Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

Nikita Rai | Oct. 26, 2020, 6:07 a.m.

Emotional Intelligence, as the term suggests, is the ability to deal with emotions intelligently. Emotional intelligence covers things like knowing your emotions, responding to them, and being aware of how your emotions can impact other people's emotions and behaviors. Teenagers, as growing leaders, remain unsure of the importance of managing and communicating emotions to run a business or startup successfully. Emotional Intelligence is often overlooked as a component in leadership because of its soft nature, but it is a key component in leadership. Leadership demands inputs from every area because no matter how skilled you are in the intellectual aspects of your business, you need to be emotionally intelligent to manage a team.

To understand the working environment effectively, a leader must be emotionally intelligent because otherwise, the leader wouldn't be able to understand the perspectives and needs of the team members. Leaders of tomorrow should be aware of their emotions, how their emotions can affect the business and team members, and effective ways of leading their emotions in the right direction. Here are a few parameters of emotional intelligence that you must be aware of as a leader.

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Self-Awareness - Like any other skill, emotional intelligence also begins with you. Self-awareness in emotional intelligence is about knowing your emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and biases as well. You should be aware of why you feel a certain way, why you react that way, and what impact is it making on you, your team members, and your business. This is an important parameter because to begin working on your emotional intelligence, you should know the nature of your emotions first.
Self-Regulation - After knowing your emotion, the next step comes of regulating them. Although having an understanding of emotions is necessary for leaders, they cannot let their emotions influence their decisions and ideas of the business. Self-regulation is about analyzing your emotions and being aware of their consequences, if not regulated at the right point. A leader should know how to redirect their emotions before making decisions and how to change according to circumstances.
Motivation - It is very well known that you cannot give away something that you do not possess. As a leader, you should be able to motivate and lead the whole team to achieve the purpose of your projects. and for that, you need to keep yourself motivated. Be aware of your strengths and focus on your skills. Awareness of your potential would keep you motivated to keep working in the right direction.
Empathy - Empathy means understanding what the other people, in your case your team members, might feel and how they might react to certain emotions. To guide your team members, you need to get an insight into their psychology. When we put ourselves in someone else's shoes and understand their motives behind saying and doing certain things, we get driven towards guiding with compassion.
Social-Skills - Last but not least- Social Skills! Maintain good communication with your team members, and not just verbal communication but also non-verbal communication. Rightly so because you would want to be a leader whose team members do not hesitate in talking to him/her. This will result in innovative ideas, new concepts to explore, and non-hesitant growth.

Emotional Intelligence is not something that can be imbibed overnight. It will take time and throughout your journey, you will discover methods of directing emotions to help your purpose. At times you will learn by watching your surroundings and your team members. At the same time, you will keep discovering its benefits.