STEPS TO BECOME A BETTER LEADER

-Leadership and Marketing Update from H. LEINER & CO

Technical skills and IQ are important in an organization, but EI – Emotional Intelligence, is far more important.

EI is broken down into 5 components:

1. SELF-AWARENESS: Knowing your strengths, values, and goals, but above all, knowing your weaknesses. Self-confidence in your strengths is crucial, but the ability to face your shortcomings and even laugh about them is what makes you real and relatable.
2. SELF-REGULATION: Controlling your instinctive emotional responses. Often we respond to people in a reactive manner, which can indicate being defensive. In difficult situations, be sure to harness your initial reactions and respond with logic and grace. Your willingness to change habits this way will earn you respect as a strong leader.
3. MOTIVATION: Having a drive to achieve. Be passionate about your work and about overcoming challenges that arise. Furthermore, your ability to be optimistic when you encounter failure will help inspire and motivate those around you.
4. EMPATHY: Considering other people’s feelings when making decisions. Emotion is a huge driver of behavior in all of us. Being sensitive and considerate to the feelings of those around you, even when there are vast differences at play, will make you easier to get along with and will help bring out the best in others.
5. SOCIAL SKILL: Being proactive about managing relationships and building networks. Communicate carefully in your relationships and notice the way people respond to you. Being a leader means empowering each person with choices that allow their voices to be heard.

These 5 aspects of emotional intelligence are vital for effective leadership. The good news is that all of these skills are learned. Everyone is born with a certain level of emotional intelligence, but the rest comes from active development from practice and feedback from others.

The process may not be easy, but it is an investment for your future, and the future of your organization and its people.

(The Essentials: An Introduction to the Most Enduring Ideas on Management from Harvard Business Review, by Daniel Goleman)

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