Boost your leadership E.Q.
Most of us think of a leader as someone with a great deal of education and experience in a specific area. While knowledge and experience are essential qualities, one’s ability to communicate and work well with others is just as crucial to being an effective leader.
Having high emotional intelligence (E. Q.) allows you to inspire and motivate others to cooperate with you to accomplish a shared objective and vision. There are several ways that you can strengthen your interpersonal skills.
Boost your leadership E. Q. with these methods and accomplish more together:
1. Increase your self-awareness. Self-development is the foundation of excellence. Before leading and inspiring others, you must first understand your motivations and behavior.
Trust yourself. Develop your vision by learning to listen to your inner values and dreams. Try not to compromise your values to achieve a goal or for other temporary gains.
Embrace passion by learning to be motivated by your internal compass rather than external forces and situations.
Keep your energy fully recharged so that you can give your best effort. You can stay energized by learning what activities re-energize you and which ones drain your energy.
Respect yourself. Know the limitations of your body, mind, and spirit, and strive for a balance between your responsibilities.
Become aware of your flaws and limitations.
Seek ways to improve yourself and be open to change.
2. Strengthen your discipline and self-management. Learning to be responsible for your behavior, attitudes, and actions can raise your performance level and help you build trust and authority with others.
Seek the input of others. Ask how you can help them or what you need to do differently to communicate and manage them more effectively.
Hold yourself accountable for your actions and performance.
Don’t be afraid to delegate responsibilities and tasks. Be confident enough in yourself to surround yourself with talented, qualified people.
3. Develop your social awareness. Be aware of your attitudes and the power you have to motivate others.
Show genuine concern for others and learn how to listen actively. Doing so will create lasting bonds and a strong team that will work with you rather than against you.
Give others a reason to support you and your vision. Let others know when they have done an excellent job and look for ways to recognize and reward excellence openly.
Help others to buy into your vision by making them stakeholders in attaining your goals. Seek their advice when setting goals and plan how to achieve them.
Help others increase their abilities and utilize their talents by providing training, scholarship, and self-development opportunities.
4. Emphasize more significant relationship management. Learn how to bring out the best in yourself and others. Utilize everyone’s best qualities and minimize their limitations with the practical assignment of tasks and delegation of responsibilities.
Regardless of your education or experience, you can achieve more success by learning how to use your people skills to harness the talents and energy of others entirely. These strategies will allow you to increase your E. Q and inspire others to enlist in your cause of their own free will.
When you apply these ideas and increase your emotional intelligence, you want to put them into practice in your work environment. Check out my Wednesday morning memo on putting Emotional Intelligence into Practice in Your Leadership. You may also like my blog post on “Executive Presence in Leadership.”