The Power Of Emotional Intelligence In Leadership

Are you aware of your emotions? Do you know how to control them? More importantly, do you know how to express your feelings?

Then there’s a good chance you’re an emotionally intelligent leader. If you couldn’t answer the questions above in the affirmative, don’t worry. You can learn how to become more emotionally intelligent. Figuring out our emotions and how to deal with them can feel a lot like solving a Rubik’s Cube.

You can work on emotional intelligence, like many of our interpersonal skills. Just because you’ve been bad at relating to others, expressing yourself, and controlling your emotions doesn’t mean you can’t.

The Power Of Emotional Intelligence In Leadership

Why Emotional Intelligence Is Important

If you’ve ever worked for a leader who lacked emotional intelligence, you know how difficult it can be. The leader flies off the handle at the most minor issue. Maybe the boss kept all of his feelings bottled up. You never knew who he was going to be on a given day.

What Is Effective Leadership?

Every leader wants to be effective in their leadership. Not every leader is effective. One of the reasons behind that is not knowing what effective leadership looks like.

What is Effective Leadership?

What is effective leadership? Effective leadership is the ability of an individual or group to guide, inspire, and influence others toward the achievement of a common goal. They also nurture the professional and personal growth of the people they lead. 

Effective leadership involves excellent communication skills, thinking strategically, being able to adapt, and making informed decisions.

All of those things are things you can work on personally. That’s the thing to keep in mind while you read this article and become an effective leader. You can do it!

Self-Awareness: The Key To Effective Leadership

Self-Awareness: The Key To Effective Leadership

We’ve all experienced a leader who wasn’t self-aware. When a leader is self-aware, they have the ability to focus on themselves and see how their own actions, thought, and emotions do or do not align with their internal standards.

We see this when a leader has set a corporate mantra of integrity, positivity, and appreciation, but his actions do not align. This leader berates his employees, doesn’t see anything good happening, and cooks the books.

Yeah, he’s not self-aware.

Yet, self-awareness is key to effective leadership. Without self-awareness, your employees will think you’re inept and not worth following.

Developing Self-Awareness

To become an effective leader, you have to develop self-awareness. Thankfully, this is a skill that can be taught and developed.

3 Steps To Self-Awareness For Leaders

In the midst of being put on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates uttered the famous line, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  He was well aware of the fact that, in order to truly live and lead as we ought, we first have to know who we are. As leaders, this is especially true since, by definition, we are going to influence and impact other people. If we are to do this as well as we can, we must first be aware of ourselves: strengths and weaknesses, gifts and flaws.

Leaders need to be self-aware

Photo by Alex Iby