Is it truly possible?
If you are in a LEADERSHIP role, then my answer would be NO.
My experience (both personal and professional) tells me that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is by far the most important aspect required to enable a leader to thrive.
Why?
Emotional Intelligence is essentially our ability to manage
a) our own emotions
b) the emotions of those around us.
Without the ability to regulate emotions, our emotions will run the show.
What happens when your emotions run the show?
➡️ Leaders are unable to manage their own stress successfully. This negatively impacts not only the leader themselves but ripples outward. Stress breeds stress.
➡️ Leaders tend to adopt a fixed mindset and hide behind a fixed ‘work persona’ to shield others from looking too closely at their flaws and insecurities. This can lead to the Leader being detached and disengaged from others and unable to build strong, authentic relationships.
➡️ Leaders struggle to motivate their teams as they are closed off to adapting their styles and approaches to get the best out of people. This can lead to low morale, disengagement and underperformance in their team.
➡️ Leaders find communication challenging, especially managing conflict or underperformance so they end up ‘stuck’ unable to shift these challenges. These challenges do not go away, in fact, they grow and escalate.
➡️ Leaders find collaboration difficult as they find it difficult to see things from other people’s perspectives and focus more on the idea of ‘winning’ rather than the successful outcome of the project itself.
Leaders’ development and progression is stunted as they struggle to build honest, authentic connections with people and they therefore find it impossible to INFLUENCE and IMPACT successfully.
If we have low Emotional Intelligence, can we do something to improve this?
The good news is, of course you can improve this. It’s a skill and quality that we can all grow if we choose to.
However, to improve in this area you need to be willing to do 3 things:
1) Accept that the change you want to see, starts with YOU.
2) Decide you want to change and seek the right SUPPORT for yourself
3) Be willing and open to being UNCOMFORTABLE whilst you change
Our BOLD Leadership coaching programmes are created with Emotional Intelligence at the core.
Interested in hearing more? Get in touch. 📞
