I’ve been working full time with leaders to assist them in their leadership development for 10 years now, and I have found that the leaders that make the biggest positive impact with others are those who can engage empathetically utilizing the emotional dynamics that take place in any human encounter. This of course is the very essence of the four key elements of ’emotional intelligence’ – that is – self-awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management. This has lead me on a search to see whether there was any hard data to verify my experiences.
What I have discovered in my search is that greater numbers of empirical research studies are being produced that reveal outcomes that can no longer be ignored by serious leaders. Some of the key measures associated with emotional intelligence that are being examined are job satisfaction levels, job effectiveness the contagiousness of moods and physiological responses to others (heart rate, health). Studies show that the emotional intelligence of the boss directly affects employee job satisfaction levels, and this in turn impacts upon employee turnover. Furthermore when a boss brings a negative mood to the workplace through displays of irritability, and anxiety it takes away from a climate of enthusiasm, which diminishes work effectiveness.
In contrast, when a boss is able to exude an optimistic and enthusiastic mood it impacts positively upon innovation, productivity, team work and increased resilience to difficult circumstances. With a greater number of research studies demonstrating the positive impact that increased emotional intelligence has upon business results, it is becoming more difficult to ignore this element of leadership development. The good news is that leaders can improve and grow in this area. I have worked one-to-one with leaders to achieve this very thing. So where do you start to work at improving this area? There are a number of options available to you. You might want to look at taking an assessment to assist you in this. I offer them on my site at www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com. You may want to read up more on the four elements of emotional intelligence and select one that you know needs more work and set some goals for yourself, or perhaps ask those you are leading for their perspective, either directly or through a 360 assessment. The most logical place to start improving emotional intelligence is to increase your own emotional awareness. So I am going to be speaking about this in my next post.
Start Growing in your Emotional Intelligence today
David Allan MBus
Leadership Development for Extraordinary Results 