts, emotionally intelligent leaders look at understanding others’ perspective before looking to justify or impose theirs. This helps them evaluate the best course of action to resolve the conflict. This also comes from being great listeners, as we saw in the previous habit.
Leaders don’t just create Win-Win situations during conflict resolutions. They also look to create a Win-Win situation in all forms of interaction, such as negotiations, partnerships and team meetings, to name a few.
3. Empathy: This is another effective habit associated with leaders who are emotionally intelligent. Empathy is the capacity we have to share others’ feelings and thoughts. When we do that, we connect deeply with others.
Quite often, we tend to judge people on their actions or assume certain behaviour based on our perceptions, which may not often be accurate or true. Emotionally intelligent leaders look to place themselves in others’ shoes and imagine what they would think or feel before forming an opinion or making a decision. This approach to making decisions is considerate of others, and gives them the perception that the leaders are involved with them in their journey. This sense of oneness, when it flows from the leaders leads to further synergy and highly productive and functional interactions within team members. And that’s when the magic starts happening!
Each of the above habits are closely interlinked. When leaders start following one of the habits, they usually find themselves following the others as well. It really comes down to the leader looking to be present and serving the team by showing deeper understanding, empathy and the willingness to explore all possibilities for a Win-Win. When the leader becomes the example, the team follows.