When navigating leadership, In the bid to improve your competence the desire would be to work calmly under pressure and handle emotions appropriately. This allows a solution driven mindset which helps achieve proper results. This is possible when one’s emotional intelligence quotient is high.
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence is the ability of an individual to understand and manage their emotions and the emotions of those around them. People that possess a high emotional intelligence quotient know how they are feeling and how their feelings impact those around them.
To thrive as a leader, having a high level of emotional intelligence is paramount. When this is absent, it affects the kind of results that can be achieved. This is why it is important that leaders master certain areas of emotional intelligence in order to improve competence.
What are some of those areas?
Self-awareness:
Possessing a high level of self-awareness is crucial to managing emotions effectively. This would really go a long way to help the leader to become better at what they do. Being self-aware is the ability to acknowledge strengths and weaknesses.
So what are the ways that this attribute can be developed:
Self-regulation.
Leaders who are able to regulate themselves do not lose their heads to emotions. Self-regulation is being in control of emotions and feelings. It’s a very important skill to have. How is it developed?
Empathy.
Empathy is very consequential to emotional intelligence. To lead a diverse team, empathy is indispensable. The ability to feel what others feel goes a long way in building emotional intelligence.
To improve empathy:
To be effective as a leader, emotional intelligence is keen. When Leading and achieving effective results, mastering emotional intelligence is important.