Sweet Emotion? No, Managing Emotions!

We couldn’t argue the impact communication has as a team leadership skill if we really wanted to, but we’d need to be OK with being wrong! Since everyone I know who takes their leadership responsibilities serious doesn’t have time for such stuff, let’s push forward to what the Harvard Business School’s article called 7 Skills You Need to Effectively Manage Teams shows following right behind communication in the #2 spot on their list: Emotional Intelligence.

In defining that #2 skill, the author of the article shares this:

Emotional intelligence refers to an individual’s ability to manage their emotions, as well as those of others.

A highly developed level of emotional intelligence is a hallmark of strong managers and leaders. Someone with a keen sense of self-awareness, empathy, and other social skills is someone who can motivate and influence others—an important quality for managers to exhibit.

Since I’ve shared quite a bit about emotional intelligence in this series, in a few lessons in our Leading At The Next Level program, as well as in a complimentary webinar we offer periodically called Creating an Emotionally Intelligent Culture that Impacts Your Organization's Bottom Line, I’ll fight the urge to go very far down that path again here. I will share that achieving the “highly developed level of emotional intelligence” the HBS article attributes to being a “hallmark of strong managers and leaders” is much simpler when we have the right tools.

For what it’s worth, applying the exact same tools that help us “give plenty of constructive feedback, having at least one meaningful conversation per week with each employee” that the SHRM article I referenced last time suggested we do to build engagement can also helps us build that highly developed level of emotional intelligence - once we understand how to apply all the DISC Model of Human Behavior really offers… In over two decades of studying behavior and workplace communication, there’s just nothing else that offers a more practical approach to self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management - the four components that make up emotional intelligence.

Hey, I get it… Not everyone wants a practical approach to increasing productivity and decreasing turnover. That’s fine by me. But even for those who are only interested in the increased profit margin that those things yield, managing those sweet emotions (I couldn’t help but reference Aerosmith at least once) is a fairly simple way of doing it…

Next time we’ll take a look at two more team leadership skills on that HBS list AND I’ll share a readily available tool for honing them. Until then, I’ll extend the same offer I did last time with regards to how you learn to recognize communication styles… If you’re not clear on how you can apply the DISC model of Human Behavior to develop your own level of emotional intelligence, schedule a 15 minute call with me so we can chat through the best approach for you!