THE ABILITY TO REGULATE YOUR EMOTIONS.
The ability to regulate your emotions, as well as the emotions of the people around you, is the definition of Emotional Intelligence (EI). There are identified five key areas that comprise this theory: Self-Awareness, Motivation, Empathy, Self-Regulation, and Social Skills.
The ability to regulate your emotions and the emotions of others is the definition of Emotional Intelligence (EI). This theory, developed by Dr. Daniel Goleman in the 1990s, continues to ring true amongst those of us in leadership. Goleman has identified five key areas that comprise the theory itself: Self-Awareness, Motivation, Empathy, Self-Regulation, and Social Skills.
With this knowledge, in theory, it becomes easy to address each area and offer evidence as to how these traits contribute to successful leaders and leadership. Yet, it’s not. We often find it challenging to keep our emotions’ in-check’. Our day gets away from us, our emails are blowing up, other team members increasing our stress, deadlines are looming, and we haven’t had our second cup of coffee. This all adds to draining our emotional energy tank.
Suppose we display the full spectrum of emotional range every day with the people around us. In that case, we send messages of being unhinged or unbalanced. If we lack the very essence of leadership motivation, we send powerful messages that we don’t care. While it is necessary to know things, it’s most important to show your people that you care. As the saying goes, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Next, in his theory, Goleman’s third point of light is that if you don’t reflect empathy in moments of duress, you’ll come across as tone-deaf. For example, assume we as leaders ignore the social-skills of building our relationships with trust and accountability, rapport, and our capacity to lead through conflict. In that case, the messages we send to those around us are ‘fend for yourself and figure it out.’ Consequently, it’s vitally important to those we lead, and to leadership itself, that we possess the ability to be emotionally intelligent in matters both large and small.
It matters most when your team needs direction, guidance, follow-up, or follow-through. They require a place to share their fears, perceived limits, or shortcomings confidentially. Suppose you are not emotionally available for them. Later, when they need you, your relationships will diminish, and your influence will wane.
In this course, we begin with regulating our emotions in the space of leadership. Meaning that we don’t allow ourselves to get ‘too-high or too-low.’ We learn to be mindful of our feelings and the emotions of others. Further, we explore how our emotions affect others and how to empower them with our emotional intelligence.
