Emotional intelligence in leadership helps you communicate with your team and collaborate with others. How you relate to others can set the tone for organizational leadership. Leaders without emotional intelligence cannot connect or understand others, resulting in lower employee engagement and higher employee turnover.
5 attributes of emotional intelligence
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship management
- Effective communication
Leaders set the tone of their organization. It could have more far-reaching consequences if they lack emotional intelligence, resulting in lower employee engagement and a higher turnover rate.
While you might excel at your job technically, those technical skills will get overlooked if you can’t effectively communicate with your team or collaborate with others. You can continue to advance your career and organization by mastering emotional intelligence.
Leadership Styles Rooted in Emotional Intelligence
The benefits people and organizations can realize from emotional intelligence are undeniable. Two books cited in this article are excellent models of how emotional intelligence can transform good leaders into great leaders and how those great leaders can subsequently transform their organizations.
First, Servant Leadership in Action describes the servant leadership model, which emphasizes the responsibility of leaders to serve employees instead of the other way around. Emotionally intelligent leaders put aside ego and self-promotion to empathize with others, which builds respect and sets up workers for success.
Second, Humble Leadership details how humility and collaboration to foster trust between leaders and subordinates to benefit the entire organization. Relationships thrive when leaders make an effort to understand their employees truly. Emotional intelligence can provide the backbone of that understanding that strengthens team building, productivity, morale, and more.
Whatever model your workplace follows, emotional intelligence can build better leaders and help prevent employee turnover. After all, when workers feel respected, understood, and valued, you’ve created an environment they won’t want to leave.
Let’s look at some traits of leaders who understand their impact on others. These people tend to:
- Ask for feedback on what they can do to help their team succeed
- Regularly and comfortably engage with team members in both professional and casual situations
- Check-in with the team to assess culture and morale
- Spend adequate time with team members teaching, listening, and learning
- Understand the strengths of individual team members
- Willingly and regularly provide feedback and mentoring
- Be aware of how their emotional state affects others
- Maintain their composure and be able to manage negative or emotional situations
- Proactively seek communication
- Admit mistakes and show humility
- Comfortably engage staff in social situations
Aubrey Banks is one of those entrepreneurs who have not only put effort into making their dreams come true but also helped the people working under him to know more about their potential. Banks is an individual who wants to make his presence in the world be counted as an empathetic human being more than anything.
Understanding the impact of emotional intelligence on oneself, he made himself strong enough, and today he can lead people with his skills and make the best use of his strength to empower others.