Written by: Tim Rylatt, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Would you like to improve your company’s performance, team motivation, customer service, and your own sales skills? There is a central solution to all of these; developing your Emotional Intelligence.
What is emotional intelligence?
There are, rather surprisingly, four main identified different types of intelligence.
The first you may have heard about before as it is quite commonly known about. This is your IQ, or ‘Intelligence Quotient’. IQ is largely about the retention of, and interpretation of facts, figures, and other information. It is often assessed through academic means, and commonly rated in terms of formalised qualifications. Much of traditional education was tailored exclusively toward the development of IQ. Modern education is still largely focused on this but in some areas has now also started to diversify into other aspects in recent times.
The second type is your ‘Emotional Quotient’ or EQ. This is about how your emotional intelligence allows or hinders you in emotionally connecting with yourself, others, and the world around you. Our emotions heavily shape our reactions, conscious actions, chosen behaviours, and to some regard, how we interpret situations too. It also substantially affects our understanding of others’ emotions and our ability to adapt and respond to them effectively.
The third type is your ‘Social Quotient’ (Quotient) or SQ, which affects how well we can establish, develop and maintain long-term meaningful relationships.
Finally, there is your ‘Adversity Quotient’. This influences how well you can initially respond to difficult situations, and how well you may emotionally come out of it on the far side. This is a particularly interesting skill, as it requires the brain to learn how to bypass the natural fight, flight, and freeze responses (to some degree at least).
Important point
Emotional Intelligence is based on improvable skills, not immovable traits
We’ve all met people who seem to be totally unaware of other people’s feelings or simply ‘don’t read the room’ correctly. Equally, you will likely be able to think of people who are so empathetic and attentive, almost to a fault. It may surprise you to know that whilst some natural capability does exists, largely these are skills developed over time.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is commonly assumed to be something you are born with; a trait like your hair colour, it is, in reality, a set of skills that can be learned, developed, and improved. This can be achieved in much the same way as other forms of intelligence are taught, trained, and practised to advance competency!
The education of young children highlights this point. Young people are effectively taught about emotional regulation. They can understand and recognise emotions in others, as well as develop many more empathetic attributes.
However, it is commonly assumed that the development of this vital skill set simply stops after the early years of education and that it is neither available to nor as effective for adults. Both of those assumptions are very wrong!
In reality, the best business leaders are those who make a deliberate effort to develop and improve their EQ. They seek out professional guidance, and undertake the learning and practice needed to raise their emotional game!
Why is emotional intelligence important in business?
There have been numerous studies over time that have assessed the benefits of leaders with high EQ ratings, and how this strength has benefitted their teams and businesses overall.
When Daniel Coleman popularised the term emotional intelligence, he found that 80-90% of high performers in the C-suite have high emotional intelligence. Their EQ was appraised as being twice as likely as an accurate predictor of future performance than technical skills or IQ.
Another study found that leaders who use EQ when engaging with their team, are 38% more likely to have above-average productivity and 27% more likely to have higher profitability.
You can also see the connection for yourself. If you think about the bosses you’ve had or teams you’ve been in, when have you worked and delivered your best?
Was it when you felt listened to and truly heard?
Was it better when there was an established level of trust?
Did it help to have a sense of mutual empathy and real human understanding in place?
Did you find challenges and conflict were better resolved pro-actively, than when they were allowed to fester or were ignored overall?
How much of a difference did it make to have your leader take the time to properly explain your role, and to connect it to a wider team purpose?
In order to achieve this level of motivation and engagement from you it probably took a lot of skill and effort from the leader and manager. The skills they drew upon to do so sit squarely within the realm of EQ!
At a fundamental level, the leaders who develop and improve their EQ are better able to inspire and motivate their teams. In turn, this very often leads to better overall business performance and human productivity.
How can you develop your emotional intelligence?
There are a lot of skills that make up your EQ:
Self-recognition: being able to identify your emotions and the reasons for them, and your self-assurance.
Self-management: the self-control and discipline of your emotions, having a positive attitude, being trustworthy and are goal-focused.
Social-recognition: having empathy for others which means putting yourself in their shoes and taking action based upon the view from there. It requires looking at the holistic communications of others and beyond the words that are said.
Social-management: how you develop long-term, meaningful relationships, how to handle conflict management, and how you establish good team working practices.
It is natural that for some of these areas, you will naturally find it easier to develop and faster to become capable in than for others. The first step is to understand where you are strong and where you are less capable currently.
At UK Growth Coach, we can help you gain insight into your current EQ skill set ratings for just £75+VAT.
It involves completing a simple 15-20 minute questionnaire online. Once done, the system will generate a report with clear ratings across the different EQ skill areas, and make core recommendations on how you can personally develop your EQ skills. If you would also like to discuss some more direct developmental coaching with our specialist team, we’d be pleased to help you in that way too.
Quick skill development ideas
Here are a few ideas of activities that in our experience bring benefits to most SME leaders and managers:
1. Emotions drive action
Both your own and your teams’ actions are driven heavily by emotion. Humans aren’t as logical as we’d like to think we are!
Think of a time you have reacted emotionally to a situation.
In hindsight, what emotion was triggered and why?
Would you do anything differently if you had your time again?
Identifying and exploring your emotions is the first step to being able to control them. After that, you can use positive energy to improve future outcomes.
2. Positive psychology
Next time you have a decision to make as the owner of your business, stop and take the time to consciously view the situation from a range of perspectives.
Try the optimistic perspective, the pessimistic, examine only the facts, explore only the emotions of the situation, look at just the benefits etc. It is also worth taking a breath and considering how other parties would view that situation from their perspective, and from the objectives and goals they may have.
All too often, we focus on the negatives of a situation; what needs improving, or could go wrong. Forcing yourself to view a situation from this range of perspectives helps you be more balanced, and can often allow a more positive action to be identified. It allows you to make bolder and more considered decisions, and this is where success most commonly lies!
3. Active listening
More often than not, we listen to establish a clear opinion, to judge, and to form our next response. This focus on our next action means that we miss out on hearing what is truly being said, and also in identifying or interpreting the non-verbal parts of the communication accurately.
Practising active listening helps to build both trust and connection. It also makes the process of having a conversation more rewarding and satisfying for both parties.
Tips for active listening include:
Make good eye-contact
Ask questions
Don’t plan what you are going to say next until understanding is fully achieved
Paraphrase back what you’ve heard to confirm this
Stay focused – no checking your watch or phone!
4. Understanding others’ emotions
The final quick exercise to try is to become more attentive to others’ emotions and to better understand why they have taken any actions they have.
Taking the time to do so builds empathy, which again drives connection and trust between you and your team member or colleague. It also will help you manage and motivate this individual.
You get to better see where they are coming from, better consider what they are trying to achieve, better appreciate any distractions and frustrations they may have, and better identify how you can help them best.
As an example of how you might do this, look through your emails and see if you can ‘read’ how someone is feeling from the words alone.
What was your last interaction with them like?
Does that give you any further indications of the emotions that are driving their behaviour?
When we rely on text without context, or without the supporting information that body language, tonality, volume, or other communication factors can offer, it’s easy to see why incorrect assumptions may be made!
These quick exercises are here to get you thinking, but if you make them a habit of your leadership style, they can also be very powerful at developing your EQ skills!
Emotional intelligence is a very personal thing. It is good to learn where your strengths and development areas exist across the spectrum of EQ. With the greater clarity that provides, you can develop a development plan to become a better leader.
In our view, the main point of EQ is the impact it can deliver on your effectiveness and your relationships with others.
An understanding of your team members’ EQ skillset is vital too, as it can highlight why there may be conflict, and what can be done to move forward positively. It can also help you identify the best candidates to move into management or leadership roles.
If you would like an EQ assessment completed for yourself and, or your team, we will be pleased to arrange this for you for just £75+VAT per person. Simply get in touch and we can get this arranged for you.
Tim Rylatt, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Tim is a business coach to smaller/medium-sized business who have found themselves on a ‘plateau’ in terms of performance and want to make a change. He gets real pleasure from seeing business owners reclaim control and create personal/work-life balance. His valuable real-world insight and experience spans many sectors and industries, with businesses at all stages of their journey from start-up through to exiting a business. You would be hard pushed to find a more experienced business coach, having worked with around 250 companies throughout his career. He is also a published author on the subject.
