Developing Emotional Intelligence

Developing emotional intelligence is a key to successful leadership. Leaders with a

strong mixture of emotional awareness, self-management, and social skills are able to
relate better to those around them. Emotionally intelligent leaders navigate
relationships more effectively and are more likely to be successful in their personal
and professional lives.

This course provides an understanding of why emotionally  intelligent leadership is

important. It also provides practical, positive techniques for promoting and improving
emotional intelligence as a leader within your business environment.

Table of Contents
1. Developing Emotional Intelligence
2. Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Work
3. Looking into Emotional Intelligence
4. Developing Self-perception
5. Developing Social Perception
6. Developing Emotional Control

Developing Emotional Intelligence

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Intelligence is usually understood to mean the ability to acquire and apply knowledge
and skills. And when measured, it’s often referred to as a person’s intelligence
quotient, or IQ. But there is another type of intelligence, commonly called emotional
intelligence, referred to as a person’s EQ. This type of intelligence refers to the ability
to recognize and manage emotions.

Experts point out that often what distinguishes a great leader – in sports, politics, and
of course business – is emotional intelligence. In this course, you’ll learn why
emotional intelligence is important in the workplace and what kinds of behavior
exhibit high levels of emotional intelligence. You’ll also learn how to develop the key
elements of emotional intelligence, such as self-perception, social perception, and
emotional control, and how doing so enables successful leadership.

Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Work

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Emotional intelligence refers to our ability to recognize and manage our own
emotions and the emotions of others. Leaders with high emotional intelligence are
unusually self-aware, with an ability to control, and regulate, their own feelings. They
also exhibit high levels of empathy, an awareness of other people’s feelings,
particularly when making decisions. Leaders with high EQs not only control their own
feelings, but also understand their teams’ feelings, using that knowledge to encourage,
direct, and motivate others. Emotional intelligence in business allows you to take into
account factors that affect how things get done. By being aware of your own
emotions, you recognize your strengths and weaknesses and can therefore modulate
your impact on others.

And by being aware of other people’s emotions, you anticipate their responses and
can ready yourself to manage them. Knowing how a team might respond emotionally
to some unwelcome company news, for example, prepares you for dealing with that
response. Recognizing the emotional cues within a team’s interactions can help you
navigate meetings in a more informed way. Emotional intelligence can also be a good
predictor of success in the workplace. By exercising control over your own emotions,
you avoid the disruptive emotions that can hinder team acceptance and you create a
working environment that better accepts diversity or change.

And by empathizing with others, you anticipate the approaches you can take to steer
team members towards successful outcomes. As Joshua Freedman, a leading expert
on emotional intelligence has stated, “[emotional intelligence] is responsible for as
much as 80 percent of the ‘success’ in our lives.” Many leaders use emotional
intelligence to motivate team members. Managers who thrust their own ideas on
others, as if the ideas themselves will generate enthusiasm, often fail to recognize that
the team’s enthusiasm will not be reciprocated without some emotional assistance.

By contrast, the leader who understands what inspires or drives team members has a
much better chance of fanning the flame of their interest. By tapping into the emotions
of others, and then directing those emotions, a leader can engage and manage interest,
stimulating the team’s enthusiasm and motivating them to move toward a specific
goal. Such a strategy also uplifts the atmosphere of the workplace, as team members
feel a sense of identity, that their contributions are valued. In essence, emotional
intelligence can be effectively used to enhance motivation and optimism in the
workplace.

In fact, when used properly and consistently, emotional intelligence can bring about a
positive climate within the workforce, enhancing both productivity and adaptability. A
leader’s appreciation of the emotional responses of others generates a mutual
appreciation and a sense of inclusivity. Team members feel special and appreciated by
having their own emotions recognized. And in turn, they’re motivated to be sensitive
to the feelings of others, building team trust and respect. In such a climate of
collegiality, team members will be less afraid of change and more inclined to be
receptive to new ideas and opportunities. As Kevin Roberts, the CEO of Saatchi and
Saatchi famously said, “I have always believed that by touching emotion you get the
best people to work with you, the best clients to inspire you, the best partners and
most devoted customers.”

Looking into Emotional Intelligence

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The respected music producer Stewart Levine says that organizations today “are
actually hiring not so much for technical skills, but for emotional intelligence.” But
how does a company identify someone with emotional intelligence? Experts tell us
that people with emotional intelligence function well in four key domains. The first of
these is self-perception. To understand others and how they react, you first need to
know yourself. This means understanding not just how you respond emotionally to the
world around you, but also what makes up your core values or beliefs, and by
extension what constitutes your strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding your value system allows you to calibrate your moral compass, to
recognize the framework that controls your reactions and powers your intuition. Self-
perception allows you to recognize where your gut instinct comes from, the emotional
context, as it were, of how you respond to others.

How can you learn to know yourself better? Some people take various personality
tests, such as the DISC personality tests or the Myers Briggs Type Indicators
questionnaire. These can be helpful, but fundamentally you need to examine what is
going on inside you at any moment of your working life. How do you react to
criticism? What is your mindset when deadlines loom? How do you feel when a
colleague gets promoted into a position you coveted? Knowing how you respond to
these and other work-related moments will help you work out why you respond in the
way you do. It may also help you realize how others respond commensurately.
However, knowing yourself is not enough.

Once you understand the sources of your emotional responses, you can begin
managing them. Self-management, the second domain of emotional intelligence,
involves regulating your emotions, and in so doing maximizing your competencies.
Daniel Goldman, the author of the seminal best-seller Emotional Intelligence, refers to
this as self-regulation: controlling or re-directing disruptive emotions and impulses.

By staying calm during a crisis or showing a positive spirit during times of great
stress, you adapt positively to changing circumstances, controlling those
circumstances rather than having them control you. Leaders who can motivate team
members during the most adverse negotiations exhibit remarkable self-management
that often shifts the negotiation in their favor. Emotional intelligence also involves
knowing and managing others. Social perception is another key domain of emotional
intelligence.

People with a high EQ have insight into the emotions of those around them. They
understand – often due to their own self-knowledge – how others will react
emotionally, both individually and within a social construct. Leaders with good social
perception read the interconnections within a room. You can improve your social
perception by becoming a keen observer of the human network. By listening carefully
to the sub-text of conversations and being sensitive to what energizes team members,
you can recognize the impetus that will drive the team in the direction you want them
to go.

With a developed social perception, you can also master the fourth domain of
emotional intelligence: social skills, or how you manage other people’s emotions
within a social context. On one level this refers to getting along with people, being
able to communicate clearly and interact comfortably. But on another level social
skills refers to how effectively you can use your understanding of others’ emotions to
move them in a desired direction.

Social skills are largely about recognizing how the social dynamic – the charges and
impulses that ignite team interactions – can influence a greater good. Tapping into the
source of the team’s emotion, a leader can channel the team towards a project or
company goal and can even motivate the team to greater goals. As John Hancock, one
of the leaders of the American Revolution said, “The greatest ability in business is to
get along with others and influence their actions.”

Developing Self-perception
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Perhaps the most fundamental domain of emotional intelligence is self-perception. As

Socrates reputedly said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” Self-
perception often starts with people being curious about themselves. Experts often refer
to this first step as self-observation. However, as Joanna Barsh, founder of Centered
Leadership, points out, self-observation needs to be accompanied by dispassion, “to
allow you to get outside of your own movie to watch yourself,” to understand more
objectively what you are feeling and what that feeling is telling you. Dispassionate
self-observation is seeing yourself as others might see you, but also knowing your
feelings and how they drive your behavior. Self-observation is a step towards
identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and your emotional triggers.

If you’re asked to communicate some disappointing information to your team, you

might first observe your own emotional response. Does the thought of imparting bad
news make you anxious? Do you put off conveying the information or convey it only
in part? You begin to learn about yourself: how disappointing news triggers a certain
emotion, which in turn triggers procrastination or prevarication. Taking note of your
own responses allows you to identify your strengths and weaknesses and to find ways
of managing those responses as they arise. Developing self-perception also allows you
to interpret your goals and feelings.

By monitoring how you react in different situations, you begin to identify emotional
connections, gaining a broader perspective on what makes you tick. Emotional
responses invariably run deep, so by analyzing the reasons beneath your responses,
you gain deeper insight into the goals and longer-term values that you harbor. For
example, when you respond in anger to some breakdown in a process or miscue in
communication, you learn something about yourself: how you expect things to work
smoothly, without incident. This information can reveal a strength: you’ll work hard
to ensure that processes are well-defined and adhered to.

But it can also reveal a weakness: your expectations might be unreasonably high,
failing to accept some measure of human error. Most leaders admit that developing
self-perception involves some input from others. After all, being able to observe
yourself from the outside is rather like observing yourself as someone else. Many
leaders seek the feedback of others; and the best leaders solicit feedback frequently
and from a variety of sources. Leadership experts recommend seeking the opinion of
people you trust and who will offer their opinion frankly.

Find out how they perceive you, what you do well and what you can improve on, how
you are perceived by team members, and so on. It’s important to solicit feedback in an
atmosphere of non-threatening candor. It’s also important to get feedback from as
wide a variety of colleagues as you can: co-workers, managers, subordinates,
customers, even colleagues from other divisions. Be prepared to listen and hear the
truth. A final method for developing self-perception is recording your reactions and
thoughts.
Often in the heat of the moment – during an intense brainstorming session or while
presenting to a group of demanding customers – you may not have the time to self-
observe and analyze how you are reacting emotionally. But by writing down your
reactions and thoughts right afterwards, you give yourself the opportunity to look
back and gain a depth of understanding during more reflective moments. The act of
writing is itself an interpretive process. When taking notes, you filter and focus on
ideas that grab you, glossing over those that seem less convincing. And as you look
back over notes you took, you begin to recognize your own emotional responses and
understand a bit more about yourself. And understanding yourself helps you to better
understand others.

Developing Social Perception

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Self-perception is important in developing emotional intelligence. But it is only a first

step. Once you know how to read yourself, you then need to know how to read the
world. This is called social perception. At the core of social perception is empathy,
which is an ability to sense what other people are feeling and use it when making
decisions. Utilizing empathy begins by taking an interest in others. This may sound
obvious, but many managers and supervisors fail to take a genuine interest in their
team members as people. Taking an interest involves active engagement, showing the
other person that they have your undivided attention.

Taking an interest also involves building an egalitarian ethos, ensuring that all team
members feel included and listened to. Utilizing empathy also involves listening first.
Rather than charging into a meeting with a list of requirements or demands, start by
listening first to what others think. This should be done in a spirit of collegial
communication and open discussion. Good listeners also interpret body language. Do
a team member’s crossed arms indicate resistance to an idea? How do you engage the
person who seems easily distracted by something outside the room?

Empathy helps you recognize these signals and find strategies for re-engaging these
team members. Summarizing the team’s points at the end of a meeting is also a
helpful technique. It demonstrates that you’ve been listening actively and
empathetically. Part of the point of active listening is gauging what it’s like to stand in
others’ shoes. Some group leaders re-phrase what team members say to them,
confirming their understanding and affirming a personal connection, as if saying “I
understand you”. This doesn’t mean giving in to subordinates.
All managers must make hard decisions at times. But if your team appreciates that
you care about their decisions, they’ll be more inclined to accept the occasional tough
decision. Essentially, utilizing empathy is a way of finding common ground. When
you exercise empathy, you focus on what you share with someone else. Through that
sharing you then allow that person to feel invested in a broader goal, whether a simple
directive or the vision of the company itself. Marcus Buckingham, the British author
and motivational speaker, claims that great leaders have “extended empathy”, being
able to sense the shared feelings of groups of people.

Utilizing empathy to this extent helps you recognize the emotional climate, the
collective responses that make up the culture of the team or organization. Finding
common ground will help you, as a leader, manage the big picture. There are many
social cues, or techniques, that leaders use in developing this extended social
perception.

One such cue is tracking emotions during meetings. When one team member voices a
complaint, are others similarly disgruntled? What does this tell you about the
groupthink? When a random idea is met with unexpected enthusiasm by the rest of the
team, what broader picture do you see? Tracking the emotions of your team will help
you understand the shared emotions and tap into the group dynamic. Another social
cue in developing social perception is analyzing the organizational culture.

Once you recognize the shared emotions of your team, you can move towards a
broader understanding of the organization, grasping the abiding values of the teams
that make up the company. By monitoring and analyzing these collective feelings, you
gain a more profound understanding of the company culture. Such a breadth of
understanding positions you to manage effectively the emotions, ambitions, and very
values of the team, influencing them in key directions and allowing the major goals of
the organization to dovetail with their own, abiding interests.

Developing Emotional Control

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Leadership experts agree that developing emotional intelligence, requires not only
self-perception – the ability to perceive and understand your emotions – but also self-
regulation – the ability to control your emotions. Great leaders show remarkable self-
control, particularly during crucial decision-making moments. Developing self-control
isn’t easy. As fallible human beings, we occasionally give in to negative emotions:
losing our temper when a deadline is missed or openly showing disappointment when
sales figures are down.

But the key here is to avoid a pattern of negativity, not allowing negative response to
recur. The first step is recognizing the negative response, realizing when and why
you’re responding in a non-constructive way. Then, you can look at methods for
interrupting the negative pattern. Avoid dwelling on the negative. Force yourself to
think positively, so that you reinforce positive tendencies, the way a baseball pitcher
will stay focused after throwing a bad pitch, convincing himself that it’s a momentary
blip in an otherwise strong performance.

A positive attitude is important for building self-control because it helps mitigate not
just negative tendencies, but also stress. Stress is an enemy of emotional intelligence
because it leads to emotional outbursts that are counterproductive. By reducing stress,
you put yourself in a better position to interrupt negative patterns and reinforce
emotional control. People reduce stress in a myriad of ways: getting fresh air and
exercising regularly, listening to music, taking a break, getting enough sleep and so
on. You can use these and other techniques to establish emotional equilibrium and
promote self-control.

Another technique for developing self-control is thinking aloud. Many like to talk
things through, using a colleague as a sounding board. This allows other, trusted
colleagues to analyze your emotional responses and offer advice. Do they see some of
your reactions as negative? How does your self-perception compare to the way others
see you? Still other leaders like to write their feelings down as a way of understanding
and controlling them. When you receive an email from someone who nitpicks
incidental points, instead of immediately replying in anger, try jotting down how you
feel. Then step back from what you’ve written and read it dispassionately. What are
the abiding emotions in what you wrote? What kind of reaction will they most likely
bring about? And most importantly, how can you control them?

Techniques for increasing self-control are important, but of equal importance are
interpersonal techniques for managing the emotions of others. Again, experienced
team leaders offer helpful hints. During intense discussions or disagreements, let
others explain themselves first. This not only shows respect to the other party, but it
gives you time to strategize and consider your own feelings, and how to respond both
tactically and tactfully. Another interpersonal technique is being honest about your
feelings. Letting others understand how you feel about an issue – particularly if you’re
dispassionate and non-combative – can be remarkably disarming.

In fact, honesty can often provoke empathy and reciprocal candor. The key here is to
give clear reasons for your feelings without laying blame or responsibility on the other
side. This pushes the discussion in an objective, analytical direction, away from
disruptive emotions. Explaining the reasons for your emotions in a calm honest light
will also lead more naturally towards searching for practical solutions. For example,
explaining calmly to your development team that a missed deadline causes anxiety for
you because the sales team will put you under even greater pressure, will make the
development team more empathetic and will place a practical solution directly in front
of them.

Also, they will want to act because of your honest disclosure. Of key importance here
is the central role of honesty and responsibility in interpersonal self-control. By being
honest about your feelings, but also taking responsibility for them, you gain
acceptance and respect from others. This is a chief benefit of emotional control, as it
helps defuse otherwise incendiary moments and places those moments within a
problem-solving framework. By developing self-perception and social perception, but
with the important addition of self-control, you can develop the emotional intelligence
that will aid your development into a successful leader.