Emotional intelligence in leadership: A path to success

In the ever-evolving leadership landscape, emotional intelligence has emerged as a critical trait distinguishing exceptional leaders. Beyond traditional leadership skills, the ability to understand and manage one’s emotions, as well as effectively navigate the feelings of others, plays a pivotal role in creating a positive and productive work environment. This article explores why leaders need to develop their emotional intelligence, focusing on empathy, active listening and understanding emotions in effective leadership.

Choose Empathy Over Efficiency

When you speak with clients, customers, or prospects, do you focus more on empathy or efficiency?

Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Efficiency: the ability to accomplish something with the least waste of time and effort.

When you focus on empathy, you can’t be as efficient.

When you seek efficiency, empathy must be kept to a minimum.

8 Tips to Handle Workplace Absenteeism

Simply put, absenteeism is a big deal for business leaders. It costs a lot in terms of lost productivity and temporary labor costs. Add in weakened morale and the price of absenteeism grows even more substantial.

So, what can leaders do to address it? Here are some strategies to consider.

Be proactive – Don’t let the problem go on for so long that you eventually react in anger or, in the interim, come across to others as unresponsive.
Keep records – While you don’t want to be breathing down people’s necks, it is important to have accurate attendance data at your disposal. This will give you the information that you need to have corrective conversations.
Demonstrate concern – When you notice a trend, approach the employee and demonstrate concern. Ask her what’s going on and what can be done to rectify matters. Approach the conversation with the assumption that the employee wants to be on time and reliable. See what you can do to be helpful.

How to Give Feedback Like a Boss

In a previous post we talked about using the “EARN” approach to giving constructive feedback that focuses on a person’s actions rather than on their person or character.

Below are some other tips to help you deliver more effective feedback.

Be positive – If your intention is genuine, and you can convey this to the employee, there’s a good chance your feedback will be effective.
Be immediate – Give the feedback while the individual can act on it. Waiting until the end of the week, or worst yet, the annual performance review doesn’t help the person make mid-course corrections.

What Kind of Cop Are You?

Can you be nice and still get things done? Is it possible to be pleasant and still respected?

The short answer is yes. It is possible to balance the two, to set high expectations and yet find ways to be giving, demonstrate care, and go the extra mile. (For more about leaderships styles and how to best leverage your style with others’ needs, clink here.)

Leading others is less about choosing a persona (changing who we are at our core can be awfully difficult and can lead to all sorts of unwanted side effects) and more about finding a way for your inner self to balance against what your people really need.

BLOG