What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and control your own emotions. It can also mean that you have the ability to understand the emotions of the people around you and how they affect how you interact with others.

People who have good emotional intelligence know what they’re feeling, what their emotions mean and how their emotions can affect how other people see and interact with them.

For example, if you are holding onto some anger while at work, your coworkers might be able to tell by the way you behave and interact with them.

When angry, we often react with irritation in our voice and could hold ourselves in a tight position, possibly crossing our arms or tapping our feet in annoyance. This type of behaviour could make those around you wary of approaching you as they would not want you to take out your anger on them. This could cause issues to be ignored until you are in a better mood which means there is less productivity until the issue gets resolved.

People with good emotional intelligence could see this anger before it started to affect those around them. By being aware of their own anger, they could use coping mechanisms so that their work and colleagues would not be affected. This is why emotional intelligence can be a helpful skill to have in the workplace as it can be easier to get along with other workers and less miscommunication.

Why emotional intelligence is important

There are numerous ways in which having good emotional intelligence is important in the workplace. Here are a few.

• Increased Employee Retention. Having good control over your emotions makes it easy for people to work with you. As a manager, it is incredibly important to be able to stay cool under pressure. If you find yourself having a hard time with this, then you might lose some workers simply because your emotional outbursts were too much for them to handle.
• Better Communication. Being able to keep your emotions out of the workplace makes it easier to communicate clearly with others. Rather than trying to figure out how to work around your emotions, employees will be able to concentrate on what you are saying. It is a lot easier to be clear when your emotions are not ruling how you interact with the world. Related: How to Create Effective Communication at the Workplace
• Higher Productivity. When people bring too many of their emotions into work, they may not be as focused on their work. Our emotions can often take over our thinking, making it difficult to think about anything else. When this happens at work, it can mean productivity goes down which could be avoided with more emotional intelligence.
• Better Decision Making. When people are emotional, they do not always make the best decisions. In terms of business decisions, you need to be clear-headed and be able to think critically about the different possible outcomes. Without being able to use emotional intelligence skills, you could make a decision based on how you’re feeling, which could mean picking the wrong choice.

With these examples, it is easy to see how having good emotional intelligence at work can be beneficial for everyone.

Personality traits for the emotionally intelligent leader

In order to be a good leader, having emotionally intelligent personality traits is important. The following are personality traits that will improve your emotional intelligence.

Self-Awareness

Being self-aware means that you are aware of your own emotions, triggers and how your emotions can affect others. Having self-awareness in business means that you know what your strengths and weaknesses are and how these affect your work.

For example, if doing a lot of repetitive tasks causes you to become frustrated, it could be good to break up these types of tasks so that you are not doing them for too long each day. By being self-aware you would know that this is the best solution to the problem and you would avoid becoming frustrated while at work.

Self- Regulation

Self-regulation is the idea that you are able to control your emotions, even when up against difficult situations. People who can self-regulate are able to regulate how they act in situations and can take their emotions out of how they behave toward people. In other words, instead of reacting to everything with strong emotions, these people can pause and use their rational brains to decide what to do next.

An example of this would be if your boss erupted in anger towards you due to a mistake. Instead of getting angry and acting in anger back towards your boss, you would be calm, take ownership of the situation and fix the problem. People with good emotional intelligence can do this easily as they are able to control how they feel and not let their emotions rule their actions.

Self-Motivation

Self-motivation is when people consistently work towards a goal, even if obstacles are in the way. This is a good skill to have as often in business you have to pivot or change how you approach things. Having self-motivation to keep working towards a goal is a great way to positively influence those around you. Not giving up when things get tough is something leaders have to do in order to be successful and those under you will see this quality in you and try to emulate it.

If, for example, you are working on a large difficult project, you would want to be able to stay motivated even when things get in the way of progress. By having self-motivation, you are a good example to your workers and show your emotional intelligence by staying calm under pressure.

Empathy

Empathy is when you are able to see another person’s perspective and understand how they might be feeling. This can be a critical quality in a leader as they need to have a good understanding of how their employees feel. Having empathy for your workers means that you can get a better quality of work out of them as they know you care beyond just the job.

People want bosses who can understand their perspectives and be treated with respect while at work. Being able to empathize with your employees will increase your respect for them as you will have a better understanding of what might be motivating them or hindering them in their job.

An example of this can be seen when you ask a certain group of employees to work late a few nights in a row to help complete a project with a tight deadline. If you do this type of thing too often, your employees might start to feel resentment towards you and the other employees who do not have to work late. Making sure that your employees know that this type of request will not happen often, and perhaps offering an extra day off later in the week, can make the whole experience easier.

Social Skills

Not everyone is gifted with the same social skills. Some people are gifted at communication while others intuitively know how to fix conflicts. By acknowledging which social skill that may be lacking, you can show your employees that you are willing to work hard at improving your emotional intelligence.

Related: Conflict Management Styles: A Guide for Managers

Learning to praise others, for example, may feel awkward to some, but if you practice this skill it will become more natural. Praising others is a great way to expand your emotional intelligence as it allows you to see what types of tasks your employees do that do not get adequately appreciated. This means that you are thinking about your employees’ feelings, which is strengthening your emotional intelligence.

In order to be a better leader, it is important to develop your emotional intelligence. By building the above personality traits, you can raise your emotional intelligence and become the type of leader that is effective and efficient.