Emotional intelligence for leaders

Why emotional intelligence?

Many managers and supervisors did not receive training on how to actually manage people when they entered leadership roles. Because of this, they may not have been prepared for the emotional cost of leadership. This can impact their mental well-being and the mental well-being of those they lead, manage and support. Leaders can reduce their own stress while positively impacting the effectiveness of their teams by improving their emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage our own emotions, as well as recognize and appropriately respond to the emotional distress of others.

Leaders with strong emotional intelligence:

• Understand emotional triggers
• Are aware of their automatic assumptions about other people’s behaviour
• Listen first, without interrupting, and acknowledge and confirm what they hear
• Ask questions that recognize another person’s positive strengths
• Use reflective listening skills
• Provide negative feedback in a respectful, helpful and effective manner
• Regularly touch base with each person who works under their supervision

Self-awareness

• Improve your personal emotional intelligence. The activities offered in Emotional intelligence for employees can help you both in and out of your role as a leader.
• Try this activity in which you envision your ideal self. Most of us will find some differences between the realistic and ideal versions of ourselves. Identify these areas and create goals to improve them.
• Your behaviours may not always reflect the type of individual you believe yourself to be. Try this activity in which you envision yourself through others’ perspectives. 

Listen and connect

• Communicate with emotional employees. These strategies can help you have supportive conversations with employees who may be dealing with health or life stressors. These skills are useful for all relationships in which you want to be helpful.
• Get employee commitment. This approach to get employee commitment helps employees commit to their own success and has them explain what they need to succeed. Responding to impractical requests without disappointing employees is a valuable skill.
• Connect with your team. When work demands are high, it can be hard to make time for social interactions that building genuine connections with your team.
• Elicit feedback. Learn how to seek employee feedback in a productive and psychologically safe way.
• Lead with positivity. Negative language and conversations can be highly destructive. They can impact morale and can lead to negative emotions at work. Positive language and conversations can have a strong beneficial effect. Strengthening relationships with your employees, and expressing your respect and appreciation for their work, is a powerful way to build morale.
• Learn to listen and reflect. When an employee is upset or in crisis, listening to understand their point of view can help you avoid increasing their distress. Reflective or active listening can help you understand their verbal communication, and also interpret non-verbal communication.
• Approach employees using appreciative inquiry. This involves asking questions that recognize workers’ positive strengths. You can do this by acknowledging their past and present achievements, abilities and potential.
• Giving negative feedback can be uncomfortable. A number of factors can get in the way of providing negative feedback to others. You might worry about how they will feel or react emotionally. It is common for anyone to react to negative feedback, but the right approach can make this easier.
• Recognize different needs and views. When we’re stressed, it is not unusual to struggle to say exactly what we mean. Effective listening can help managers avoid reacting to the words and take time to clarify intent. When you acknowledge an employee’s point of view, without agreeing or disagreeing with what they’re saying, you send a strong signal that you want to understand how they feel even though you may or may not agree.
• Team activities for leaders. These activities help you raise the emotional intelligence and resilience of your team right along with you. Most activities take 30 minutes or fewer and can be done virtually or in person. 

Emotionally intelligent feedback

• Give negative feedback positively. Feedback is an important part of supporting employee success. It can help guide workers to perform better and ultimately benefit the whole team. Learn how to Provide negative feedback constructively.
• Performance management has more tips and techniques for giving feedback that supports your employees’ success.
• Recognition strategies for leaders helps you express respect and appreciation to your employees.
• Conflict response for leaders is a psychologically safe approach that provides a clear path forward. 
• Strengthening leadership skills is a booklet of activities can help you build leadership skills, including emotional intelligence, resilience and communication strategies. 
• Building trust for leaders helps you show your employees you’re trustworthy by exploring core competencies and behaviours that matter.

Workshop materials

This workshop helps participants understand their own emotional triggers, explore the functions of emotions, reflect on when behaviours are a symptom of emotions and respond more effectively to the emotions of others.

Take the self-assessment

The free Emotional intelligence self-assessment takes about 10 minutes to complete. The results will highlight your strengths, as well as areas in which you can benefit from additional skills training. It covers 4 areas:

• Self-awareness – your ability to accurately identify your emotions, understand why you react the way you do and recognize your impact on others. 
• Self-management – your ability to effectively manage stress and appropriately express emotional reactions, whether alone or with others. 
• Social awareness – your ability to understand others’ emotions and reactions and respond in a supportive and non-judgmental manner. 
• Relationship management – your ability to communicate in an assertive, respectful and non-defensive manner, particularly when providing feedback or managing interpersonal conflict.