The most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree of what has come to be known as Emotional Intelligence (EI).
Effective emotional understanding and management help team members cohere, be more productive, and feel valued and understood. Additionally, managers who show more empathy toward direct reports are viewed by their bosses as better performers in their jobs.
However, not all leaders have a high emotional intelligence, which is a problem.
If your leader has low EQ in the workplace, he/she/they may be tearing the team apart. Here are a few things to look for:
- A need to be right.
- Oblivious to other feelings.
- Insensitivity.
- Blaming Others.
- Poor coping skills.
Leaders with low EI
Leaders with low Emotional Intelligence struggle to regulate their responses to external triggers or show concern and interest for their team. They are often perceived as demanding and aloof as well as lacking empathy and appreciation for others’ efforts. Instead of taking responsibility, they quickly deflect and shift the blame when things go wrong. While these leaders may possess the necessary technical skills for the job, they fail to demonstrate care for their team members, demonstrating a lack in people skills. Additionally, under stress, they may become volatile, unpredictable, and reactive creating an unsafe work environment.
Furthermore, leaders with low EI are less likely to prioritize the emotional well-being of their team because they don’t value it in their own lives. This has significant consequences for an organization, especially in executive roles. Employing leaders that lack emotional intelligence results in lower productivity, higher turnover, increased stress, decreased engagement, reduced creativity, ineffective communication, and overall division within teams. Ultimately, this leads to a decrease in morale, creating a negative impact on organizational culture and performance.
In summary, leaders with low EI not only lack essential emotional intelligence skills but also contribute to negative outcomes within their organizations.
Take a moment. Can you fill in examples from your specific situation of what this looks like? What words, actions, or innuendos undermine collaboration or trust?
Do you recognize these examples?
- A supervisor who breaks promises and never addresses them.
- A micromanaging boss who demoralizes employees with excessive demands and negative feedback.
- A team leader who plays favorites and exhibits erratic, unpredictable behavior.
- A customer-facing employee who meets the bare minimum of care and concern.
- An entire team constantly engulfed in blaming and finger-pointing.
There are millions of different examples with a common theme. These problems all have the same root cause: a lack of emotional intelligence. This rings true for most of the problems plaguing organizations worldwide. According to the research, almost 75% of organizational issues are relational, as opposed to technical. It’s a people problem. And for better or worse, people are driven by emotions and are influenced by their own and others’ emotional intelligence. For businesses seeking to make an external social impact, an intriguing paradox emerges: the key lies within their own walls. Enhancing workers’ job satisfaction holds the potential to become the most crucial undertaking they embark upon.
Although each issue should be addressed differently, there are a few key ground rules to follow when engaging with leaders with low EQ resistors: focus on listening, and be open to change yourself. Make sure to have two conversations: one that allows them to share their thoughts and feelings and another to respond thoughtfully. Engage your own emotional intelligence muscle.
Signs Your Team Needs an Expert
As you can see, low emotional intelligence affects your team’s morale, engagement, productivity, success, and overall bottomline. Emotional intelligence is a lifelong process, not something you can embody overnight. It takes patience and energy as well as support and guidance. In my experience, it is also important to find an external expert to guide you through a program or course in emotional intelligence. Often, teams won’t be as vulnerable or honest if it’s being guided by someone within the organization. Having a third party offers a mediation perspective between teammates and managers, helping all parties involved be heard, and facilitates group growth and cohesion.
Take an honest review of your team. Even if it’s just one individual, they most likely are weighing the team down and their low EI is adversely rippling through your team dynamics. If your team demonstrates any of the following, it’s a key sign that your team would benefit from an external expert.
Hiring an external expert may be helpful if individuals have or your team has:
- trouble understanding what causes certain feelings.
- frequent emotional outbursts or mood changes.
- difficulty asserting opinions or taking charge in a situation.
- little interest in finding new ways of solving problems.
- trouble accepting criticism, constructive or otherwise.
- difficulty expressing ideas clearly or getting a point across.
- a habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
- a certain obliviousness to emotional cues from others.
- a tendency to fixate on mistakes instead of learning from them and moving on.
- pessimism and loss of motivation after setbacks.
Emotional intelligence may have been overlooked in the past as “soft skills” or as inappropriate for the office. However, the times are changing and showing your employees that you care about their emotional wellbeing can not only keep them invested in working for your organization but can help them tap into their full leadership potential.
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