Management

 

What’s Your EI?

 

Research has shown what distinguishes outstanding leaders is not their technical or analytical skills, but their degree of emotional intelligence. That is, their ability to effectively manage themselves and their relationships.

The 5 key components of Emotional Intelligence (EI) are:

 

Self-awareness  The ability to recognise and understand your moods, emotions, and drives. Self-aware people know their weaknesses and strengths, as well as how their behaviour affects others.

 

Self-regulation  The ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods, suspend judgment, and think before acting. You stay calm in the midst of turmoil and confusion and can work in environments of uncertainty.

 

Motivation  The ability to pursue goals with energy and persistence in spite of obstacles, and for reasons that go beyond money or status.

 

Empathy  The ability to understand people’s emotional makeup, and their needs, concerns and goals.

 

Social skill  The ability to manage relationships, build networks, and find common ground.

 

Having Emotional Intelligence isn’t genetic, so strengthening your EI skills is possible. You can develop your EI skills through practice, getting feedback from those around you, and from your enthusiasm for making a difference.

 

Additional characteristics and responsibilities:

 

Contemporary business leadership calls for generous portions of decisiveness, coolness under fire, and results-oriented thinking. It also calls for courage in the face of conflicting demands. The ability to make trade-offs between people, resources, money, and deadlines — often causing short-term pain for the sake of long-term benefit — remains a vital element of effective leadership.

 

Likewise, leaders must be future-focused; they must know how their group or unit fits into the bigger organisational picture. They must be able to efficiently organise short-term tasks according to long-term priorities.

 

Perhaps one of the most important responsibilities of today’s leaders is creating the conditions that enable employees to excel. To achieve this aim, the most successful leaders are also the most flexible: they have learned to adapt their leadership style to the situation.