Enhancing Leadership: The Role of Emotional Intelligence

Welcome back to Leading Through Relationship Building. We're about to begin module two, which is, as you can see, titled Building Emotional Intelligence, and this is a great follow-up to our first module, which centered around building your network.

So as we begin, let's just review what we did in module one, and you'll see in the summary, and you'll remember that we made a very, very strong case, did we not, that quality relationships are really critical and crucial to your personal work success. Yes, those relationships will change as you move into leadership, and hopefully that's in a good way. It'll be expanding your relationships as well as changing them.

You do want to plan for every possible opportunity to deepen your relationships through communication, and of course, that's going to take great communication skills, and we're going to amplify that today as we build emotional intelligence. You know that networking is going to broaden and expand your relationships, and as you continue to build and maintain those relationships, that's a really important critical skill for you as an emerging leader. So with that in mind, let's move forward into module two, and as we take a look at module two, our learning objectives for today are to describe the emotional intelligence in our lives as leaders, to look at the components of emotional intelligence, and then take some time to apply the concepts to some work settings.

Now, as we start with this, I have to really emphasize that this is about research. Research is very, very, very, very clear that emotional intelligence is a key factor that affects many aspects of life, not just our leadership skills. Our EI, our emotional intelligence, determines how successful people are in their relationships, their careers, and any other part of their lives as well.

The statistics are real, and they clearly show us that people with higher levels of emotional intelligence tend to be more successful and have better outcomes in life. A higher EI is also a better predictor of one's ability to lead successfully, and that's why it's important for us to discuss it today. So yes, it is essential to focus on improving your emotional intelligence and also the emotional intelligence of your followers.

Now, let's take a look at what EI, emotional intelligence, is all about. So let's start with a definition. When you look at the definition here, you're going to see it begins by saying it's about monitoring one's own, yours, and other people's emotions.

That's the first piece of it. All right, now don't get too concerned here because oftentimes when I begin this, people go, Oh, this is all going to be about touchy-feely, and I really don't want to go there because I'm not a touchy-feely. Well, neither am I. Neither am I. I actually have a sweatshirt that says not a hugger with a porcupine on it, but that doesn't mean I don't have high emotional intelligence.

It means that when we are talking about EI, we can recognize what our own emotions are and manage them, and we can recognize those emotions in other people. Why is that important for us as leaders? Well, it is because we're often and regularly talking about the need for leaders to be able to show appropriate empathy when needed. So we can make a case for this.

The second part of this in emotional intelligence is our ability to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately. What does that mean? Well, it means when I'm sad, I can call it sad and not happy. When I'm frustrated, I can call it frustrated, not angry.

When I'm really excited, I can say I'm really excited as opposed to, yeah, well, whatever. So we can identify those emotions. We see a difference between them, and we can put the right label on them.

The third piece to the definition is that someone with high emotional intelligence can use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, not only those of their own, but those of others around them. We can influence people when they're expressing emotions. Now, again, I said this was grounded in research, though this wasn't just somebody's idea. Let's talk about why I personally think emotional intelligence is important.

Now, it started back in the 1990s when Daniel Goleman, who is considered the forefront leader in this field, first brought the term emotional intelligence to a broad audience. Now, he'd been doing research for many years, but he published a book in 1995 called Emotional Intelligence. He was also the first person to apply the concept to the business setting, and that's why it's important for us.

So his research was conducted at nearly 200 very large global organizations, and in that research, Goleman found that the qualities typically associated with leadership, now listen to them, intelligence, toughness, determination, vision, those qualities, while they are required for success, so we're not saying they're unimportant, but they weren't enough. They were insufficient. As we look further into his research, he really revolutionized, forgive me for not being able to get over that word, are thinking about the attributes of effective leaders, and he contends and continues to contend, and there's more research to support this, that effective leaders are also, in addition, distinguished by a very high degree of this thing called emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence includes the attributes of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

We are going to talk about those four things in just a moment. So what does Goleman say in short? He says emotional intelligence is an array of skills and characteristics that drive successful relationships. Ah, that's our tie back into our first module.

Now, what's the current research set? I'm going to share with you quite a few statistics. You don't have to remember the statistics necessarily, but I think you will understand very quickly that there's a lot of data out there that's current, not just back in 1995, that tells us that high emotional intelligence is a better predictor of leadership success than, let's say, IQ or intelligence quotient. So let me share some statistics with you.

Eighty-seven percent of millennials today are motivated by the emotional intelligence of their leaders to help their company or agency succeed. Eighty-seven percent. The Chartered Governance Institute of the UK and Ireland reports that emotional intelligence accounts for nearly 90 percent of what sets high-performing leaders apart from those with similar technical skills and knowledge.

Ninety percent. DDI. DDI is a global leadership consulting firm, and it ranks empathy as the number one leadership skill, reporting that leaders who master empathy perform more than 40 percent higher in coaching, engaging others, and decision making.

Here's another one. Employees who believe that their leaders treat them with respect are 55 percent more engaged, 63 percent more satisfied, and 58 percent more focused on their jobs. We're not done yet.

This next one is disconcerting to me as one who teaches leadership skills. There's a 31 percent gap in leadership development effectiveness between organizations where emotional intelligence is valued versus those in which it is not. And there's more.

Demands for emotional intelligence skills across all industries are expected to grow by 26 percent in the United States and 22 percent in Europe by the year 2030. Why? The market is driven by increasing awareness among organizations about the benefits of EI. Emotional intelligence is considered a core skill today and is one of the top 10 vital skills for the future workplace.

Thirty-six percent of executives think that emotional intelligence will become a must-have skill in a few years. And one more, 95 percent of surveyed human resource managers and 99 percent of employees believe that emotional intelligence is a must-have skill for every staff member. That includes us as emerging leaders.

Now, here's the downside. After increasing every year since 2017, emotional intelligence dropped in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic. The Journal of Personality released new research showing that three out of four facets of emotional intelligence have declined over the years.

And this analysis involves 70 studies with 17,000 participants. And it showed that well-being, self-control, and emotionality have declined over the last few years. Well, that's a problem, isn't it? If the very thing that we say is a core leadership skill, that our employees respond extremely well to it, it creates greater success within the organization, and as we were climbing and doing better and better and better in increasing EI among our staff, we are in that decline.

Well, let's you and I make a difference today and help it begin on the incline again. So let's be clear. It's very foolish for us to suggest that a leader's intelligence doesn't matter.

Yes, their IQ matters. And yes, their technical competence matters. But it's not the same predictor of career success that we may have thought it to be.

That's why we have to distinguish the differences between emotional intelligence and our IQ, knowing full well that both can contribute to our success as leaders. So let's take this one step further. This is your first exercise in this module.

And you'll see that it's asking you to generate a list of characteristics of both emotional intelligence, EI, and IQ, our intelligence quotient. Now, to generate this list, I encourage you to do some quick research, and it won't take you more than a few minutes for sure. And you will very quickly, I think, begin to see the differences between the two and also the value in both.

So I'll give you a few minutes to work on that, and then we'll come back.