What is Emotional Intelligence?

Your emotional intelligence (EQ) determines your ability to interact effectively with other humans. It’s your delivery system through which you share your knowledge, experience, and skills with others. If your delivery system is broken or inefficient, your influence won’t translate or make the right impact. This means that to achieve high performance, you don’t just need great technical skills (IQ), you need a great delivery system (EQ).

Signs of Emotional Intelligence

Here are 30 skills to focus on when improving your emotional intelligence. These skills are signs that you can look for when identifying emotional intelligence (or lack thereof) in leaders and managers. They come from the EQindex™ emotional intelligence assessment developed by Oxford social scientist Dr. Timothy R. Clark.

Self-Regard

1. Independence
2. Self-Respect
3. Confidence
4. Optimism
5. Motivation

Social Regard

1. Interest
2. Respect
3. Social Efficacy
4. Empathy
5. Compassion

Self-Awareness

1. Consciousness
2. Monitoring
3. Introspection
4 Openness
5. Integrity

Social Awareness

1. Anticipation
2. Observation
3. Perception
4. Listening & Questioning
5. Mindfulness

Self-Management

1. Stress Tolerance
2. Emotional Stability
3. Delayed Gratification
4. Resilience
5. Impulse Control

Social Management

1. Conflict Management
2. Ego Management
3. Influence
4. Relationship Management
5. Accountability Management

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Emotional Intelligence is a critical factor in achieving high performance and fostering a productive work environment. While technical skills and cognitive abilities are essential, they are not enough on their own. EQ enhances how employees interact, collaborate, and resolve conflicts, directly influencing the overall success of an organization. In modern workplaces, where teamwork and communication are key, high EQ can differentiate between a cohesive team and a dysfunctional one.

The Impact of EQ on Workplace Dynamics

1. Improved Communication: Employees with high EQ can express their thoughts clearly and understand others' perspectives, leading to more effective and transparent communication. This transparency reduces misunderstandings and errors, ensuring that tasks are completed correctly and efficiently. By fostering an environment where open communication is encouraged, employees feel more comfortable sharing ideas and concerns, which can lead to innovative solutions and improvements.
2. Enhanced Collaboration: Teams with emotionally intelligent members work better together, leveraging each other’s strengths and compensating for weaknesses. High EQ allows team members to appreciate diverse viewpoints and skills, leading to more innovative problem-solving. When team members understand and respect each other’s emotional states and motivations, they can work more harmoniously, reducing friction and increasing productivity.
3. Conflict Resolution: High EQ enables individuals to navigate disagreements constructively, reducing workplace tension and fostering a more harmonious environment. Instead of allowing conflicts to escalate or cause lasting damage, emotionally intelligent employees can address issues calmly and effectively. They are skilled at identifying the root causes of conflicts and finding mutually beneficial solutions, which helps maintain a positive and cooperative workplace atmosphere.
4. Leadership Effectiveness: Leaders with strong emotional intelligence inspire trust, motivate their teams, and handle stress gracefully, setting a positive example for others to follow. These leaders can manage their own emotions while understanding and influencing the emotions of their team members. This ability to connect on an emotional level makes them more approachable and respected, fostering a culture of trust and loyalty. Effective leaders use their EQ to navigate challenges and guide their teams toward success, ensuring that everyone feels valued and motivated.
5. Employee Satisfaction: When employees feel understood and valued, their job satisfaction and engagement levels rise, resulting in lower turnover rates. High EQ in the workplace leads to a supportive environment where employees’ emotional and professional needs are met. This results in higher morale and a stronger commitment to the organization. Satisfied employees are more likely to go above and beyond in their roles, contributing to the overall success and growth of the company.

How to Increase Emotional Intelligence

Engage in Deliberate Practice

Improving your emotional intelligence isn’t something you can do in your sleep. You don’t accidentally stumble upon these skills and you won’t develop them without trying. No, your emotional intelligence, like any learnable skill, needs to be practiced in order to be improved.When we think of practice, we normally think about it as one-dimensional product of repetition and consistency. But in the context of EQ, the repetition of subpar, flawed interactions won’t lead to improvement on its own. Deliberate practice does that. Consider these five things:

(1) Deliberate practice is feedback-guided. We want to know how other people experience our interactions.

(2) Deliberate practice is systems-oriented. We need a quantifiable way to engage in practice and measure progress.

(3) Deliberate practice is attention-focused. We learn from doing things deliberately, not accidentally or instinctively.

(4) Deliberate practice is future-minded. We are motivated to improve when we have specific goals in mind.

(5) Deliberate practice is refinement-seeking. We improve when we use each individual practice as an opportunity to get better.

Start With Component Parts

Whether you’re mastering the measures in a difficult piano piece, or practicing individual football drills that influence the game, deliberate practice always involves breaking things down into their component parts. It’s the same with EQ.

Breaking down your interactions into their component parts can help you identify where to seek feedback, set goals, refine processes, build systems, or put your attention.

Build Self-Awareness

Once you break your interactions down into their component parts, how do you determine what you need to practice and improve? Your self-awareness is what allows you to process feedback and create a learning loop. Once you can self-diagnose in social situations, you’re better equipped to self-correct as you interpret the responses of others.

While self-awareness allows us to recognize both our deficiencies and strengths, it's more likely that we will be hurt from a blatant deficiency than we will be by not taking advantage of a strength. Unfortunately, we are less inclined to recognize our faults than we are our talents.

As you first exercise this muscle, consider including trusted mentors and loved ones in the process. They can see things you can’t, and can help jump-start the process so you don’t become your own bottleneck in the improvement process.

Ask a trusted mentor these 10 questions about your emotional intelligence:

1. Where do I get in my own way as I interact with others?
2. What is one thing I do well? How could I make improvements in that area?
3. Where do I fail to hold myself accountable?
4. Who needs my attention and isn’t getting it?
5. What motivates me to do what I do?
6. What small improvement could I make that would be an easy win?
7. When/where do I have a hard time perceiving reality?
8. What norms do I create/tolerate/perpetuate that are harmful?
9. Do you think that how I see myself aligns with how others see me?
10. What talent do I offer that no one else can?

Developing Emotional Intelligence in Leaders

Let's talk about how culture forms. Here’s the sequence: It starts with a pattern of thought or behavior in a person. We call this a habit. Then a team adopts a shared pattern, which becomes a norm. Eventually, a collection of norms becomes a culture. If we want to change a culture, we can't change prevailing norms themselves. We have to address the habits at the individual level. Luckily, we can do this through improving emotional intelligence.What exactly needs to change? We have three options: You can change the head, change the heart, and change the hands.

The traditional approach to this type of change would be to start with the head by increasing awareness and understanding, with the assumption being that conviction will follow your new understanding. With that conviction, your heart will change and you’ll start to act and behave differently. This approach isn't wrong, but it doesn’t get you all the way there.

What changes last in a human being? We’ve learned that in almost every case, it’s the heart that changes last. So beginning with the head is good, but you need to engage the hands concurrently. What does this mean?

It means that you jump into behavior at the same time that you’re increasing awareness and understanding. Engage your head and hands at the same time. We call this principle Behave Until You Believe. If your leaders are struggling to find the heart to improve your emotional intelligence, engage their heads and their hands. Then wait for their hearts to catch up.

When We Fall Short

Because we’re human, we don’t often sustain what we start. Take a look at the axes on the graph below, which represent performance over time. At some point, when we decide to change, we experience an improved level of performance. As we progress, we eventually find ourselves at a critical juncture where we can keep our improved skills, or regress to the mean.

When it comes to behavioral change, we have two choices. Either we change our behavior, or we change our beliefs about our behavior. It’s always easier to change your belief about your behavior than the behavior itself.

When people begin to lose motivation to sustain a personal change, they tend to engage in deflection. Why? Because they need to be able to give themselves a reason for no longer putting forth the effort. They need to be able to justify or rationalize the fact that they are not pursuing the goal anymore.

How do you know if you’re starting to regress to the mean? What are the warning signs? Let’s look at the patterns. We call them the Patterns of Deflection:

To convince themselves that change isn’t necessary, people tend to engage in three primary forms of deflection. Denial means you don’t acknowledge reality. Blame means you do, but it’s somebody else’s fault. And excuse means you acknowledge reality, but there’s a good reason for it. All three forms of deflection represent ways that we tell ourselves soothing stories so we can feel good about quitting.

We’ve all done this to some degree. The goal is to eventually eliminate all three patterns of deflection from your life, and, in the meantime, recognize and rectify them quickly to maintain your improvement.

The key to all of this is what we call the iron law of sustainable behavioral change. It’s pretty simple. It says that sustainable behavioral change—that means changing and making the change stick–is based on a transfer of ownership to the individual. You have to own it. You can have all the resources and support in the world, but if there is no transfer of ownership to the individual, game over.

Throughout your personal and professional life, there will be times when you receive support for your goals and times when you don’t. Don’t expect to rely on others for your personal development. You won’t get too far if you do. Rather, learn to be self-reliant in that journey. If you get help from others, great. Think of that help as scaffolding... Scaffolding can offer support, but it doesn’t hold you up. You play the primary role. Others play a secondary role. In short, you have to own your own development!

4 Steps to Improving Individual Emotional Intelligence

In order to improve our EQ, we need to turn information into action. As we self-diagnose and self-monitor, and with the help of others’ feedback, we can identify our strengths and deficiencies, practice them deliberately, and observe and document the consequences of the behavior:

1. Identify the deficiency.

You can’t improve anything until you know what needs improving. Dissect your interactions into their component parts. What went well? What could’ve gone better? Ask a trusted mentor for help as you work to improve your self-awareness.

2. Choose a behavior.

Knowledge of your deficiencies alone won’t get you anywhere, you have to engage in real action to make real change. Choose one deficiency. Make a list of concrete behaviors that would improve that skill, and pick one that resonates with you.

3. Engage in deliberate practice.

Give your full effort to practice this skill over a set period of time. Seek feedback, set goals, refine processes, and build systems to help you improve your skill. Give it the deliberate attention it needs and deserves.

4. Debrief the results.

Once you changed your behavior, what happened? Were the results positive or negative? Unless you acknowledge the positive effects of your efforts, you risk regressing to the mean.

Emotional Intelligence Training for Leaders

Developing emotional intelligence in leaders is not just beneficial; it’s essential. Leaders set the tone for their teams and influence the broader organizational culture. By investing in EQ training for leaders, companies can foster environments where both employees and business can thrive. Emotional intelligence training equips leaders with the skills they need to understand and manage their own emotions, as well as the emotions of others, leading to more effective and empathetic leadership.

Key Elements of EQ Training for Leaders

1. Self-Awareness Enhancement: Training helps leaders recognize their own emotional triggers and biases, enabling them to manage their reactions better. Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence, as it allows leaders to understand their strengths and weaknesses. By becoming more aware of their emotional states, leaders can better control their responses and make more thoughtful decisions. This awareness also helps leaders identify areas for personal growth, fostering continuous improvement.
2. Empathy Development: Leaders learn to understand and appreciate the emotions and perspectives of their team members, fostering a supportive and inclusive atmosphere. Empathy is crucial for building trust and rapport with team members. By genuinely understanding and valuing their employees' feelings and viewpoints, leaders can create a more engaged and motivated workforce. This empathetic approach helps in addressing employees' concerns and needs, leading to higher job satisfaction and loyalty.
3. Effective Communication: EQ training teaches leaders how to convey their messages clearly and empathetically, ensuring their team feels heard and valued. Effective communication is vital for successful leadership. Leaders with high EQ can express their ideas and expectations in a way that resonates with their team members. They also listen actively, showing genuine interest in their team’s feedback and concerns. This two-way communication builds stronger relationships and fosters a collaborative work environment.
4. Stress Management: Leaders gain tools to handle stress and maintain emotional stability, which is crucial during high-pressure situations. Stress is an inevitable part of leadership, but high EQ leaders know how to manage it effectively. They use techniques such as mindfulness, relaxation exercises, and time management to stay calm and focused. By maintaining their composure, these leaders set a positive example for their team, helping to reduce overall stress levels in the workplace.
5. Conflict Management: Training equips leaders with strategies to resolve conflicts amicably and maintain a positive work environment. Conflict is a natural occurrence in any workplace, but high EQ leaders can address it constructively. They identify the underlying issues, facilitate open discussions, and guide the parties involved toward a resolution that satisfies everyone. This proactive approach to conflict management prevents small disagreements from escalating into larger issues and helps maintain a cohesive and productive team.

How to Measure Emotional Intelligence

EQindex™ is the world’s most accurate, comprehensive, and powerful emotional intelligence self-assessment. It was designed by a team of industry experts and social and behavioral scientists, instructional psychologists, and psychometricians. It measures The 6 Domains of Emotional Intelligence, the first EQ assessment of its kind to measure the intent behind our behavior.

The six domains of the EQindex™ framework address different the beliefs, knowledge, and action you bring to social situations.

Self-Regard & Social Regard: These companion domains refer to your beliefs about yourself and others and the intent you bring to social interactions.

Self-Awareness & Social Awareness: These companion domains refer to your understanding and awareness of your own thoughts, feelings, and behavior, as well as the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of those around you.

Self-Management & Social Management: These companion domains refer to the behavior and skills you bring to social interactions. These are the culminating domains that determine your overall interpersonal effectiveness.

Purpose of EQ Assessments

The goal of EQ assessments like EQindex™ is not to achieve a perfect score but to identify areas for improvement. By understanding your current level of emotional intelligence, you can focus your efforts on specific domains that need enhancement. This targeted approach ensures that your development efforts are both efficient and effective, leading to meaningful improvements in your interpersonal effectiveness. EQ assessments provide a roadmap for personal growth, highlighting strengths to leverage and areas that require attention. By continually reassessing and refining your emotional intelligence, you can enhance your ability to interact with others, build stronger relationships, and achieve greater success in both your personal and professional life.

Remember, EQ is a learnable skill. The purpose of an EQ assessment is not to get an A or score 100%. The purpose is to assess your EQ in relativity to identify where you should spend your time.