The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

What is emotional intelligence, and why is it important to being a good leader?

There are layers of difficult emotions that we carry within us that we ourselves are barely able to recognize. These can live in our subconscious minds, and they impact us through our automatic responses to 'triggering' situations. They make us 'defensive' or 'envious' or 'aggressive', given the right context or situation. And they often stem from trauma we experienced as children or during our formative years.

So when we're dealing with others in a professional manner, we aren't just dealing with a person in their present moment or context, but with a set of complex emotions and experiences that are layered deep within their psyche. We can't just expect people to respond to our requests, orders, or suggestions without potentially causing a reaction in them that they themselves might not be fully aware of.

Being emotionally intelligent means not only doing the hard work of getting in touch with how we ourselves respond to varying situations, but in being able to recognize certain types of responses in others as well.

This means being able to read subtle body language, verbal cues, and by being open to asking questions and listening to what a person says to us. It means altering how we communicate with people because we know that some folks are more sensitive than others to certain modes of interaction. Ultimately, it means seeing others as 3-dimensional, complex beings, and more than just cogs doing a job in your company's machine.

To increase one's emotional intelligence it pays to learn what it means to truly be empathetic, to become a really good listener, and to pay attention to people's cultural and economic backgrounds in order to understand where they're coming from and how their experiences might differ from our own.

The payoffs can be immense, as we're likely to find ourselves building deeper connections with those around us, forging friendships and not just 'working relationships', and earning trust with our peers and direct reports.